The Promise of Bruce Springsteen [Oct 22, 2002]

You may have noticed that my entries have recently decreased in frequency, down to one post a day from my usual five originals plus a telling quote, ironically deployed, cribbed off an especially deluded member of the liberal media elite. As is my fate, I've been traveling. I've recently returned from Damascus, where I followed the exploits of one Major Lawrence. Extraordinary man, that Lawrence. We really could use more like him as we prepare to take Aquba from the rear.

Then, on Thursday at New York University, I'll participate in a panel discussion on George Orwell with Andrew Sullivan, Christopher Hitchens, David Lloyd George, Maxine Keyser, and the overrated Jason Sehorn of the football Giants. It should be lively, and I encourage you all to show up and cheer for me against lesser intellects.

Meanwhile, between Damascus and New York, I write to you from Rome, the eternal city, where I've just had the privilege of returning from a Bruce Springsteen concert.

Since 1972, I've seen more than 500 Springsteen shows, but I enjoy him most in Europe. Monday night’s show in Roma was perhaps the best ever; he played all my favorites, including a solo piano version of "Darkness At The Edge of Forever," a rousing, anthemic "Home Is For the Hungry," and an acoustic accordion rendition of "Dream Heart Deferred." When the E Street Band launched into "Betty's Place," from his new album "The River," the crowd seemed to elevate above the Piazza del Popolo. The Boss performed with a spirit and panache that he sometimes lacks at home. For the Italians, he didn't have to prove it all night, but somehow, he proved it anyway.

"Bruce-a!" shouted a man from the audience in somewhat accented English. "I love-a you! I want you to meet my mother!"

It warmed my heart that foreigners could see the best of what American culture has to offer. There are two ways to look at America from abroad right now. One is the wrong way, the left-wing way, which portrays George Bush and his evil band of brigands as Bible-toting gun-happy plutocratic monsters bent on destroying all that is sane and good in the world, not caring how many prostitutes they shoot up when they bust into the saloon. Then there’s the real America; the one where a working-class kid from New Jersey can work with class and meet a bunch of guys in New Jersey and start a band, getting on the cover of Time magazine before he's 25 but eventually having all his hopes and dreams sucked dry by a meaningless lawsuit and then finding himself reborn as an accidental patriot and then marrying a supermodel and becoming uncomfortable with his multi-million dollar house and then recasting himself as a sad acoustic troubadour and then rising to the occasion on America's darkest day. That's the American life that we all live, and know, and love so well.

I'd like to think that if Thomas Jefferson and John Adams and Louis Armstrong were alive today, they would have been in Rome with me last night, singing along at the top of their lungs: "Cadillac, Cadillac, out the door, out the back. Da di da da doo, da di doo da di. Riding down the highway like a big old dinosaur!" A little rock-and-roll would have been a hell of a lot of fun for them back in the day when they were writing the Constitution. Like the man says. You can't start a fire without a spark.