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 ju...