How I’m Feeling Today

You know? You get tired. I’m tired of most everything. My wife is getting tired of embarrassing stories about her alma mater, Rutgers. Here’s their latest:

This seminar offers a theologically oriented approach to Bruce Springsteen’s lyrics. We will focus on Springsteen’s reinterpretation of biblical motifs, the possibility of redemption by earthly means (women, cars, music), and his interweaving of secular and sacred elements. Springsteen’s work will also be situated within the broader poetic tradition that casts the writer as a religious figure whose message does not effect transcendent salvation, but rather, transforms earthly reality.

Really? I think the professor even said Springsteen explored biblical themes more than any other contemporary musician. What utter bullshit.

Yeah, I’m a Jersey boy, but I’m not a fool. There’s more Christianity in the Tom Waits opus than in Springsteen’s by a factor of 10 to 1. Waits is trying to live and love. Springsteen is trying to get a union card for self-loathing misery. On a motorcycle.

But. As already foreshadowed — because I’m in a mood, what with none of our esteemed commenters having anything to say about the impending humanitarian disaster of ObamaCare — I’ll default to my favorite all-world band, the Rolling Stones.

There are no coincidences. Raebert’s spent a week convincing me I need to use the ear buds and listen to all the music that isn’t Mozart’s concerto for clarinet and oboe all by my lonesome. He’s happy now and so am I.

So Springsteen is a master of the cheap allegory:

Interestingly, Springsteen refers more often to the stories of the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament) than the New Testament. On a literary level, Springsteen often recasts biblical figures and stories into the American landscape. The narrator of “Adam Raised a Cain” describes his strained relationship with his father through the prism of the biblical story of the first father and son; Apocalyptic storms accompany a boy’s tortured transition into manhood in “The Promised Land,” and the first responders of 9/11 rise up to “someplace higher” in the flames, much as Elijah the prophet ascended in a chariot of fire (“Into the Fire”). Theologically, I would say the most dominant motifs are redemption — crossing the desert and entering the Promised Land — and the sanctity of the everyday. Springsteen tries to drag the power of religious symbols that are usually relegated to some transcendent reality into our lived world. In his later albums he also writes very openly about faith.

Really? Faith in what? Democrat rulers? Seems like it. All he does anymore is parade around campaigning for leftists. No wonder he prefers the Old Testament. Kings beat jacks and deuces every time. The “Promised Land” is Rumsen, where Bruce lives and even gatekeeper cottages cost millions. Got it.

No. Don’t touch me. Don’t talk to me.

Please spare me the mournful, self pitying dirges that constitute Springsteen songs about growing up so illiterate that none of your song lyrics even scan.

Told you I was in a mood. I promise I’ll stop. But only after four more demonstrations that the Stones have a lot more theological content than Bruce ever did..

Doubt.

Defiance.

Gospel.

Clearly NEW Testament by the way, all of them. Shidooby.

Oops. Did I say Four? Okay. Here’s how you should all think of me.

You can put that on my tombstone. Right after best writer ever.

One thought on “How I’m Feeling Today

  1. Lake’s mention of the Boss (even if he was talking about a different boss) reminded me that long ago, maybe a decade, maybe two, I read some bathroom-wall graffiti: “BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN IS ‘THE BOSS'”.

    Underneath it someone else had written: “THE BOSS OF WHAT? YOUR FUCKIN SOUL?”

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