Some Bruce Springsteen miscellany.
-There's so much that I admire in "Hungry Heart." First, I like the way the jaunty melody contrasts with the sad, sad lyrics. (This reminds me of the superficial peppiness of the "Walking on Broken Glass" melody.) When writers do this, I think about Chekhov, and how he took supremely depressing stories and labeled them "comedies." I guess the idea is that, given time, even the most apparently cataclysmic human situations look small and foolish--because humans are actually tiny, and humans are fools.
-Another thing I love in this song is that the narrator doesn't really try to explain his foolishness. He abandoned his wife and kids in Baltimore! (This later seemed to inspire Jason Robert Brown: "He left his wife and kids in Portland on a whim.") The abandonment wasn't a step toward greater self-realization: "Like a river that don't know where it's flowing, I took a wrong turn and I just kept going." (The well-placed simile: I'm reminded of "The Rising," with life "like a catfish dancing on the end of my line.")
-The second verse is like a lower-stakes echo of the first verse. Here, the speaker may be a new character, or he may be the same old fool; it doesn't really matter. This particular speaker recalls a girlfriend: "We fell in love, I knew it had to end." No reason given--beyond the fact that the speaker has a "hungry heart." (I also love that the girlfriend isn't formally introduced to the listener; we just get a sudden allusion to "her." It's this kind of smart economy, a tiny detail, that helps to make a song distinguished.) Like the bewildered speaker of the first verse, staring at the wreckage of his own baffling choices, "We took what we had and we ripped it apart. Now here I am down in Kingstown again." There's a suggestion that the speaker traveled--he went places with this woman--and now he has been deposited right back where he started. A runway that turned out to be circular. "A river that don't know where it's flowing."
-Surely, Mr. Springsteen did not invent the phrase "hungry heart," but it's so well-used here. It means that we're all at the mercy of desires we ourselves don't fully understand. Life is like a confusing, chaotic dance: "You lay down your money and you play your part." Springsteen is aware that people aren't always forthright: "Don't make no difference what nobody says, ain't nobody like to be alone." We might claim we have self-sufficiency, but we're all like children searching for Mama (and rejecting many well-intentioned Mama surrogates along the way).
-The other day, in a pub, I heard my favorite Springsteen song (and I'm no expert): "Born in the USA." I love this song especially because of the speaker's wanderings in the third verse: "Come back home to the refinery. Hiring man said, SON, IF IT WAS UP TO ME....Went down to see my V.A. man. He said, SON, DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND...." The attention to euphemism and hypocrisy, the way these characters are unable to say, bluntly: "I will not help you." I sort of feel like I'm reading a good novel when I hear those stinging lines.
-The big thing that stands out, to me, again and again, is Springsteen's compassion. He registers human foolishness, but he does it without judgment. There's no one wagging a finger at the idiot speaker in "Hungry Heart." The same is true in "My Hometown": "Tension was running high at my high school. There was a lot of fights between the black and white, there was nothing you could do. Two cars at a light on a Saturday night, in the back seat there was a gun..." Springsteen seems to dip his pen in "grief-and-pain" ink, over and over. He doesn't simplify problems; he just raises questions that may not have answers. By raising these questions, he makes you newly aware, at least for a few minutes, of the wonder and tragedy of being human.
P.S. I'm off to Europe! No blog for several days. Back around August 14!
-There's so much that I admire in "Hungry Heart." First, I like the way the jaunty melody contrasts with the sad, sad lyrics. (This reminds me of the superficial peppiness of the "Walking on Broken Glass" melody.) When writers do this, I think about Chekhov, and how he took supremely depressing stories and labeled them "comedies." I guess the idea is that, given time, even the most apparently cataclysmic human situations look small and foolish--because humans are actually tiny, and humans are fools.
-Another thing I love in this song is that the narrator doesn't really try to explain his foolishness. He abandoned his wife and kids in Baltimore! (This later seemed to inspire Jason Robert Brown: "He left his wife and kids in Portland on a whim.") The abandonment wasn't a step toward greater self-realization: "Like a river that don't know where it's flowing, I took a wrong turn and I just kept going." (The well-placed simile: I'm reminded of "The Rising," with life "like a catfish dancing on the end of my line.")
-The second verse is like a lower-stakes echo of the first verse. Here, the speaker may be a new character, or he may be the same old fool; it doesn't really matter. This particular speaker recalls a girlfriend: "We fell in love, I knew it had to end." No reason given--beyond the fact that the speaker has a "hungry heart." (I also love that the girlfriend isn't formally introduced to the listener; we just get a sudden allusion to "her." It's this kind of smart economy, a tiny detail, that helps to make a song distinguished.) Like the bewildered speaker of the first verse, staring at the wreckage of his own baffling choices, "We took what we had and we ripped it apart. Now here I am down in Kingstown again." There's a suggestion that the speaker traveled--he went places with this woman--and now he has been deposited right back where he started. A runway that turned out to be circular. "A river that don't know where it's flowing."
-Surely, Mr. Springsteen did not invent the phrase "hungry heart," but it's so well-used here. It means that we're all at the mercy of desires we ourselves don't fully understand. Life is like a confusing, chaotic dance: "You lay down your money and you play your part." Springsteen is aware that people aren't always forthright: "Don't make no difference what nobody says, ain't nobody like to be alone." We might claim we have self-sufficiency, but we're all like children searching for Mama (and rejecting many well-intentioned Mama surrogates along the way).
-The other day, in a pub, I heard my favorite Springsteen song (and I'm no expert): "Born in the USA." I love this song especially because of the speaker's wanderings in the third verse: "Come back home to the refinery. Hiring man said, SON, IF IT WAS UP TO ME....Went down to see my V.A. man. He said, SON, DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND...." The attention to euphemism and hypocrisy, the way these characters are unable to say, bluntly: "I will not help you." I sort of feel like I'm reading a good novel when I hear those stinging lines.
-The big thing that stands out, to me, again and again, is Springsteen's compassion. He registers human foolishness, but he does it without judgment. There's no one wagging a finger at the idiot speaker in "Hungry Heart." The same is true in "My Hometown": "Tension was running high at my high school. There was a lot of fights between the black and white, there was nothing you could do. Two cars at a light on a Saturday night, in the back seat there was a gun..." Springsteen seems to dip his pen in "grief-and-pain" ink, over and over. He doesn't simplify problems; he just raises questions that may not have answers. By raising these questions, he makes you newly aware, at least for a few minutes, of the wonder and tragedy of being human.
P.S. I'm off to Europe! No blog for several days. Back around August 14!
Comments
Post a Comment