"An Epic Poem About Losers"
- Jon Stewart Regarding Springsteen's Career

One of the most vivid memories I have as a kid was the night my Mom got a babysitter for my brother and I so she could go see Bruce Springsteen And The E Street Band play at a college just up the road on 95. She and a group of friends piled into some 70's dual exhaust American car and disappeared into the cold Northeast winter. I remember there was a certain electricity to that night as my Mom and all her pretty friends got dressed and perfumed-up for a Rock ‘n Roll show. I'm certain now that that energy was my first introduction to the magic of Rock ‘n Roll.

A few years later "Born In The USA" was released. I remember being about 12 years old in a muscle t-shirt, early 80s goofy shorts with pulled high striped socks and one missing front tooth at a BBQ in Boothwyn, PA when "Born In The USA" (the song) came on the radio. A song can silence and radiate a room, and I remember seeing and feeling that change in the air when it came on that day. I remember one of my uncles talking about The Boss. He had a sense of pride and investment in Springsteen's story. I thought he knew The Boss somehow as I sat and watched and listened. The chorus then came, and we were singing along. This was the land of Little League Baseball, factories, refinery torches, family-owned Italian restaurants, Herr's Potato Chips and large stone churches.


Chester, PA is my hometown. The first 15 years of my life honestly resembles some epic Scorcese film where immigrants, the working class and government housing families coexisted in some troubled Norman Rockwell epic. Things were in flux, the weather was gray and I thought Chester was all there was. When I was about 13 the man who cut my hair since I was a little boy committed suicide. I didn't really know what suicide was until then. Maybe I'd heard the word, but you know, the bigger world and all it's sub-plots start creeping in around our early teens. So sitting at home while my folks were at work, the whole suicide situation was weighing heavy on my mind. I started going through my Mom and Dad's album collection. Rows and rows of vinyl. Fleetwood Mac, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Kris Kristofferson, Willie Nelson, Bonnie Tyler, Joan Baez, and Bruce Springsteen. Luckily my folks had good taste. I remember sitting in the front room of our row home on Clover Lane in Chester with sunlight coming through the big windows. "I'm On Fire" was the song I listened to over and over again:

"Sometimes it's like someone took a knife baby
Edgy and dull and cut a six-inch valley
Through the middle of my soul"

That was the section that made me think about the man I thought I knew so well through the monthly ritual of Saturdays at the barbershop. It gave me just a glimpse of the darkness that can visit men and women. I felt better for even understanding it, even if just a little at that point in my life. Springsteen's work communicates in ways that maybe at times, even friends and family fail. Who knows why we hesitate in the face to face intimacy of language, but thank God for music. "I'm On Fire" led to "No Surrender" and "Bobby Jean". "Downbound Train" followed soon after, and that section in the middle felt so heroic to me as I wandered the streets of my hometown at dusk when the refinery fires started to glow.

In the 1986 my folks moved to the quieter, safer suburbs of Newark, Delaware. We weren't there more than a year when my folks hit a rough spot in there marriage. It was a cold November. We had left behind the troubles of Chester, PA to find us feeling a bit alien in a new world just 30 miles south. My older brother never really came with us. He was lost to the seductive and dark nothingness that some kids find and follow down some streets. My younger brother was only about 3. There was nothing on the walls of the new house yet, so sounds just kind bounced around in that house. From music, to the phone ringing, to my little brother's late night howling and even the arguments between my Mom and Dad. It all just reverberated through those rooms. We had a small cassette player in the kitchen, my folks would play "Tunnel Of Love" quite a bit at the time. The more I listened, the more I felt I understood what my parents must be going through.

In the 90s I started writing my own songs.  Music for me had become a giant megaphone in my heart and ears that connected to me to the bigger, more resonate stories that drive and compel us to do the things we do. For better or for worse, for laughter or tears music, real music, never lies to you. Bruce Springsteen's music never lies. I don't know how he does it. I don't know how his characters become symbols for myself and so many people in my life, but they did and continue to. It's truly inspiring how one can be so brave, and enormously generous with their talent and spirit. It's simply a mystery, and I've often wondered at what cost does he offer so much of himself to the world.

In 1997 my first record was released by A&M records. References to Springsteen were attached to nearly every review that emerged by champions and critics of that record.  It scared the shit out of me, it really did. I never wanted to be The Boss or any of my heroes. It felt like I was being compared to Jesus Christ, Charles Dickens or John F. Kennedy. How can anyone hope to deliver in the shadow of the epic dialog those figures have already created? It was overwhelming, daunting. But you know, it's true in all that we do, we gotta work hard, never give up, recognize and enjoy the moments of peace and achievement; and hopefully over time build our own kingdoms by committing entirely to our own volumes of conversations with both the dark and light in our humanity. And even then, there are no promises. But it's these things that I feel I've learned from Springsteen's work. Perseverance isn't always high-minded, and it isn't always simply about survival; It's a big gray ball of question marks that we have to dissect, mistake, welcome, champion and rail against so we have a chance to define who we are as men and women.

Maybe I've over-thought all of this. But then again, I don't think I have, because the other night I watched The Kennedy Center Honors and I couldn't help but smile like my uncle did some 20 years ago. I'm still working on my dream, and at times there's a lot of struggle and uncertainty. But thankfully I guess, that's the point, that we should always be working on our dreams. Dreams that are dormant, dreams that are old and dreams we haven't even dreamed yet. Watching Bruce Sprinsteen's songs being performed, and laughing at John Stewart's comments and grinning with goosebumps during Sting's performance of "The Rising"... well, what a beautiful connector Springsteen has been: Connecting people to their dreams, their joy, their failings, their promises, the world, their country, their heroism, love, family, perseverance and hope. Speaking for one embattled dreamer who's in awe of his achievements, I'm grateful for what The Boss has given and continues to give. Regardless of any wounds we gather inside those boxing matches between cynicism, hope, innocence, guilt and despair, Springsteen's work and spirit continues to cut through and inspire a devotion to one's self. And now seriously, is there any greater gift one human can offer another? And he's done it for so many, simply amazing.

A few weeks ago EIC Scott Crawford asked me if I was interested in writing an article or blog entry for BLURT. Since then I've thought about it and thought about it. There's so much I'd like to say. It always makes me think of Randy Newman's I Just Want You To Hurt Like I Do. "Rough, rough world... tough, tough world... you know..." 

We are in such a strange time in our relationship with the evolution between ourselves and what we create - technology, music, porn, junk and medicine, our culture at large; everything. It is beautiful what we're capable of. It's not always beautiful what we do. Somehow, any cultural balance seems simply gone. Capitalism and marketing has made the goal more important than the work. I don't pretend to understand all the details of what feels wrong about where we're at. But, something is wrong. 

Where is our culture when soda (pop culture) is more important than water (art)? Think about that. Is there even a hint of balance? I believe there should be, because art offers wisdom, sparks imagination, and confronts us with what is often our own story in our time from a different point-of-view. And to me, pop culture just seems to be leaning further towards the quick and the sensational, it's like a pill that's been so thoroughly researched that often it's just a precise missile designed to attack, but not inspire.

Recently a friend from Italy gave me a collection of poems by Wallace Stevens. Initially I didn't like it, because it felt like waking up in someone else's house. But upon a few sittings with the book it started opening up to me. One favorite poem turned into two then three. My life was enriched, engaged, spoken to. Might I suggest you read Description Without Place. Maybe it will speak to you, maybe it won't. But one thing is beyond debate, it is art. 

You see, there is a difference between art and entertainment. Art often needs to be digested, considered, felt and sometimes ruminated upon; entertainment is designed to engage. Each can be both. But more and more, entertainment alone dominates in a way that we can't fully comprehend the consequences of. At least not yet. Because it's my feeling that entertainment is on a march motivated by capitalism. Our music, our books, our technology and our films are all at the mercy of capitalism and they're being compromised for the sale rather than celebrated for the soul. Capitalism has no conscience. Art appeals to the better self in the struggle, it's complex and simple and rooted through where you were and where you're going. Art is humanity in an almost physical form to be shared via pictures or sound. Think about that. It's true. Yet sadly it seems, that more and more, our culture is celebrating entertainment and marketing as art. Meanwhile forgetting what art really is.

So, I opened my email this morning, and a woman named Pam sent me the stunning, beautiful and patient Ballad Of The American Arts by Wynton Marsalis. He nails it. And I am inspired and in awe. I could certainly say it no better, no smarter, no more thoroughly than Mr. Marsalis has. We have to take a stand for the arts. That's what BLURT and so many of US are trying to do. There is no reason pure art shouldn't be in competition, in balance, in contrast to the things that only have the skin and teeth of art, but not the soul. 

So here's the link, scroll down the page and you'll see the video of the Wynton Marsalis speech. It's masterful - earnest, funny, pure, sad and hopeful. Beautiful stuff.

http://www.americansforthearts.org/events/2009/aad/nhl09.asp

Matthew Ryan is an independent American singer/songwriter, producer and composer. He's released 11 records since 1997. He's currently working on a new one.