Dear Mr. Springsteen:

Later today I'll be joining with three dozen other writers and artists and editors and lovers of language in my city, Philadelphia, to read your words on behalf of Writers Resist. I'll invoke the authentic, there's only one of you you, I promise. Thank you for giving us words to hold onto.

When the way is dark and the night is cold
One sunny mornin' we'll rise I know
And I'll meet you further on up the road.....

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Twenty Feet from Stardom: the documentary, the feeling

We've all been there. So close, but not yet. Passed by, again. Promised, but the promise floats off, vanishes on the horizon. The hard work, the high hopes, the quiet.

We make music. Others star. No matter where we are, in our work out here, it can feel like we've missed the boat called "Big Time."

Is it the boat we want to be on? Can we even answer that question?

Is it our fault? Is it anybody's fault? Is it talent? Is it timing? Is it luck?

Or is it luck when Big doesn't happen quite yet. Isn't life about the getting there, and not about the arrival?

Last night I watched the 2014 Oscar winning documentary, "Twenty Feet from Stardom." Didn't expect as much depth as I encountered. Didn't think I'd cry; I did. Merry Clayton, Darlene Love, Claudia Lennear, Lisa Fischer. Bruce Springsteen, Mick Jagger, Stevie Wonder, Sting. (Judith Hill, midway.) The distance between the back-ups and the spotlight. The barriers—the right song or luck (not the talent, in these cases)—that stand between. The things that happen to those who press ahead and those who step aside. The regrets, in both cases, the need for grace in it all.

This is an important story for the artists it introduces (again). For the superstars we already know, but who speak (not surprisingly, in all these cases) from a magnanimous place. For us, wherever we are, whatever we want, whichever doubts we entertain. For the music that, nonetheless, gets made.

Twenty Feet from Stardom. 

And?

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Songs of Freedom, at Masterman High in Philadelphia

I took the story of the Berlin Wall to Philadelphia's academic magnet school, Masterman—meeting with the students of two exquisite and clearly well-respected history teachers, Liz Taylor and Janel Vecsi.

In the Spring Garden neighborhood, inside a circa-1876 building that has inspired filmmakers and hosted President Obama, we talked about risks, responsibilities, and choices. I met students with a personal tie to East Berlin. Students who knew history and the world around them. Students who watch the news out of curiosity and not out of an assignment. Students who work extremely hard at school and at home—and excel. Students who willingly make art and share it. We hear about the terrible struggles of the School District of Philadelphia. We meet and write about the teachers who work so hard under difficult circumstances. Then we hang out with the students themselves and are (again) reminded how important this teaching enterprise is, how necessary it is to get it right, for them.

I came home with a fat file of graffiti art and poetry. What do you want that you do not have? I'd asked the students, after sharing Wall stories, playing Bruce Springsteen, reading from Going Over. What separates you from your dreams or those you love? What is the cost of desire? What are the consequences of change? What are the lessons of the Wall?

And student after student thoughtfully answered. A mere sampling:

I know why the caged bird sings
because I am that caged bird.
My wings are clipped,
my legs are tied,
yet, I will still warble in
this dark, pressing night.
I will walk up to this barrier,
this solid thing that embodies
all forms of constriction.
I don't care, I will fly,
my ropes are loosening,
my wings are growing.
The bird knows its risks.
Yet it flies, it flies.
The bird has one
thing that I cannot attain:
freedom.
Freedom is on the other side.
Will I jump?
I know why the caged bird sings.
He's telling me to jump.
*

It's safe to stay where I am.
That's what people say, at least.
It's too risky
To risk the distance,
Defy the borders.
Your life is fine here, easy.
But I don't live to feel fine.
I live to feel alive.
To do what I want to do.
To pursue freedom.
To chase my own dreams.
I don't live to listen to washed-up lyrics
Written by tyrants.
I live to dream.
To dance.
To dare.
*

Walls separate
Mentally, physically, emotionally...
On one side, ideals.
The other, truth.
People have ideals,
A set mind on how they
Want to live.
But then there is the truth.
How they are living ...
If there ideal is their truth
There would be no wall.
*

The cost of desire is terror—
the Terror you feel when change occurs,
when it does not turn out the way you thought.
like you wanted it to.
You do not know what answer you will get.
What feelings you will have.
What the long-term outcome will be.
But you try and you try
And you hope change will go your way.
*

Walls.
They protect but also confine.
They keep out the bad but
also the good.
They protect us from the outside world
but also block us from the outside.
So break down the walls
and let yourself free.
Because the walls can't protect you forever.
And when they break,
make sure you're ready.

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rain or shine, we're launching GOING OVER

There's plenty of rain out there, stripping the cherry trees of their pinks, heavying the heads of tulips, flooding the low plateaus of my brief driveway.

But inside all is color as I prepare for the launch of Going Over, my Berlin novel. Karen Bernstein, who surprised me earlier this month with a birthday celebration at the Wayne Art Center, has been at work on this vase for a long time now. She's a clay artist of the highest order. She read the book while it was still in galley form. She studied images of the actual graffiti on the Berlin Wall and made this pot — West Berlin, then East Berlin, 1983.  See that arrow up there? It's symbolic. See those flowers? Incredibly gorgeous. They fight the rain. They elevate my mood. They say love, in so very many ways.

I wish you could meet Karen and see for yourself what a special and uber talented person she is. She is, however, now in a car, headed to NYC, where she will meet Diane Keaton (whom I love so much that I celebrated her in Handling the Truth) at the 92nd Street Y. Karen has a lot of Diane in her. The two could probably talk forever. If they did, or when they do, Diane K. will be enchanted.

Those of you here, near, those of you able to slip out with all this rain, come join us for cake at Radnor Memorial Library, Winsor Room, 7:30 PM.

Berlin Wall.

Friends.

Family.

A little Springsteen, too. 

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Berlin Wall Music Monday: 99 Luftballoons

Long before I went to Berlin I was singing and dancing to "99 Luftballoons/99 Red Balloons" (both the German and English versions were on the record my husband had bought while in graduate school at Yale).

It wasn't until I began to research and write Going Over, the Berlin novel that launches in three weeks, that I understood the greater significance of the song. Its rhythms filter into Ada's dreams. Its possibilities filtered into mine.

Here is part of the story, as presented by Object Retrieval.

"99 Luftballons" is a Cold War-era protest song by the German singer Nena. Originally sung in German, it was later re-recorded in English as "99 Red Balloons".

"99 Luftballons" reached #1 in West Germany in 1983. In 1984, the original German version also peaked at #2 on the American Billboard Hot 100 chart and the English-language version topped the UK Singles Chart. The German version topped the Australian charts for five weeks and the New Zealand charts for one week.

While at a Rolling Stones concert in Berlin, Nena's guitarist Carlo Karges noticed that balloons were being released. As he watched them move toward the horizon, he noticed them shifting and changing shapes, where they looked nothing like a mass of balloons but some strange spacecraft. (The word in the German lyrics "UFO") He thought about what might happen if they floated over the Berlin Wall to the Soviet sector.

Both the English and German versions of the song tell a story of 99 balloons floating into the air, triggering an apocalyptic overreaction by military forces. The music was composed by Uwe Fahrenkrog-Petersen, the keyboardist of Nena's band, while Karges wrote the original German lyrics.

Interested in Berlin Wall music?

Check out Bruce Springsteen singing Bob Dylan in one of the most moving Springsteen performances ever.

Check out Elton John, slyly singing "Nikita."

Check out The Chipmunks singing "Let the Wall Come Down."

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Bruce Springsteen sings "Chimes of Freedom" at the Berlin Wall

This morning, putting together my play list for the GOING OVER blog tour (thank you, Lara Starr and Chronicle Books), I found myself transfixed by this video of our own Bruce Springsteen singing Dylan's "Chimes of Freedom" to the East Berliners one year before the wall came down.

Look at the faces of that crowd. Look at him. I can't even speak. Watch all the way through, as Springsteen answers an interviewer's questions about the people of Berlin.

Interested in joining the blog tour? Let us know.

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Raw to the Bone: On Springsteen, Rivers, and the Arc of Creativity in Poets' Quarterly

April Lindner had the idea to gather us (Jane Satterfield, Ned Balbo, Ann Michael, me—her Springsteen loving friends) at the Glory Days Symposium at Monmouth University more than a year ago. We each gave papers, each talked about the influence that Bruce Springsteen has had on us.

I spoke about the arc of creativity under the influence of Bruce Springsteen's river songs, and I'm so happy to be able to share a link to that full essay here today, for the piece now stands among works by Donald Hall, Daisy Fried, Barbara Crooker, and Caroline Maun (among others) in the current issue of Poets' Quarterly.

It begins like this, below, and carries forward here:

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.

 Many thanks to Leslie Nielsen, and Ann Michael.

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more student love: Daniel Blas in the Pennsylvania Gazette

Sometimes I just want to fluff back against a frothy pillow and consider the wonders of my students.

Last week, in the Philadelphia Inquirer, I wrote about Leah Apple, now a Fulbright winner, who has changed the lives of West Philadelphia children through an initiative called CityStep Penn. I wrote a recommendation letter for a gifted bioengineer who spent much of this past year inventing (with others) a device that allows children with cerebral palsy to take their own photographs (he invented, and at the same time wrote remarkable memoir/profile pieces for 135.302). I whispered pretty somethings into the ears of people making decisions about students' futures. I exchanged emails with my Katie, who graduated a year ago and has been working in New Orleans with Catholic Charities as a triage artist (I call her an artist) before she heads off for medical school. In the pages of Handling the Truth, my book about the making of memoir due out in August, my students sing. I wrote that book in large part because I love to hear them sing. Because sometimes I just want to fluff back against a frothy pillow and consider the wonders of my students.

Today I am celebrating the work of Daniel Blas, a tall and slender Whartonite with transparent integrity—a young man who may have actually mostly been studying, say, risk and insurance, and reading, say, the Wall Street Journal, but who never failed to move us with his surprising ironies, his soft-shoe humor, his Calvin Trillin touch. Dan came to my class this spring semester at the suggestion of Al Filreis. He sat in the same chair, to my left, every single Tuesday—steady and just the right amount of sure, conveying Springsteen adorations to a prof just slightly obsessed with her own Springsteen adorations. Dan slayed us with details and structural magic. We wanted more.

Here, in the pages of the Pennsylvania Gazette, is more—Dan's Springsteen memoir (which is actually about Dan's relationship with his concert-loving dad) abbreviated and modified for the Gazette readers. Dan worked with Trey Popp to perfect this piece, and I am over the moon that "Always Wear Tie Dye" now sits in the pages of this fantastic magazine.

You'll read Dan here and you'll be glad you did. And then, if you haven't already read the Gazette-bound work of my other students, I share it all again below:

Maggie Ercolani
Nabil Mehta
Joe Polin
Moira Moody

To the power of the young. To Bruce Springsteen and Daniel Blas and the dad who started it all.

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Never Fall Down: Patricia McCormick and Arn Chorn-Pond

Yesterday afternoon I had the privilege of reading Never Fall Down, Patricia McCormick's most recent young adult novel.  Never Fall Down is inspired by the life of Arn Chorn-Pond, who survived the Khmer Rouge genocide and went on to become a musician-peacemaker celebrated by Bruce Springsteen, Peter Gabriel, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and many others.  Rare is the writer who could take on such a subject and do it honorably.  For very good reasons, Chorn-Pond trusted Patty, a journalist whose earlier young adult novels—Cut, My Brother's Keeper, Sold, Purple Heart—are both deserving literary prizewinners and commercial successes.  Patty McCormick's career is proof that you can write with great meaning, originality, purpose, and more than a little poetry and still find a fervent readership.

I'll have more to say about Patty McCormick in the weeks to come.  For now, please watch the video above, in which Patty and Chorn-Pond (introduced to one another by one of Patty's neighbors) speak of the making of Never Fall Down.

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reflecting on my ballroom dance "career" in today's Inquirer

In today's Philadelphia Inquirer I yearn toward dance, mourn my countless non-capabilities, and conclude, well — read on.  The story begins like this, below, and can be found in its entirety here.

How I stood, how I sat, how I walked into a room and didn't possess it - these were concerns. Also: the untamed wilderness of my hair, but we would get to that. In addition: the way I hid behind my clothes and failed their easy angles. Most troubling, perhaps: my tendency to rush, my feverish impatience with myself, my heretofore undiagnosed problem with the art of being led.

So I thought I could dance.

So I imagined the ballroom instructors leaning in to say - first rumba or perhaps the second - "You've got a knack for this."

What knack? What had I done? Why had I not realized that dancing in the dark alone to Bruce Springsteen does not qualify anyone for the cha-cha? That grace is not necessarily an elevated pointer finger? That how they do it on TV is how they do it on TV? That just because you love to dance does not a dancer make you?

So many thanks to Avery Rome for making room for the piece, and to DanceSport Academy in Ardmore—and all my teachers—for making room for me.  Thanks, too, to a certain Moira.  She knows who she is.

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a caution, and—opening words about Springsteen's river songs

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.

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Last Week and Next, and the Week After That. Join Me?

One week ago today I was still anticipating the Springsteen concert, still thinking my next book would be based in Siena, still ashamed of the thatchy weeds out by my mailbox, and still holding my breath (just a little) as my son moved into his new home and work opportunity. 

How things change, and how quickly.

I've since danced in Springsteen's dark, booked an apartment (for research) in Florence, tugged (most of) the weeds away, and listened to my son talk, with such confidence and happiness, about his new city and his deepening passions.  I have read books about birds and eggs, teared up at Michelle Obama, been interviewed by two men for separate publications who startled me with their knowledge of my work, navigated unexpected changes in my publishing life, finished an employee newsletter, reached out to friends who were there, and been reminded, over and over again, that love is the most important thing.  Love, and a child's happiness.

This weekend I'm hibernating just a bit as I work my way through the first and second chapters of that now-Florence novel.  I'm going to the movies with my husband (he has promised me a trip to "The Words"). And I'm preparing for the next few weeks.  Please join me, if you can.

September 12, 2012
Radnor Memorial Library, Radnor, PA
SMALL DAMAGES launch party
7:30 PM.  Details here.

September 14, 2012
The Bruce Springsteen/Glory Days Symposium
Monmouth University
Appearing with April Lindner, Jane Satterfield, Ned Balbo, and Ann Michael
Details here.

September 21, 2012
Joining David Levithan, Ellen Hopkins, and Jennifer Hubbard at Children's Book World
7 PM. Details here.

   

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city love, Main Line Media News, and a memoir panel at Penn

Late yesterday afternoon, I took a quick dance lesson then hurried to the train to see my kid, city side.  I have been down there untold times of late—checking out apartments, moving boxes in, arriving, breathless, to help with something, and of course, this young man (not a kid) needs no help at all.  I'm just drumming up excuses to spend an hour here or there with him.

So that I have seen the city under sun and the city swollen with rain, the city just after dawn, the city late at night.  And I have felt more energized and alive than I have felt for a long time.  Philadelphia does that to me.  And so do snatches of conversation with my guy.

This morning a text comes in, six a.m.ish.  I'm working on my story, it said.  Because my son shares this with me, this love of words.  This pleasure taken in filling the silent hours with vivid fictions.  By now, he's off to work, first day.  And my happiness for him is giant.

Meanwhile, Ryan Richards of Main Line Media News interviewed me yesterday morning at 8:15 a.m. (not-ish) and, 13 hours later, this Springsteen-infused story (which is also about the making of Small Damages for Philomel) had been posted.  Tuesday is day-before-pub day there at Main Line Media News and Ryan plays a central role in getting all stories out and prettied up for show.  I have no idea, therefore, how he wrote such a nice story in the midst of all that, but I thank him.  I hope he got some sleep last night.

Finally, tucked into the day was this formal announcement from Penn about the Homecoming Weekend Panel I'll be sharing with my friends Buzz Bissinger, John Prendergast, and Cynthia Kaplan, as well as James Martin, whom I am eager to meet.  Join us if you can.

October 27, 2012/Saturday 4:30 PM - 6:30 PM  

  
Memoir: Methods and Meanings
 Kelly Writers House
Arts Cafe
 3805 Locust Walk
 
Join alumni authors at Kelly Writers House as they read from and talk about their work in memoir.  Panelists include Pulitzer Prize-winner Buzz Bissinger C'76, whose latest book is Father's Day: A Journey Into the Mind and Heart of My Extraordinary Son; essayist and performer Cynthia Kaplan C'85, whose 'true stories' are collected in Why I'm Like This and Leave the Building Quickly; Beth Kephart C'82, author of multiple memoirs and young-adult novels, and of the forthcoming Handling the Truth; and James Martin W'82, author of In Good Company, which tells the story of his conversion from GE executive to Jesuit priest, and eight other books. Pennsylvania Gazette Editor John Prendergast C'80 will moderate the discussion. Advance registration is not required, but seating is limited. RSVP to whhomecoming@writing.upenn.edu or call (215) 746-POEM.  

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Bruce Springsteen: Gallant

What hasn't been said about Bruce Springsteen live?  He sweats through to the bottom of his boots for you.  He yields the microphone to little girls in pink cowboy hats who have the nerve to sing a sunny day.  He talks about ghosts, and he pounds his heart for redheads.  He plays "The River" for a soldier in Afghanistan and an obscure tune for a guy with a sign.  He's already laughing with the Phillies crowd before he mentions the opposing team—stars in his eyes kind of smile, though, man, he's been going like this with his Wrecking Ball Tour for so long that you don't know how he's even standing, how he gets those guitars, one after another, strapped on, how the mike doesn't fly out of his grip.  He bows his head beside Clarence Clemons's nephew, Jake, and you know he feels the uncle's presence like a prayer, and he is ageless, a stuck Catholic, a confessing romantic, a professor of truth, a scorcher and a crooner, still running, still dancing, still ad libbing, still performing.  He's not out of breath, but you are, and he has the power (I'm telling you) to stop the rain. 

I was there.

That is what has not, until this moment, been written about Springsteen.  I was there.  Having waited since I was eighteen years old.  Having worked all those years to convince my husband.  Having finally bought the tickets and made the announcement, We're going, because I had an excuse, this little talk I plan to give (thanks to April Lindner) at the Glory Days Symposium a few short weeks from now.  I had to go.  It was business this time.  And besides, this girl is getting old.

Good Lord, it was better, it was richer, it was deeper, it was more hallowed than even I thought it could be.  And I never sat down, though I had seats.  And I danced—by myself and with the crowd.  And I sang—hard and out loud.  And late, late at night, walking back through the city with my husband and a couple of kids just out of school, I talked Old Springsteen Love with Young Springsteen Love, and let me tell you this:  We spoke the same language.

The shard below, blogged in early August, is snapped from what I'd written in theory for my Springsteen paper, "Raw to the Bone."  Every once in a while, in this life, I get it right.  I was right when I danced Springsteen alone in my house, and I was right last night, dancing with Philly:

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.   

Bruce Springsteen.  Wrecking Ball Tour.  Citizens Bank Park.  Philadelphia.  September 3, 2012.

I was there.

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Bruce Springsteen dancing with his mom, and I'm going to see this man, rain or shine, tonight.

True, I have been monitoring the Philadelphia weather forecast for the past two weeks.  Also true:  Every single report has promised some kind of rain for tonight, perhaps even thundershowers.

Heck, I don't care.

I'm going to see Bruce.  Lifelong dream (to be fair, since age 18, starting on my third day as a Penn freshman, which, at my age, seems like a lifetime), and water will not thwart it.

LEVEL:  Field
SECTION: N
ROW: 7
SEAT: 1

I will be there.  Looking like a dork in a plastic poncho, if I have to.  But there, alive, Bruce before me.

Today, I prepare.  Listening to all his albums (I own each one) through.  Again. Olympic-style, dancing and crooning.

It's hard work, but somebody has to do it. 

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afternoon love (Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia)

I won't bore you with the details.  You know what matters, anyway.  My son, having been given a dream opportunity in a wonderful Philadelphia agency, moved to the city this weekend.  The place could not be more perfect—old and also new, a studio with elbow room, nice light, new systems.  When we visited again this afternoon to help attend to some details that certainly didn't need our attending (the excuses parents make!), I took the chance to take a quick neighborhood walk. 

Into Rittenhouse Square I went—my hair all humid, my shorts a little baggy, my ear pressed to a phone conversation with my friend Kelly.  All of a sudden, they appeared—not one but three afternoon wedding parties.  I had no real camera to speak of, but snapped away with my phone (goodbye, Kelly).  The third bride got wind of me (perhaps she reads this blog?) and vanished before I could place a trace of her here. 

But here are two of the brides encountered on this day, two of the journeys now under way.  A few blocks north, the Parkway was jammed with the Made in America crowds.  A few miles south, Bruce Springsteen was in the house, warming up for yours truly, who will see him (rain or shine!) tomorrow.  A few blocks east, my son in his happy new home.

All in all, an afternoon of love.

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what mathematically inclined people do at the beach

No, no, no.  I was not referring to me.  I was referring to my brother, who so generously shares his treasured Stone Harbor vacation with me.  Yesterday was our day, and so my son and I set off for the sea. We played, sang to, and analyzed Springsteen all the way there and all the way back, while occasionally speaking of Other Equally Important Things.  We Frisbeed (I'm terrible), paddle balled (I'll never be good enough, but don't tell my nephew, who is still holding out hope that Aunt Beth will work her way up to worthy beach companion status), walked (at this I succeed; just ask me), jumped waves (or stood near them), ate (anything we wanted, thanks to all the calories we'd burned), left books behind (no, not my own; what kind of ego do you think I have?), and ice creamed (Springer's, of course).  We did not buy a hermit crab at Hoy's, and I am pleased to report that at one point during our Hoy's shopping spree, my brother stopped festooning our heads with bad hats.

On the beach, mid-day, my brother, one of the world's great math guys (I kid you not), entertained us with this first-rate sand hill.  I'm sure there's a quadratic tucked into the design, though I wouldn't know a quadratic if it up and splashed me.  Still, my mathematical deficits do not dilute my enthusiasm for our sacred day at the beach.

It was wonderful.  Thank you, Jeff, Donna, Miranda, and Owen.

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Raw to the Bone: Putting the Springsteen Paper to Rest

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.    

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Bruce Springsteen on Flannery O'Connor and inner meanness

"The really important reading that I did began in my late twenties, with authors like Flannery O'Connor.  There was something in those stories of hers that I felt captured a certain part of the American character that I was interested in writing about.  They were a big, big revelation.  She got to the heart of some part of meanness that she never spelled out, because if she spelled it out you wouldn't be getting it.  It was always at the core of every one of her stories—the way that she'd left the hole there, that hole that's inside of everybody.  There was some dark thing—a component of spirituality—that I sensed in her stories, and that set me off exploring characters of my own.  She knew original sin—knew how to give it the pesh (sic) of a story.  She had talent and she had ideas, and the one served the other."

Bruce Springsteen in conversation with Will Percy, for DoubleTake Magazine (Spring 1998)

(Do you remember DoubleTake?  How I loved that magazine.  The photograph above is of Asbury Park, taken in winter, a few years back.)

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today, I give this song to those I love

though it is not mine to give

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