Blasphemy: I think Sting performs "The Rising" better than Bruce Springsteen does.
You can see the footage from the Kennedy Center Honors; Mr. Springsteen watches from a box. Sting has a sexy beard, and he seems to have the right amount of reverence for Springsteen. It's a moving clip. https://www.google.com/search?q=sting+the+rising&oq=sting+the+rising&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.1394j1j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
Springsteen writes so well, if you're not careful, you can take the words for granted. Beyond that: In the wake of 9/11, just hearing Springsteen's famous voice, backed by a chorus, felt cathartic. But if you look closely at the words, there's an actual story, a one-act play, in the great tradition of Stephen Sondheim.
The astonishing first section puts us in the present. It both is and isn't about a firefighter climbing the stairs of one of the Towers on 9/11. The language is precise enough to make that clear: The climbing man is "bound by a chain," unaware of what is behind and what is ahead, weighted down by a sixty-pound backpack, shouldering a "half mile of line." But what's miraculous about Springsteen's allusive language--over and over again--is that a regular shmoe can "relate." We haven't all been in the Towers, but we know what it's like to feel blinded in the present, pushing through some urgent task, weighted down by obligations. That's Springsteen's great gift: To put you in the shoes of someone in dire straits, even if you yourself are presently in a relatively luxurious setting.
(You may not live with AIDS in the 1980s, but you would have to be subhuman not to connect with: "Bruised and battered, I couldn't tell how I felt." You may never have torpedoed a marriage, but again you would need to be an alien not to feel some sympathy and personal understanding for the foolish, human figure who "left a wife and kids in Baltimore, Jack. Went for a ride and I never went back.")
After the opening, we get a vision of some kind of communion. The speaker and listener will "come on up for the rising." You will "lay your hands in mine." There's a suggestion of a church revival, or Judgment Day, or both. You think of souls flying up to Heaven in the midst of all that death (whether or not you actually believe in God, Heaven, et al.) In the wake of so much horrifying divisiveness, Springsteen has a vision of connection: We're all human. Lay your hands in mine. ("Everybody's got a hungry heart.")
From here, we have a flashback, and Springsteen makes something as pedestrian as the morning ablutions routine into an epic, Biblical event. "Bells ringing filled the air. I was wearing the cross of my calling. On wheels of fire I come rollin' down here." Again, the language works on at least two levels. There's the quotidian: Bells ringing can be alarm bells, and "wheels of fire" can allude to a speeding car, or firetruck. But then there's also something apocalyptic and grandiose: The bells in the air and the wheels of fire may make us think of Heavenly messengers, Tony Kushner, "the ozone, ragged and torn, patches of it threadbare as old cheesecloth." And we're back to the staircase in the Tower, in the present: "Lord, I stand before your fiery light." The speaker wants to honor the dead and care for the living, as any decent working man would, whether or not he works for the fire brigade.
Then, if you ask me, the speaker seems to die. He has a vision of his wife and children "dancing in a sky filled with light." The Biblical imagery is heavy: The wife happens to be named Mary, the play occurs, partly, "in a garden," the children's image is "holy." As the speaker ascends (to the upper floors of the Tower? to Heaven? to both?), he has a vision of life-as-connection: "May I feel your arms around me. May I feel your blood mix with mine...Sky of love, sky of tears...Sky of fullness, sky of blessed life...."
The song ends with another reference to "the rising." The speaker implores the listener: "Come on up." Lay your hands in mine. Listen. Pay attention. There's a sense of the wondrousness and slipperiness of life: "like a catfish dancing on the end of my line." And: Fade out to silence.
P.S. Another thing about this song. Springsteen chose to spotlight the firefighters. Here's the thing about a firefighter's task that morning. It would almost certainly be Sisyphean (or even worse). You entered the burning building knowing you may not rescue anyone, and you may even die. But the act is so important for posterity. It's moving, in 2018, to think that people were willing to do that. It endows life with meaning. Community and hope in the midst of terror. "Lay your hands in mine." When you act, it may be for people in the future, people who will never know you. I sense this fact was important in influencing Springsteen's literary choices.
P.P.S. Community--our obligation to one another--seems written into the first few lines. The speaker is "bound by chains"; on his shoulder is "a half mile of line." These are literal representations of connection--the way we are linked to one another. On our back is "sixty pounds of stone"; we must help to carry one another.
You can see the footage from the Kennedy Center Honors; Mr. Springsteen watches from a box. Sting has a sexy beard, and he seems to have the right amount of reverence for Springsteen. It's a moving clip. https://www.google.com/search?q=sting+the+rising&oq=sting+the+rising&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.1394j1j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
Springsteen writes so well, if you're not careful, you can take the words for granted. Beyond that: In the wake of 9/11, just hearing Springsteen's famous voice, backed by a chorus, felt cathartic. But if you look closely at the words, there's an actual story, a one-act play, in the great tradition of Stephen Sondheim.
The astonishing first section puts us in the present. It both is and isn't about a firefighter climbing the stairs of one of the Towers on 9/11. The language is precise enough to make that clear: The climbing man is "bound by a chain," unaware of what is behind and what is ahead, weighted down by a sixty-pound backpack, shouldering a "half mile of line." But what's miraculous about Springsteen's allusive language--over and over again--is that a regular shmoe can "relate." We haven't all been in the Towers, but we know what it's like to feel blinded in the present, pushing through some urgent task, weighted down by obligations. That's Springsteen's great gift: To put you in the shoes of someone in dire straits, even if you yourself are presently in a relatively luxurious setting.
(You may not live with AIDS in the 1980s, but you would have to be subhuman not to connect with: "Bruised and battered, I couldn't tell how I felt." You may never have torpedoed a marriage, but again you would need to be an alien not to feel some sympathy and personal understanding for the foolish, human figure who "left a wife and kids in Baltimore, Jack. Went for a ride and I never went back.")
After the opening, we get a vision of some kind of communion. The speaker and listener will "come on up for the rising." You will "lay your hands in mine." There's a suggestion of a church revival, or Judgment Day, or both. You think of souls flying up to Heaven in the midst of all that death (whether or not you actually believe in God, Heaven, et al.) In the wake of so much horrifying divisiveness, Springsteen has a vision of connection: We're all human. Lay your hands in mine. ("Everybody's got a hungry heart.")
From here, we have a flashback, and Springsteen makes something as pedestrian as the morning ablutions routine into an epic, Biblical event. "Bells ringing filled the air. I was wearing the cross of my calling. On wheels of fire I come rollin' down here." Again, the language works on at least two levels. There's the quotidian: Bells ringing can be alarm bells, and "wheels of fire" can allude to a speeding car, or firetruck. But then there's also something apocalyptic and grandiose: The bells in the air and the wheels of fire may make us think of Heavenly messengers, Tony Kushner, "the ozone, ragged and torn, patches of it threadbare as old cheesecloth." And we're back to the staircase in the Tower, in the present: "Lord, I stand before your fiery light." The speaker wants to honor the dead and care for the living, as any decent working man would, whether or not he works for the fire brigade.
Then, if you ask me, the speaker seems to die. He has a vision of his wife and children "dancing in a sky filled with light." The Biblical imagery is heavy: The wife happens to be named Mary, the play occurs, partly, "in a garden," the children's image is "holy." As the speaker ascends (to the upper floors of the Tower? to Heaven? to both?), he has a vision of life-as-connection: "May I feel your arms around me. May I feel your blood mix with mine...Sky of love, sky of tears...Sky of fullness, sky of blessed life...."
The song ends with another reference to "the rising." The speaker implores the listener: "Come on up." Lay your hands in mine. Listen. Pay attention. There's a sense of the wondrousness and slipperiness of life: "like a catfish dancing on the end of my line." And: Fade out to silence.
P.S. Another thing about this song. Springsteen chose to spotlight the firefighters. Here's the thing about a firefighter's task that morning. It would almost certainly be Sisyphean (or even worse). You entered the burning building knowing you may not rescue anyone, and you may even die. But the act is so important for posterity. It's moving, in 2018, to think that people were willing to do that. It endows life with meaning. Community and hope in the midst of terror. "Lay your hands in mine." When you act, it may be for people in the future, people who will never know you. I sense this fact was important in influencing Springsteen's literary choices.
P.P.S. Community--our obligation to one another--seems written into the first few lines. The speaker is "bound by chains"; on his shoulder is "a half mile of line." These are literal representations of connection--the way we are linked to one another. On our back is "sixty pounds of stone"; we must help to carry one another.
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