Sunday's Concert

I know, I know. Bruce Springsteen is doing the Superbowl, and he has gone I think a bit out of his way to disassociate himself completely from the football game to which his gig is attached. For Bruce, it would seem, the millions (I can’t recall if it is forty or ninety million) are all gathering to hear his twelve minute show. I saw a SuperBowl once(you see, I don’t even know how to spell it!), in 1969, when the Jets and Joe Namath played against the Baltimore Colts and Johnny Unitas. New York and the Jets won. I was a New Yorker living amongst Baltimoreans. It was a patriotic act in which I participated. That was the last football game I ever saw.

I know, I know. The Stones and Tom Petty (and others) have played the Super Bowl. (Bob Dylan never played the Super Bowl, though it does thrill my heart to think of 90 million (or 40 million) people singing “There must be someway out of here, said the joker to the thief) right before the automobile commercial and right after the beer ad.)

So as I listened to my iPod this morning during a frigid run (no above 32 degree temperatures any day this entire month of January), Springsteen’s “Jungleland” came up on the shuffle. And as always the music intrigued me; suddenly, there was these guitar chords--but no, it was more: it was the sound in the guitars. I heard a defiance that I adored in rock n’roll, and that defiance was a refusal to succumb to the difficulties which the song depicted, a refusal to succumb to anything less than jubilance in the face of despair, and a refusal to defer joy. I heard in Springsteen’s music in “Jungleland” a desire to always head for the darkness at the edge of town—that is where life might be more daringly be lived. And more, that is where I think I have spent much of my time. And I’m heading out again to Jungleland on the edge of town.