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.
My friends, the time has come. Tomorrow I will join April Lindner, Jane Satterfield, Ned Balbo, and Ann Michael for "Springsteen and Storytelling," our panel discussion. We're one of many
Bruce conversations that will be going on this weekend at Monmouth University as part of the Glory Days Symposium. And I'm so grateful to be given a chance to break away from my world for a moment, and to delve into this one.
Bruce and my bruised heart today have nothing to do with each other, but I feel the need to say this just now, while I have your attention (and I suspect that The Boss himself would agree with me on this one). For any one who might be checking in on this blog, for whatever reason you may be checking, please trust me on this:
Not everything journalists write—however well meaning those journalists may be—is true. And sometimes, even if we try very hard to get the record corrected, even if we cry, stomp, and offer to drain our bank accounts in the endeavor, we fail. We cannot achieve the only right result, which is the truth.For now, I am sharing this—the opening words of "Raw to the Bone: Transported Toward Truth and Memory by Springsteen's River Songs," the paper I'll deliver tomorrow.
Might as well start with “Shenandoah,” the old pioneer song that Springsteen and the Seeger Sessions Band transformed into sweet bitters in the living room of Springsteen’s fabled New Jersey farmhouse. “Shenandoah,” the tenth song on the We Shall Overcome/Seeger Sessions album, is music being made, as Springsteen himself has said. Music created in the moment, held between teeth, conducted with the frayed bracelet strings of an uplifted hand. It’s music hummed, hymned, and high in the shoulder blades, deep in the blue pulse of a straining vein. Patti’s lighting candles in the darkening farmhouse, as the band tunes in. The antique clock ticks. The thickly framed mirror doubles the volumes of sound and space. And now the Sessions band is elaborating, confabulating, and the Shenandoah roves.
Oh Shenandoah,
I long to see you,
Away you rolling river.
Oh Shenandoah,
I long to see you,
Away, I'm bound away,
'cross the wide Missouri.
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.
I'm back from a brief interlude at the Jersey Shore. I'm steeping myself in Bruce Springsteen. No more putting this off, no more being afraid. I've got to write my Glory Days paper.
I will need more words than I have.
I will need to watch this again and again.
So glad it was such a satisfying day - that you got the boardwalk walk in, and for the dueling texts with your brilliant son! (I can imagine you with head bent, hair falling over your right cheek, big smile on your face, at the pleasure of his words.)
Those are some great photos, and I'm glad you had time to breathe the salt air. I hope you had a great fest of texts with your son!