I wrote this shortly after the new year in late January.

After finishing the last of the Christmas cookies and recycling the ghosts of New Year’s Eve—empty champagne bottles long after their spirits have fled—I settle down for some football by the fire and wonder what The Boss is thankful for this year.  I saw him perform in St. Paul several weeks ago and the concert is still fresh in my mind, especially with his new album playing in the background over the crackling flames.  Magic, still riding the waves of its first single and a fiery tour with the E Street Band (the first in almost five years), has kept Springsteen just as busy through the hectic holiday season as the country he’s been questioning and comforting in his music for the past three decades.   

            If Springsteen’s music were projected through a prism—guitars, saxophones, keyboards, drums, lyrics, everything—the result would be a multi-faceted spectrum of romanticism, disillusionment, hope, the muffled grip of rubber on pavement, and the perpetual grind of Americans everywhere, blue-collar or not.  His biggest hits all reflect notions of American identity and opportunity, even if those opportunities are lost, like the title character in “The River.”  “Born in the USA”—mindlessly blared over stadium loudspeakers all across the nation—is not a flag-waving, arm-pumping anthem of American grit.  It’s a distinct reflection of purpose—purpose of the Vietnam war, purpose after—in a country rejecting its own (“nowhere to run, ain’t got nowhere to go”).  And that FM summer classic, “Dancing in the Dark,” equal parts catchy, dusty, romantic, true—it’s about community (or dancing, if that’s as far as you’d care to go).  Visualize the song—we’re dancing close, the music all around us without a light to guide us.  Our feet are hidden and may bring us to new and unexpected places…but we’re doing it together.  There is a union to our mistakes, should we make any.  And if you fall in the dark, baby, I’ll pick you up and twirl you again. 

            And the list goes on.  Other hits whittle away at questions of past, present, and certainly the open road of the future.  The more you listen to Springsteen, the more his words quietly infiltrate your conscience until you find yourself asking those same questions.  Who am I, really?  What could I be doing?  If I grabbed my keys, started my engine and just drove, what corners might I turn? 

It should be of no surprise, then, that his new album has been at the top of the charts.  Magic, only 12 songs strong, breathes like a well-tamed dragon waiting to spread its wings.  More with Magic than ever before, Bruce makes clear his concern with the current state of the nation.  During the concert he played almost the entire album, and in typical Springsteen fashion left the crowd breathless, exhilarated, and moved.  He ended with a song he wrote called “This American land,” where “There's diamonds in the sidewalk, there's gutters lined in song, / Dear I hear that beer flows through the faucets all night long, / There's treasure for the taking, for any hard working man, / Who will make his home in the American land.”  Tongue-in-cheek, Bruce belted lyrics like these to the faceless crowd, defiant in a time of apprehension and distress.  He spoke of growth.  Renewal.  Words we haven’t heard in a long time.   

His lens is focused precisely on America, 2008 and beyond.  We have a historic presidential candidacy up for grabs next year, where two of the main contenders represent social groups never before seen in the Oval Office.  We have an unpopular president fighting an unsuccessful war while the genocides of Sudan and Darfur remain largely out of the public eye.  The economy is teetering on recession, and homes are being foreclosed coast to coast at an alarming rate.  We have much to be concerned about.  And we have Bruce Springsteen.

Opening his album with “Radio Nowhere,” he sings of a lone rider with no direction, no home and no destination.  Civil responsibility is lost on “Livin’ in the Future” as Election Day is “whistled away.”  “Magic” is a haunting low tune about the vicissitudes of smoke-and-mirror politics.  The album resonates with portents of what will be or what has come to pass. It is neither a musical reflection of the apocalypse, nor is it a mad flag-waving, fist-pumping civil mob bellow. 

The album has more facets than its four corners tell—it is passionate, bold, heartbreaking, lush, and reminiscent.  It bleeds in sepia-colored tones and dresses the wounds with ethers of nostalgia.  Most of all, though, it is a call to arms.

The sinking ship that is America—outrage at the government, suspicious of the neighbors, subject to the whims of a fickle economy—can still be salvaged and made seaworthy.  By virtue of the gifts Americans are born into and what Bruce is most concerned with—freedoms of speech, religion, and organization—are the same virtues that can get us out of here.  It is civil responsibility—not disobedience nor wrath—which Bruce most calls for.  It can never be beaten off, taxed away, or given up to the authorities.

Before launching into “Magic,” Bruce spoke to the crowd for just a minute, his only blatant harangue before thousands.  “This song isn’t really about magic,” he told us, “it’s about tricks.”  He walked calmly around the stage and spoke of the rolling back of civil liberties and the suspension of habeas corpus just a few years ago.  And the concert continued as if nothing had happened, his words left to ponder later in our ringing ears as we turned from Kellogg Avenue to I-94.  After playing most of Magic, he finished with a few of the old favorites, so obvious it is folly to name them here.  All his songs hold the same qualities, musically and thematically—balance, purpose, energy, and tonight’s performance is no different.

So as the year has closed and we enter another, I have many resolutions to make and aspects of my life I am thankful for.  And what of The Boss?  Does he have time during this vigorous tour to further reflect on what his music means, or how the contexts of the times have changed but his words are still as relevant?  I suppose there’s no way of knowing.  At the bottom of my resolution and thankful list, I scribble in “B. Springsteen” using the knee under my blue jeans as a pad.  I do that because he stills believes in us, even when we forget to believe in ourselves.