The Boss...

I don't think I'd have made it this far without Bruce Springsteen.


His words have saved me and uplifted me and bought me back to life.


Some people don't understand what an overly girly trans lady can see in a macho, posturing, air-punching male singer.


Well I don't see him as that - I see him as a poet more in the Bob Dylan mold. He's seen as a macho twat by some - I don't think they've really listened to what he has to say.


His world view has always been, pretty much, that life is tough.  It's a struggle to get out there and work and live every day.  But there's something noble in  that - and there is hope.  Hope for a better life and hope for redemption.


That's pretty much my world view too.


'I believe in the love that you gave me - I believe in the faith that can save me - I believe in the hope and I pray that some day it may save me'


Not complicated words - maybe not clever - but from the heart.


And so tender, sometimes.


'Now I just act like I don't remember and Mary acts like she don't care'


That line always gets me because I think that's what a lot of people do in life.


'Some day girl I don't know when, we're gonna get to that place where we really wanna go and we'll walk in the sun, but till then tramps like us, baby we were born to run'


I suppose it's corny but I don't care - love is corny isn't it?  It's sentimental.


'Put your make up on, fix your hair up pretty, and meet me tonight in Atlantic City'.


I will Bruce.  And I would love to wrap my legs round your velvet rims and strap my hands cross your engines.  


But then there's also the anger and the passion - like in the massively misunderstood anthem of defiance :  'Born in the USA'.


It's a song of anger and protest about Vietnam and the American Dream gone wrong.


'Born down in a dead man's town, first kick I had was when I hit the ground, you end up like a dog that's been beat too much, till you spend your whole life trying to cover it up...'


His world view runs right through that song - I've been beat down, but I'm defiant - but with a shot of darkness.


So many of his lines get me right there - maybe you can't see why.  Maybe you need the music.  Maybe it just all seems kitschy.


But a line like :  'At night I hear the blood in my veins, just as black and whispering as the rain'.


It's redolent, it's beautiful, it's crystal.


He's The Boss, sure.  But I call him The Poet.


'I had skin like leather and the diamond-hard look of a cobra
I was born blue and weathered but I burst just like a supernova'


'The ghosts in your eyes of all the boys that went away, they haunt this dusty beach road in the skeleton frames of burned out chevrolets'


'In the summer all the lights would shine, there'd be music playin' people laughin' all the time, me and my sister we'd hide out in the tall corn fields,
Sit and listen to the mansion on the hill'


I could go on and on...