Springsteen’s two-hour biographical rock operetta at the Walter Kerr Theater on W. 48th Street in New York City changed that for me.
Between acoustical performances of some of his greatest hits and the frequent sharing of his innermost thoughts and feelings as he maneuvered through his life as a wannabe rock star on the Jersey Shore to becoming one of music’s biggest stars, Springsteen redefined art.
He enhanced my appreciation for all of it: music, paintings, dramatical performances, poetry.
How does Springsteen on Broadway relate to a painting or a play or a sculpture?
Each creation elicits a raw human emotion.
For me, Springsteen on Broadway was a brutally honest look at my past, my present and my future.
Of course, he opened the show with an impassioned version of Growin’ Up, intertwining some of his experiences and memories of his own childhood.
That set off inside my head a daydream, or more accurately, a reflection on my own past.
I grew up on Springsteen music.
His lyrics touched me on a personal level, with some perfectly matching my own life’s experiences.
You see, and this is something I don’t ever admit or discuss, I grew up battling depression. I experienced many feelings of inadequacy and a lack of self-esteem.
To escape, I turned to Springsteen’s music. I also read…a lot.
After being introduced to Jack Kerouac as a teenager I was hooked.
From On the Road to Visions of Cody, I’d read Kerouac and listen to Springsteen and project myself into the novels and the lyrics. It was my escape to a world I’d never know.
On Wednesday, several hours before the show, my wife and I spent some time in Greenwich Village. We walked through Washington Park Square, one of Kerouac’s favorite spots in the Village to pass time and reflect.
As I walked the park, I thought of Kerouac and of the dead bodies buried just a few feet below my own shoes. The Hangman’s Elm, the tree used to hang traitors during the Revolutionary War, still stands in the Northwest corner of the park.
Moments later, I sat inside McSorley’s Old Ale House, the oldest tavern in the United States, and another of Kerouac’s recreational points of interest.
I walked the path Kerouac frequented. I drank a pint in the same cramped pub where he did the same so many times before.
Hours later, I was inside the intimate Walter Kerr Theater listening intently as Bruce Springsteen shared some of his fondest memories of his childhood, his mother and father, and his story of Growin’ Up.
I realized at that moment what an impact art had had on my life.
Music. Poetry. Literature.
And Springsteen rolled it all up into one performance that defined me, who I was and who I wanted to be.
There I was, a kid who grew up with nothing, sitting in a tiny theater in New York City with the love of my life at my side and a lyrical poet and magician in front of me.
He sang of Promised Lands and Racing in the Street and Dancing in the Dark and his Born to Run personality. He reflected on the guilt he feels for being bypassed in the Vietnam draft.
“I think often of the person who went in my place, because someone went,” he said.
Springsteen admitted to the magic trick he possesses, his ability to share his Brilliant Disguise while keeping others from seeing what’s behind the mask.
He spoke and sang of being Tougher than the Rest.
The others who shared the theater disappeared. It was just Bruce and me, left alone to discuss our Hometown. The pain we felt over distant relationships with our fathers and the emotional strain when we lost girlfriends and the ache in our hearts when our buddies were killed at war.
Two hours, filled with magic in the night. That was 120 minutes that defined my life and provided a Reason to Believe.
The hole in my heart I always believed existed is no longer there. It never was.
Thanks Bruce, for everything.
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