Racing in the Street

The creative spirit Chris Zydel says, love the muse you’re with.

Oh man, is that a lesson I keep learning over and over (and over) again.

For example this week. Actually last week. I had a random little flash of something… maybe a blog post… maybe something else… while I was walking my dog and listening to my ipod.

I immediately thought, “nahhh, that’s too esoteric and personal, don’t blog about that.” (I was pretty sure I was done writing about depression.)

Okay, fine, I’ll blog about something else then.  Dee dee dee (*drumming fingers*).

Only…crap! Now there is no space for anything else. This tiny little glimmer of a thing has become an enormous shadowy blob, it has taken over and blocked all roads into town (town being my brain, I guess?)

So one non-writing week later, I surrender. I’m here to meet its demands, hoping it might release the hostage.

The song I was listening to when I had the flash was “Racing in the Street” by Springsteen.

This was the line that caused the flash:

She stares off alone into the night
With the eyes of one who aches for just being born*

I heard that line and I felt...nostalgia.

I have never loved a man who drag races for money, but I sure have ached for just being born.

And sometimes, I miss that ache.

Yes, yes yes it was excruciating and I hated it while I was in it, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone…And yet. There was something so fragile and beautiful about it.

What was it that makes it so precious to me, as a memory, triggered when Springsteen sings abut it?

I mean sure, I’m all about contradiction and I find sadness beautiful, and happiness sad (we know that).

But there’s more to it.

I’m pretty sure it’s the act of observation. When an artist narrates someone else’s pain, when I recall my own with some distance, there is another layer introduced. A watcher. The act of observing. A sense of compassionate detachment.

Poetry.

The observation, the poetry, (the curiosity as my friend Heidi calls it)–that was the way out for me.

And so the little glimmer loops back on itself and ends where it began.

* Oh, and now that I go to look up the lyric I notice I had it wrong. It’s actually hates for just being born. Which doesn’t speak to me in the same way. So I changed it to what I hear when I listen to the song (a classic, btw, if you like brilliant and haunting, but then the album is called Darkness on the Edge of Town so how could I not love?).