There were a lot of motorcycles parked along the streets of Soho and Little Italy last night.
Thought of you, Bruce blog.
Looks like I will not be seeing Bruce at the Stand Up for Heroes benefit.
Updating in the dark
No?
Anyway, quick update:
- Working my way (slowly, luxuriously) through Tracks. Thanks to Travis for the gift. (Back to official studio albums as soon as I’m done!)
- Speaking of Travis: On Saturday the Unsacred Hearts blew the roof off Fort Useless and ended their set with a surprise, a pulse-racing cover of “The Promised Land.” When it was over someone told me I looked like I was “going to melt” from happiness. I certainly felt like I was going to melt from happiness (also sweat).
- And speaking of working: I’m slogging through a draft of an essay on “Born in the U.S.A.” It’s slow going; each time I listen to it I realize how much more there is to say. As soon as it’s finished I will put it someplace where it can be read. After that I will work on an essay about how it feels to set a world record for listening to “Born in the U.S.A.”
Went to the movies today, figured out the deal with that hat from the Hammersmith Odeon ‘75 show.
“Human Touch” (the song, at least) sank in for me finally, on a New Jersey Transit train, of all places—a chill, rainy Sunday evening as we pulled into Newark. I was leaning my head on the scarred plexiglas window and I looked up at a row of faces hovering on the platform, and there was a raucous group of teenagers waving their cell phones in front of me, a mousy woman in pink capris half-asleep in the seat to my right, and I found myself hitting repeat on the song, over and over, all the way to Penn Station.
Then I came home and discovered that it is, of course, a public transit song.
“Bruce came (into the band) when they moved over. They needed a lead guitar player.
“I called them my boys,” said Vinyard, who has no children.
The “Bruce” here is rock and roll superstar Bruce Springsteen, with whom Vinyard has remained close friends since the days of her husband – who died in 1988 – managing this band, the Castiles, and Marion being a kind of band mother.
” Longest-serving Monmouth employee recalls how a young Springsteen practiced in her home.Shake away your city life
Fizzy New York euphoria notwithstanding, it was bound to happen. The homesickness hit hard the other morning, before I’d even left for work, and by the time I pushed myself through the rotating door in the office lobby some distant part of me was walking down the back of Munjoy Hill, the last four blocks from my old apartment. I used to take that route to the ocean in the mornings, regardless of weather, on foot or by bicycle. I have never been an ocean person, and I am certainly not a beach person—I know woods and lakes—but standing there above the sweep of Casco Bay, the abandoned fortifications on Hog Island Ledge, the sailboats twisting on their moorings, the gulls, the causeway to Mackworth Island, the lobster boat scudding west, the ferry turning east, the dogs chasing sticks on the sand, I felt the peace of a sustained narrative, something that began with rock and water and lasted long enough for me to find a place in it.
And, my god, those beach roses, especially when they are dying.
That afternoon between meetings I took my ipod, rode the elevator down eight floors and walked into a wall of city heat. I decided to listen to “Incident on 57th Street” because it is in part a song about endings and beginnings, and because the way Bruce sings “Good night / it’s all right / Jane” would distract me with another sort of ache. To the east the streets were crowded with lunchtime activity, people sucking down nicotine and falafel and staring into their cell phones. I turned north and then west. After a few blocks I stopped at a crosswalk, and that’s when a breeze picked up, bringing with it a whiff of water—no joke about pollution, I mean the smell of moving water. The base note is the same everywhere. I realized it was the river I could see from the windows behind my desk; I’d come to think of it as decoration, like the pictures of television personalities and cartoon characters in the hallway. I had forgotten it was alive. I stood there, eyes closed, inhaling, until the light and the wind changed, and then it was time to go inside and pick up where I had left off.
