“that desire to do it his way”
Intensity. Self-determination. Perfectionism. Self-reflection. Resilience. Self-growth.
We use those words and phrases to describe traits of giftedness— both traits bemoaned and traits desired. But what do they really look like? How might they eventually become assets for children who are (can I resist?) born to run?
Cover of Darkness on the Edge of Town
When I recently watched the documentary The Promise: The Making of Darkness on the Edge of Town, I knew I needed to keep it in the DVR to watch again, when I would have time to press the pause button and write down some of the quotations to share here. I was struck not only by Springsteen’s intensity, but also his hard edges, his lack of “people pleasing” skills, his insistence on doing things his way. He even speaks of the mindfulness of a “commitment to life, to the breath in your lungs.”
I also thought to myself, he must have been quite a child to raise ! (I don’t want to begin to analyze the fact that now, when I think of Bruce Springsteen, I wonder what it would be like to be his mother.)
On Born to Run:
The success we had with Born to Run immediately made me ask, well what’s that all about? What does that mean for me?
The success brought me an audience. It also separated me from all the things I’d been trying to make my connections to my whole life. And it frightened me because I understood that what I had of value was at my core, and that core was rooted into the place I’d grown up, the people I’d known, the experiences I’d had. If I moved away from those things, into a sphere of just freedom as pure license, to go about your life as you desire, without connection… that’s where a lot of the people I admired drifted away from, the essential things that made them great. And more than rich, and more than famous, and more than happy [laughter], I wanted to be great.
On Darkness on the Edge of Town:
It’ s a reckoning with the adult world, with a life of limitations and compromises, but also a life of kind of, of just resilience and commitment to life, to the breath in your lungs. How do I keep faith with those things? How do I honor those things? Darkness was a record when I set out to try understand how to do that.
Patti Scialfa on Springsteen’s lawsuit with Mike Appel:
When he went through that lawsuit… those things don’t have to be horrible things that happen to you. There are things that happen to you, and then there are catalysts for something else.
Band member Max Weinberg on the effects of the lawsuit:
My sense of his reaction to this roadblock in his career was that determination, that will, that desire to do it his way became even greater. Maybe his way of working it all out was to write songs.
Intrigued? Read the Rolling Stone review of the documentary and watch an excerpt. May everyone have a joyful and peaceful rest of the week (and Happy Thanksgiving to those in the U.S.!). Posts here will resume on November 29th.
