Dethrone the Dictaphone
When you're so deep into an artist's work, it's easy to start thinking that the work, which seems to be so all-encompassing, can actually answer questions about your real life.
I'm only on the second chapter of Jimmy Guterman's Runaway American Dream, a 2005 collection of long essays about Bruce Springsteen's work, and I've already choked on this gem. I choked out of vehement disagreement, and a shock of recognition.
Because really, what the fuck else would we use art for, if not to answer questions about our own lives? The question might be "How can I face another morning?" or it might be "How can I get laid?" It doesn't matter.
Art does two fundamental things: It asks questions, and it answers them. It may not do both at the same time, and it may not answer any of the questions it raises. But that's art to me, in a nutshell: Questions and answers.
And yet...and yet. I'm not exaggerating much when I admit I've listened to nothing but Springsteen since about mid-February. I absorbed the new record, and revisited some old records in the same mold. And then the tour started, and the magic of the internet brought me an abundance of full bootleg recordings of shows on his latest tour, sometimes less than 24 hours after the final encore.
I had a buddy in college who was a Deadhead and I never could understand it. The 20-year-old me couldn't possibly foresee his iTunes library fifteen years later, with several thousand bootleg cuts and probably 100 versions of "Rosalita" alone. What answers am I getting out of hearing "Thunder Road" at least once a day, every day, for months? And not the studio version, but the closing tune from Springsteen's main set on April 4 of this year, at the former Meadowlands arena?
It's possible I'm getting the same answers over and over again, and the questions are just so big and persistent that they require a constant response. But sometimes my awareness pushes through into something new and unheard. It could be a fresh fill from Roy Bittan's piano, or a new roll from Max Weinberg's drums. Or it could be a new way to hear old words; "Thunder Road" will always mean something to me, but what it means exactly will be ever-changing.
If insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, then at least I'm not insane, because I always find something new. Or I am fucking crazy, and I need a new definition for insanity.