How I began listening to Bruce Springsteen

• October 28, 2007
• James Skemp
• StrivingLife

Years and years ago I was young. My father had moved out of his parent's house by this time (meaning the time I'm recollecting on), and had possibly lived at at least one other place.

Anyways, he ended up living at my Uncle Pat's place. I don't recall the first couple of visits to the place, but I remember the place well enough. Recollections of the place itself will have to wait, though, since that's not what I wanted to speak about.

So, my sister and I ended up spending a deal of time at that old place. I recall the first couple of times I didn't like the room I had got because of a feature of my closet. My sister had a very large closet in her room - one time me and the neighbors hung out in there, trying to hide from a brother, and possibly a sister. My closet, in addition to being pretty empty, had a small rectangular hole in it. From an early age I had read 'scary' stories, stories of UFOs, and aliens, and mosters, detective stories, mysteries, and the like. I was always afraid someone was going to crawl through the hole, even though I knew no normal person could.

(One time, at the first house I remember, I had built a very large LEGO city. One night I either had a dream, or not, that something was trying to get me. I don't know what 'get' means anymore, but I know it was bad - life and death almost. Anyways, I had to touch the LEGO city before whatever it was did. And it had to be constant; if it touched it, the bad thing was going to happen. Picture an '0', or a square zero. Now imagine that the points that make up the zero are empty space, while the rest is filled. If you were in one corner, you couldn't see the opposite, but you could see the two opposing. Now, you have to get to the opposite corner. However, there's someone else that needs to do the same thing, and they're in the opposite corner. In other, words you have to switch positions. But, whoever gets to their position last 'loses'. And, if one person is in their corner and sees the other, they can force the other person to 'lose'. But, you can't stay in your corner the whole time, you have to move, even if it's just a little bit.

What do you do? Stay in your corner? When do you sleep?)

Anyways, it so happened that my father had a number of tapes at his house, as well as an AM/FM radio/alarm/cassette player. I don't recall all of the tapes, but The Police's Synchronicity and Bruce Springsteen's Born in the U.S.A. were two of them. I liked Sting, but I really liked Bruce. Before he had moved out, I knew the words to every song on that tape.

Of course, I was young, and didn't necessarily understand the lyrics, but a number of songs had a place in my heart. Downbound Train, I'm On Fire, Glory Days, Dancing In The Dark, and My Hometown.

When you like an artist, there's a reason for it, just as there's a reason for almost everything people do. For me, music has some relation to my life, in particular memories of what I was doing at some time; memories of my life. This in turn shapes how you hear, or in the case of physical works, how you see, the artist's works.

For example, the first time I heard Touch of Grey, I saw it on MTV. My dad was trying to sell a truck, or some vehicle, and it was fairly late at night (at least, the sun had gone down and the stars were in the sky). My sister must have been asleep, and my mom at work. He was in the kitchen, and I was in the living room (I don't think my bedroom was in the basement at that time).

For me, Springsteen is about times lost, and coming to gripes with that lose. For some of his songs, we look back with sadness, some with happyness.  For the former, those memories are more than we can successfully handle, while for the latter, we've learned to move on with our life, using those past experiences to make our future life that much better.

Enough said on this.

• bruce springsteen