I’ve been listening to a lot of Springsteen these past few weeks.
He makes me feel better.
I may re-listen to his memoir. The man fills my soul with language and hope.
But The River… That song is maddening.
Don’t get me wrong. I love it, too. It’s the Springsteen song that I find myself singing most often. But every time I hear that song, I find myself pleading the protagonist of that song to pull himself together.
“Then I got Mary pregnant
And man that was all she wrote
And for my nineteenth birthday I got a union card and a wedding coat
We went down to the courthouse
And the judge put it all to rest”
Put it all to rest?
Nothing is put to rest before your twentieth birthday.
When I was twenty, I was about to be arrest and jailed for a crime I didn’t commit. While awaiting trial, I ended up homeless and the victim of a horrific crime that has left me with PTSD for all my life.
C’mon, man. When that kid is graduating high school, you’ll be 37 years-old.
But the protagonist goes on:
“Now all them things that seemed so important
Well Mister they vanished right into the air
Now I just act like I don’t remember
Mary acts like she don’t care”
Seriously?
You’ve got a wife and a kid who love you. Yes, your employment status is precarious, and maybe you’re struggling to get by financially, but it’s never too late to rise up and make something happen. Never too late to find some luck or make some of your own.
This guy needs to hear Springsteen’s “Waitin’ on a Sunny Day” on his car radio.
Or “The Rising”
How about “Badlands” with this classic line:
“Talk about a dream
Try to make it real
You wake up in the night
With a fear so real
Spend your life waiting
For a moment that just don’t come
Well don’t waste your time waiting.”
Hell, “Thunder Road” and “Born to Run” should be enough to get his ass in gear.
I think the real problem with the protagonist of “The River” is that he is a Springsteen character in a Springsteen-less world. He lacks the music that would lift his spirts and give him hope.
If Springsteen was more like Stephen King or Kurt Vonnegut, willing to make himself a character in his own fiction, then perhaps the protagonist could find himself riding down the Jersey Turnpike one day listening to “Badlands” and suddenly be inspired to launch that elderly skincare line or artisanal landscaping business that he dreamed about in high school.
But alas… Springsteen is far too down to earth for something like that.
So it’s up to the protagonist to pull himself together.
Mary, too, by the way. She’s also a mess.
But they never do. Every time I listen to that song, I hope that maybe this will be the time they finally lift themselves from their malaise, but nothing ever changes, and it enrages me.
My friend, Jeni, would say that I don’t know what Mary and her husband are dealing with on a daily basis. Mental illness, depression, a less-than-ideal education, malnutrition in their formative years, radon poisoning…
Jeni thinks I need to have more empathy for folks who aren’t relentlessly chasing their dreams. Elysha, too. They tell me that people deal with hardship and struggle that can’t always see, and that can create barriers that are invisible but insurmountable.
I’m working on being a better human being in this regard, but the protagonist and Mary are fictional characters in a Springsteen song, and I get to fill in the fictional gaps however I see fit, so I see them as perfectly capable, healthy and intelligent people living in a radon-free home who need to pick themselves up, chase their dreams, never quit, and be happy, damn it.
Maybe Springsteen will write a sequel for me someday.
