thankful for this

i'm extremely thankful this moment exists.
i'm thankful for Bruce and for Jon and for what they've done for my generation and for our country.

and of course, i'm extremely thankful for my family and friends and for music and laughter and all the good trappings of life.

it's been a hard year for a lot of people. speaking for myself, i lost my job and my sense of attachment and belonging to a community, lost track of who i was and what made me joyful and inspired. this was the year i got really into Bruce Springsteen. i mean, really into Bruce. i moved from California to Kentucky to New York, and on that 11-hour drive from the midwest, my home, to Central New York, where i was going to make a new home for myself with little more than hope and a determination not to fail, i listened to nothing but Bruce the entire time, and for the first time, i felt like those lyrics were speaking for me, rescuing me from a despair i didn't know i was in. there was a desperate hope i could identify with, and as i was driving through that region of America i could feel Bruce there on the road and in those dusty bleak industrial towns, felt him present in my situation, supplying evidence for hope and joy in darkness that makes it capable for people like me, people like us, to survive these dark and trying winters.

it's been a hard year for a lot of people, and it may only get harder. but there are sources of joy and beauty and strength that we need to remember. and for that, i'm thankful.



abridged transcript:

"I am not a music critic, nor historian, nor archivist. I cannot tell you where Bruce Springsteen falls in the pantheon of the American songbook. I cannot illuminate the context of his work, or its roots in the folk and oral history traditions of our great nation. But I am from New Jersey. So I can tell you what I believe. And what I believe is that Bob Dylan and James Brown had a baby. And they abandoned this child, as you can imagine at the time...interracial, same sex relationships being what they were...they abandoned this baby by the side of the road between the exit interchanges 8A and 9 on the Jersey Turnpike...that child was Bruce Springsteen...

I cannot tell you where Bruce Springsteen falls in the pantheon of the American songbook. ...But I didn't understand his music for a long time, until I began to yearn. Until I began to question the things that I was making and doing in my own life. Until I realized that it wasn’t just about the joyful parade on stage and the theatrics. It was about stories of lives that could be changed. And that the only status that you could fail to achieve is the status quo. The only thing, the only failure in life was not to make the effort to change our station.

And it resonated with me because, and I say this truly to him... I would not be here, God knows, not even in this business, if it were not for the inspirational words and music of Bruce Springsteen."