Long Time Comin'

If music is the fluid that moves a spirit, Bruce Springsteen is the flood that my soul needed.

Since my last post, I have aimed to submerge myself in music--all kinds of music--in an attempt to lift my spirits. I am listening to classic music at work. I have stopped listening to talk radio on my way home from work and have opted for CDs. And on Friday night, BH and I went to my very first (and BH's zillionth) Bruce Springsteen concert.

In all honesty, I never really "got" Springsteen. His CD's are ok, but nothing I was just bonkers over. I always enjoyed the poetic-ness of his songs, but never enough to really call myself a fan. And then, oh my goodness then, I saw him live. Springsteen is much like hockey in this one regard... it's a whole new monster in person.

Springsteen's passion is unparalleled. He feels his music so deeply that you cannot help but let yourself absorb into the moment. He played with a spontaneity I have never encountered. There was no set play list; he simply let the mood move him. The concert, Devils and Dust, features Springsteen, a harmonica, a piano, and a series of impressive guitars. The concert is truly just a man and his music. The talent that it takes to transfix 6,000 people for 3 hours with nothing but the air in your lungs and the strumming of a guitar is almost unfathomable.

Springsteen's most amazing gift, though, is his storytelling. He tells stories between songs and in his music. Very few of the songs have choruses; they are songs that force you to sit back, listen, think, and feel. This storytelling talent allows you to escape in his poetry and relate to him on what feels like an almost intrusively personal level. At the end of the concert, I felt like I knew him. I felt like I had been given the privilege of peering into his heart. He told me a story, and I listened. We all listened. And I am better for having heard what he had to say.