I choose the music on my iPod very carefully to insure my mind is occupied and my body inspired to keep the beat as I warm up on the elliptical machine. What I play depends on my mood, the weather and the time of year. This morning I was feeling nostalgic, and chose Bruce Springsteen’s Born To Run to keep me moving.
Springsteen’s early albums hold a very special place in my heart because he was just hitting it big while I was coming of age at Rutgers College in the heart of New Jersey. His music could be heard everywhere on campus and his sightings at local haunts like “Greasy Tony’s” were legendary. My roommate Wendy actually met him there the year before Born to Run came out. She has long contended that her name was the inspiration for the famed “Wendy” of the song. Years later she actually received written confirmation of that possibility from “The Boss” himself.
I remember the first time I heard Born to Run. It was August, 1975 and I had just moved into Brett Hall to begin my junior year. Because I worked in the dining hall, I was able to move in with ahead of the crowd, affording me an early escape from the long, lonely summer break I spent in suburban south Jersey with no car, few friends and the two jobs I worked to pay my tuition.
That night before the freshman arrived, campus was quiet. I don’t remember why but Dave was able to move in early as well. It was that first evening back he came over with his new Springsteen album and with all the reverence and ceremony befitting its premier, we sat on the floor in the dark in my dorm room and listened to the entire album; start to finish, without a break. When it was over, I remember sitting quietly for a while, with tears streaming down my face, feeling so connected to the music and stories of coming of age in New Jersey. And, while my own story lacked the drama of the characters Springsteen so colorfully brought to life, I can’t recall any other time in my life when any music has so completely become as interwoven into the fabric of my being as if it had been written just for me with the exception of good liturgical music. Until this moment, I never really thought about it in that way. I suppose you could say, the music touched my soul.
So many years have passed since then. The young woman who sat on the cusp of adulthood, now sits on the cusp of her senior years and has only been back to New Jersey for a handful of weekends over the past forty years. But somewhere, deep in my soul, the shadow of the Jersey girl remains ready to “take a walk out on the wire…”