C I P R I A N I

After their chatter about his audience stopped, my kids rode in relative silence as we listened to an early recording of an old Bruce Springsteen show on Sirius XM. From the sounds of thing, it was one of the first public performances of “Racing in the Streets”. The year escapes me now, but it was from the 70s.

Whenever it was exactly, it was from a time when I was younger than both of my kids are now. And during that particular time in the “Me” decade, I was too busy playing with Muppets and Star Wars to listen to the Boss. Aside from the Rocky soundtrack (and Muppets and Star Wars), I didn’t start really paying attention to music until a few years later in the early 80s. Blondie’s “The Tide is High” was the first song I remember coming out of my first little radio, something my dad pulled out of the top of a closet. My first cassette came some months after that, Men at Work’s “Cargo” that I played on a separate tape recorder, that if memory serves was blue.

Eventually, like every other kid in the neighborhood, I got a “box”. It cost 50 bucks on sale at “Hills”, they flew off the shelves so fast that I remember getting a “rain check” to return when they were back in stock.

At some point “Nobody Told Me” by John Lennon was on that radio – posthumously. I was at the same time puzzled and astonished by the concept of a new song by a deceased person. It wasn’t the same day, but later in that same bedroom there was a rainy day and an episode of Family Ties playing on an old black and white TV that I often refer to in my own mind as a sort of objective emotional barometer. I was melancholy. I’m not sure if it was the first time, but anyone that knows me is aware of my nostalgia for some things then. This has become more measured in recent years as the present has taken on a weirdness that seems clothed in the past and at times a seeming disdain for the future. But I am trying to plant my feet and simply concern myself with now. But I have to say, that moment in 1984 with the rain and Family Ties is some sort of emotional portal. Not good, not bad, just is. Was? Hard to tell.

So for whatever reason, later in the evening, I wound up looking at some of these old essays and reading references to the kids when they were first born and like so many things of late, I’ve really been feeling the passage of time, the years, the decades, the distance.

It was some twenty years ago that I saw Bruce perform Racing in the Streets live – and it was an “old” song then.

And somehow, Bruce hasn’t really aged. Though his most recent release of covers reminds me a bit of the stuff that K-Tel used sell and advertised between “Nanny and The Professor” reruns on channel 53.

There’s no one reading this – and if they are, they’re probably friends and are well aware of what WPGH, Channel 53 was. But in the off chance there’s a stranger on the other side of the world glancing at this, Channel 53 out of Pittsburgh, before it was bought by FOX was the greatest television station in the history of television broadcasting. Also, stranger, if you can hear me, thank you.

“Is anyone alive out there!” Bruce yells that during his concerts. He does now. He did it when I saw him. Not sure if that bit started in the 70s, but his Elmer Gantry act was certainly taking shape then. Something not lost on my daughter….

“Why is he talking so much? Why doesn’t he just sing?”

She said as we listened to him on the radio. She’s only starting to discover The Boss, at least consciously. “Because the Night”, a live version from Atlanta, also in the 70s, was the song that was playing in the delivery room when she was born.

Fun Fact: This was due to an audible called by the wife during labor. Van Halen’s “Right Now” was already playing (and honestly, a far more appropriate song if you know my daughter) and though the pain of childbirth consumed my wife, she insisted I quickly change the song for fears of the ramifications, superstitious or not, of coming into the world accompanied by Van Halen. I didn’t see the harm, but I was not going to argue with my wife and though my wife isn’t as big a fan of him as I am, The Boss got a nod in the affirmative and my little girl came into the world to a live version from Atlanta featuring the Boss in his prime.

And that, now, is what some would call a long time ago. That moment in the delivery room was a decade ago. And much of this didn’t seem like a long time ago until recently. And sometimes still, it doesn’t seem that way. But it is, isn’t it?

My son asked me why I have so many books. He looked around my office, my unintentional tsundoku, and asked how many of the books I’ve actually read. I said somewhere between 1 and 3 percent, and that might be generous. Whether it’s because the Japanese have a word for it and thanks to social media, I know I’m not alone, I don’t feel as guilty about it as I once did (and ironically when I actually had fewer books). But the more I read, the more books I collect. And then I glance at a shelf lined with titles I know I have read – and have mostly totally forgotten. This is often the case some times days after I’ve completed reading a book. In some cases, as I’m usually reading multiple books at a time, I sometimes forget what the hell is going on in the middle of the thing. Kind of like this piece.

There’s a disorientation I’ve been encountering quite a bit – and like having stacks of unread books collect around oneself, I know I’m not alone in this sensation either.

There’s a theory that something happened with the Large Hadron Collider that knocked us into a parallel universe. It’s a conspiracy theory, but a theory nonetheless. It’s one explanation as to why things have felt so strange for so many of us.

But is that “strange” just a result of hanging around here long enough to start seeing and feeling and truly living in what this world truly is? This peculiar time in human history where the whole of us objectively have no way of knowing whether or not we’re at the end, the middle or the beginning of something new altogether. All of this access to information from everywhere all at once might be part of the reason that time feels so jumbled.

Personally, I’m looking back at my life and feeling the same way – am I at the end, the middle or the beginning of something new altogether?

I guess am terrified that what I thought were stepping stones were in truth pinnacles. But even that is a matter of perspective – and is ultimately determined not so much by how much time one has left, but what they choose to do with it. The only alternative is giving up living and dying little by little, piece by piece. And dying to me don’t sound like all that much fun.*

*thanks to Mr. Springsteen and Mr. Mellencamp.