#springsteenonbroadway a review (& some hyperbole): You need god-given talent. Drive. A fire in the belly. Ignorance and anger. A healthy flight instinct. And you have to live the lie. It’s all a lie — I’m a conman, he admits, never worked an honest job, never worked five days a week (“until now!”), never set foot in a factory, but he’s spent his life writing about work, about factories, about cars, about men. The lie is not a lie, though. It is the seed of creativity. It grows, unfurling it’s broad branches. It is truth, a spark that ignites and fires the new. It is, Bruce Springsteen proclaims, rock and roll. // The familiar chords. Springsteen center stage with his guitar. “I stood stone-like at midnight,” Bruce strumming hard, breaking into the song, a story, a memory, family, place. Elvis. Not s concert, but a one-man show. And not even that. I struggle to name this thing I’ve witnessed, this distillation of memoir and concert and group therapy session. But I know it was real. Spiritual. A revenance, shared with the congregation. // The contours were familiar — mostly familiar songs, though unexpected shifts, detours. A song for his mother I’d never heard, two songs from Tunnel of Love with Patti, a reminder that all is not lost in Trump’s America — “Long Walk Home,” “Land of Hope and Dreams.” He spoke of ghosts — the past stays with us, those we lost helping us make our journey. // Clarence was there. And Douglas Springsteen. Danny Federico and all of the departed — friends, family, community. A tree. Maybe I’m making more of it than I should, and maybe I’ll temper my response tomorrow. Maybe. But now, at this exact moment, writing by the glow of a mesmerizing night at the Walter Kerr Theatre, I must allow the awe to shine through. @newspoet41 @springsteen #instagramessay (at Walter Kerr Theatre)
