Bruce Springsteen on Fresh Air:
“Most people’s stage personas are created out of the flotsam and jetsam of their internal geography. They’re trying to create something that solves a series of very complex problems inside of them or in their history.”
Springsteen is an obvious musical genius. A brilliant writer, musician, and performer. My favorite.
It also turns out that he has the clearest of windows into my soul.
Those words are all so true.
I’m writing a book about the value of storytelling for yourself, whether or not you ever tell your story to another human being, and much of it comes down to what Springsteen has said here:
I’ve spent the last 15 years, and truthfully, most of my life, telling stories about myself in an attempt to make sense of things. I’ve told many of these stories on stages all over the world, but I’ve told even more of them to myself.
I tell stories to myself to make better sense of my life. I find understanding and meaning through these stories. I find the sweet inside the sour. I carve out the message from the messiness. I craft the purpose from the
Stories have helped me understand, clarify, frame, shape, contextualize, redefine, and distill the moments of my life, allowing them to serve me better than before.
My life has become a series of chapters rather than an endless string of days, events, or problems. Difficult times are given beginnings, endings, and meaning. Patterns become clear. Light is found within darkness.
Yes, Bruce Springsteen. As a storyteller, I take the flotsam and jetsam of my life and make meaning, art, and sometimes entertainment and connection.
Damn, that man is smart.
