Dancing in the dark...

Sometime around 1972 or 1973, back when I would have been 21 or so, my sister Moira and I, and maybe even our very much younger brother Patrick, went to see then-hot Chicago at a concert in Richmond, Virginia, where we lived at the time. I dimly recall that we had pretty good seats at the Coliseum, for a show that I was very much up to see, having been a Chicago fan ever since the group’s debut double-album under the banner of Chicago Transit Authority some four or five years earlier.

I’ll admit that, prior to the concert, I hadn’t paid any attention whatsoever to the opening act and, in fact, didn’t even know who it was, figuring, not unreasonably, that, not unlike most opening acts, this one was preordained to be forgettable. I mean, c’mon, we’re talking Chicago, and any opening act could, even under the best of circumstances, be little more than a speed bump en route to the night’s ultimate destination — forty minutes, maybe more, of somebody else’s one-riff-beyond-the-garage music, then on to the real deal. And, whaddya know, as if to confirm that dim expectation, out on the stage steps this decidedly scruffy fellow from Jersey, a young guy, a guy with the seriously un-billboard-like name of Springsteen, backed by an imposingly large sax player named Clarence, linchpin, if only by stature, in a crew that inexplicably cast itself as the E Street Band.

Since then, my life, maybe like yours, has been signposted by Springsteen: 1984 and Born in the USA, me a mere 33, new dad, this time second time around, in relatively good shape myself, albeit nothing like the newly, sexily buff Springsteen; a year or two later and I remember, as if it were yesterday, the day I bought that boxed, three-CD live set at the Book Annex in Alexandria, Virginia, with that album, if memory serves, the incentive for buying our first CD player; come the 1990’s, and I’m pretty much cruising at 40 and steering beyond, my compass not then set on the Boss, with family, life and a writing career tugging my needle from the due-north of E Street; by 2001, and the unhappy inspiration for The Rising, I’m in med school, all ears when it comes to the Boss’s message, but all broke when it came to ever hitting a concert.

But just four years later, in the fall of 2005, at a solo concert in Madison, Wisconsin, a concert that was for Karen and me a celebration of our 25th wedding anniversary, Bruce and I had at last and again hooked up. And if Bruce didn’t know it, I certainly did. Entire decades had come full circle, I was for a moment that comparative kid again in Richmond, Virginia, and the world, apart from the devils and dust of our collective nightmare, was for that same moment, not the complicated place which Karen and Bruce and I otherwise inhabited, but for she and he and me a renewal of sorts, and, for Karen, in particular, a first chance to put flesh to the other love of her life.

But, for Karen, alas, that love was unrequited.

Sure, this was Bruce, but only Bruce, just Bruce, no E Street Band, and so Karen felt somewhat short-changed by what was a comparatively low-octane Springsteen gig. Fast-forward two years, though, and the Boss is again hitting the boards, this time to push a new album, this time backed by the E Street Band, and, with anniversary 27 in the offing, I, as a surprise to Karen, snagged tickets for two to Bruce and the Band at the United Center in Chicago.

If Springsteen was great that night, and he was, the concert was all the better for giving me the chance to watch Karen shed her middle years and dance that night in the dark, each lick of the Boss’s guitar cranking chords of memory as much as music: “Born to Run,” and, Karen, our own meanderings — 19 moves in 28 years of marriage — leapt that night immediately to mind, even as the Boss belted words I’d so often said in other words, “Someday, girl, I don’t know when, we’re gonna get to that place where we really want to go…but till then…tramps like us, baby, we were born to run”; “Thunder Road,” and, who’s kiddin’ who, we’re as scared as we’ve ever been, “that maybe we ain’t that young anymore,” with the ghosts of our own twined lives haunting all those decades lost to parenting and med school and residency, no less, beautiful Karen, than the ghosts of “all the boys you sent away,” like those of Springsteen’s storied Mary, haunt the “dusty beach road” of your own young life; and, don’t you know, dear Karen, that when I hear “Out in the Street,” that you, you, my own and much loved Karen, are that girl again, the girl I knew back when we first met, walking the way you wanted to walk, talking the way you wanted to talk, wha-oh, wha-oh-oh-oh-oh.

But if there is Bruce solo and Bruce with the Band, there is also Bruce as he can only be experienced from the pit, surrounded by fans of fellow deep persuasion, an experience that was then still unticked on Karen’s life list.

So, come this last March, there Karen and I were again at a Springsteen concert, this time in Omaha, this time right there on the floor, close enough to imagine what it was like, all those years ago, when a younger Karen, a younger me, might have rocked to a younger Bruce, right there on the floor, with everyone around us, then as now, writhing in unison, thousands of arms pistoning air, thousands of hips pivoting as one, thousands of mouths mouthing words long ago tucked into memory.

Am I going somewhere?

“You bet,” in the vernacular of this, the Midwest of my long-ago youth.

Because a couple of weekends back, back in those dying days of August, Karen and I motored to Milwaukee, where Bruce was the closing act for Harley-Davidson’s 105th Anniversary. It was, in addition, the last stop on the Boss’s latest tour, a tour begun about a year ago, a year that had also marked the loss of one of the members of the E Street Band, dead these many months ago to melanoma. Time, it seems, had caught up to the Band, as much as it had caught up to me, who in E-Street years, had already counted the loss of both parents and all too many friends and relatives, and to Karen, whose own father was among those more recently fallen behind, his hand slipped suddenly free of his daughter’s, his life lost, as Bruce, singing alone to Karen, might have sung, “in the shadow of the evening trees.”

But on that night, time, and loss, and memory, were one.

Because there Bruce was, his arrival announced, loudly and in total darkness, by the vroom-vroom-vroomvroom-vroom-vroom- vroom of a Harley, even as the audience, 50,000 or more shadows on the lawn of Milwaukee’s lakeside Veterans Park, Karen and me among the shadows, scanned a darkened stage, all of us fully expecting the Boss to power-drive the stage, only to have the lights light to reveal Bruce, not astride, but striding toward the stage, band members already at their stations, the opening lyrics of “Gypsy Biker” even then filling the black and starlit air. Minutes later, that song done, and with no breath between, the Boss declared his intention to have fun with “Out in the Street,” leaping, almost immediately from the main stage to the catwalk beyond, sprinting up and down the ramp, his free hand grabbing strangers’ hands, his back suffering unnumbered, anonymous pats, and, once and then again, flinging himself to the mosh pit of the audience, fans’ hands offering him to the gods of the black Milwaukee night.

Now, I’ll admit, that I was hardly enamored of the crowd around me, most of whom subscribed more to the Harley fetish than they did to Springsteen: leather, both thin and thick, fringed or not; denim shirts snipped short at the sleeves; cigars, sported as much by women as men, and, if not cigars, cigarettes seemingly touched one to another; weak-ass Miller slapped back at $5.75 a slap, and we’re talking beaucoup slaps, with the expected wobbly results in a standing-room-only crowd; and, dare I tell, those baring the most skin, men oddly more than women, were those who should most have covered up.

Still, fists pumped humid air, feet sprang, hands clapped, hips swayed, and I’m only talking Karen. And, song after song after song, the Boss played on, until more than three and a half non-stop hours later, after two concert-tested, half-hearted entreaties to band member Stevie Van Zandt, “ What time is it, Steve?” and the equally concert-tested, half-hearted response, “It’s quitting time,” even the Boss himself, now on the far side of midnight, finally had to call it quits, this after 31 songs, a record for the tour; after repeatedly throwing himself to the mercy of the chosen, wrist-banded 3,000 nearest the stage; after knee-sliding the catwalk; after glad-handing God-only-knows how many fans, suffering Lord-only-knows how many touches here, there and everywhere; and after making the night memorable, not just for Karen, but also for one very much younger face in the nearer crowd, who, echoes of Courtney Cox all those decades ago, suddenly found herself on stage sa-shaying hand in hand with the Boss to “Dancing in the Dark.”

Admittedly that night, some lines rang all the more true, if only for me.

In fact, all those decades ago, back in my once loved and still lamented Vermont, back in the days when I made my living as a full-time scribbler of words, I was known to play Springsteen, loudly, and I mean loudly (just ask the kids), to sparkplug the day’s writing.

To this day, I still joke that those lines in “Dancing in the Dark” — “I’m sick of sitting ‘round here trying to write this book…I need a love reaction…come on, baby, gimme just one look” — led, for this freelance writer and his all-too-available lover, in all-too-bucolic Vermont, to five children. And you can’t know how often in how many places since I have thought, like Springsteen, that, “this town is full of losers, and I’m pulling out of here to win.” And, I’ll confess, even now, even as recently as Milwaukee, wanna-be-adventurous me bellowed along with the Boss (just ask Karen), “I ain’t nothing but tired, man, I’m just tired and bored with myself,” even as I looked beyond the here and now of the here and now, “I ain’t getting nowhere, I’m just living in a dump like this.”

Whatever, as I’m too often wont to say, too often to the irritation of those around me.

But with Milwaukee behind us, both Bruce and I now get to motor on, he to home and New Jersey and whatever lies beyond, me to whatever waits beyond this specific moment, this particular place. I look forward, as does Karen, to whatever moves the Boss to make music, and hope, on behalf of Karen and me, that time and health, things all of us, Bruce included, had to take for granted when younger, conspire to allow future tours. As for Karen and much older me, we’ll keep feeling our way forward, too often blindly, so rarely with anything resembling sure-footedness, knowing nonetheless and all the way, “the night’s busted open, these two lanes will take us anywhere,” and, more important, that even at this late hour of life, “we’ve got one last chance to make it real,” (even as Karen reads this and thinks, oh, God, hold on and hold on really tight, ‘cause here we go again!).

And, yet, I confess yet again, the life I’ve lost ‘til now.

Spent, too late at mid-life, were those two years in grad school at beloved Notre Dame. Spent, too, even later, were four more years in med school and three years in residency, not to mention two more years along the way doing all those pre-med science courses. And all along, all the time I lost with Karen, with our children, years I can never have back, years that can never fully be justified on the profit-and-loss statement of life, no matter how many meaningless letters of however many worthless degrees get tacked after my name. Bruce, too, I’m sure, has paid the price for all his years on the road, but you can’t help but think that his lost years bought joy, while mine bought only security and, even on the best of days, mere contentment.

But, oh God, what I would give for joy.

Bruce, in parting in Milwaukee, vowed he’d be back. “We’re only getting started,” he promised the hungry of heart still begging for more deep into that August night. And, Bruce, buddy, I’m gonna have to hold you to it. After all, “There’s something happening somewhere,” both us spinning to sixty know, “even if we’re just dancing in the dark.”

© 2008 by Dónal Kevin Gordon