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As readers of this blog know, it has been a tumultuous time here—a sinking realization that not all the people you trust to get something right (or to do right) do.  A sense of helplessness about a false newspaper claim.  And so many friends stepping in to cry out against the injustice.

And while I will never be able to leave this cruelty behind—for it is not about me (about that I would not care) but about someone I deeply love—I did physically leave home very early yesterday morning to join friends at the Glory Days Symposium, an intelligent gathering of people who recognize that Springsteen does so much more than entertain. (One of my own—many—appreciations of Springsteen is here.)  I was proud to join April Lindner, Jane Satterfield, Ann E. Michael, and Ned Balbo on a storytelling panel, and deeply inspired by the conversations I heard along the way.  I was happy to at last meet Mark Bernhard, an associate provost at University of Southern Indiana, who puts so much of himself into this event.

Mid-afternoon I slipped away to Asbury Park and walked the boardwalk alone.  Sea and salt and time to be.  A quick but essential exchange with my editor, Tamra Tuller.  A funny, I-am-the-luckiest-mother-on-earth text carnival with my son.

Monmouth University, where the Glory Days Symposium was held, is a green campus, architecturally cohering and whole.  At its center stands Wilson Hall, a Horace Trumbauer designed mansion originally built, in 1929, as the private residence of F.W. Woolworth Co. president Hubert Templeton Parson.  In the summer of 1916, in a building lost to fire on this same site, Woodrow Wilson worked through his presidential campaign.  If this Trumbauer building looks familiar to you, that's because it served as the set for the movie, Annie.

I share above some images from the day.

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Yes, it has obsessed me, but it is done.  "Raw to the Bone:  Transported to Truth and Memory by Springsteen's River Songs" is written at last, and it will slumber now, until September, when I will have the great pleasure of joining April Lindner, Jane Satterfield, Ned Balbo, and Ann Michael at the Glory Days Symposium at Monmouth University.  This blog will now return to its regularly scheduled (ha, I never schedule anything) program.

From the paper:

The music will rise through the soles of my feet.  It will scour, channel, silt, and further rise.   In the dark cavern of my hips it will catch and swish.  Outside, perhaps, the stars have come up, and probably the deer have vanished, and maybe the cicadas are rumbling around in their own mangled souls.  But inside, a river churns, widens, roars, and steeps, and I am dancing Springsteen.    

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Could there be anything more thrilling (for a reader-rocker) than reading the beautifully researched, impeccably written David Remnick profile of Bruce Springsteen in the July 30 issue of The New Yorker?  The story is called "We Are Alive," and most everyone read it before I did, because my issue didn't arrive until late yesterday afternoon.  I'd read pieces online.  I'd read the raves.  But yesterday, after a very long day of corporate work and minor agitations, I found a breeze and read the profile through.  I didn't have to fall in love again with Bruce Springsteen; I've been in love since I was a kid.  But I loved, loved, loved every word of this story.  I would like to frame it.

(For those who haven't seen my Devon Horse Show photos and video of Jessica Springsteen, who is as sensational in her way as Bruce is, I share them here.)

Perhaps my favorite part of Remnick's article was discovering the way that Springsteen reads, how he thinks about books.  You don't get to be sixty-two and still magnetic, necessary, pulsingly, yes, alive if you don't know something, and if you don't commit yourself to endless learning.  Reading is one of the many ways Springsteen stays so connected to us, and so relevant.  From The New Yorker:

Lately, he has been consumed with Russian fiction.  "It's compensatory—what you missed the first time around," he said.  "I'm sixty-some, and I think, There are a lot of these Russian guys!  What's all the fuss about?  So I was just curious.  That was an incredible book: 'The Brothers Karamazov.' Then I read 'The Gambler.'  The social play in the first half was less interesting to me, but the second half, about obsession, was fun.  That could speak to me. I was a big John Cheever fan, and so when I got into Chekhov I could see where Cheever was coming from.  And I was a big Philip Roth fan, so I got into Saul Bellow, 'Augie March.' These are all new connections for me.  It'd be like finding out now that the Stones covered Chuck Berry."

Next week, I'll begin to write my paper for Glory Days: The Bruce Springsteen Symposium, which is being held in mid-September at Monmouth University, and where I'll be joining April Lindner, Ann Michael, Jane Satterfield, and Ned Balbo on a panel called "Sitting Round Here Trying to Write This Book: Bruce Springsteen and Literary Inspiration." I don't know if I've ever been so intimidated, or (at the same time) excited.  I don't know what I have in me, if I can write smart and well enough.

But this morning I take my energy, my inspiration, from the friends and good souls who have written over the past few days to tell me about their experience with Small Damages.  We writers write a long time, and sometimes our work resonates, and when it does, we are so grateful.  When others reach out to us, we don't know what to say.  We hope that thank you is enough.  And so, this morning, thank you, Alyson Hagy and Robb Forman Dew.  Thank you, Tamara Smith.  Thank you, Elizabeth Ator and Katherine Wilson.  Thank you, Jessica Ferro.  Thank you, Hilary Hanes.  And thank you, Miss Rosella Eleanor LaFevre, who interviewed me a few years ago about Dangerous Neighbors, and who has stayed in touch ever since.  I don't even know how to say thank you for 3 Comments on Bruce Springsteen, Glory Days Symposium, and Thanks, last added: 7/30/2012