No Retreat, No Surrender

I walk into River's daycare this morning and ask, "Is that Springsteen playing?" "No, are you a fan?" Reeling back twenty years, "Well, I used to be, yes."

I'm seventeen and driving to Alpine Meadows, an outdoor ampitheatre in East Troy, Wisconsin to see Bruce in concert. I stand with throngs of screaming fans waiting to get in to the show. The crowd parts and he walks right next to me. Jeans like I have never seen on a man before, cut off faded T-shirt hangs loosely over a maverick neckline. He raises am arm high above his head, "Hey, everybody, thanks for coming out. We're gonna have us a wild night under the stars."

Just like that, heat rises from my body, and I am in the erotic, communal celebration. It's all I can do just to scream out under the full moon with everything I have, raise a light to this bard who weaves story straight into the heart.

I don't go home that night. The parking lot is alive with gypsies, and I find a place that I hardly leave for the next decade: the road, the car, soul ablaze with longing and the dangerous, flaming questions.

Five o'clock the next night, I wait again to ride that train. My body sweaty and open and ready. I take that pill of philosophy and passion and music and rebellion and integrity and stubborness. The moon is brilliant and Bruce saves my life over the next few hours. He sings The River and I am transformed.

The following night at home, alone in the kitchen, stoned, I stir cake mix. I don't know where I am, so radically open that I stay up all night again, and paint with frosting. I draw three faces: Jesus, Thoreau, Springsteen. All night I form three images that by sun up become one extended face. Spent, I sit on the kitchen floor and cry. One message: Love. Truth. Beauty.

I am the editorial editor of the high school newspaper. I bring my cake to class and ask the only teacher who gives me a real shot, the one who makes me read Walden, if I can please write my thoughts about why I think Jesus, Thoreau, and Springsteen are the incarnation of the same soul. Bless her heart forever, she lets me. Front page.

Until I left my parent's house, those songs and those writings protected my sleep. I had a recurring dream that Bruce lived in the bushes outside my front door. At night I would forget my struggle and steal away, part the branches and join him for incredible hours of conversation and tenderness. He told me that I would be loved and showed me how.

With Bruce in my car's tape deck, the tattered Walden on the dash, I was safe to go. Safe to follow a road without a MacNally map. The map was in the heart of the world, being transcribed into my heart with each mile.

He sings now, this morning, to my fortieth year. But I see a young man singing to a young woman, "Now we can sleep in the twillight by the river bed, with the wide open country in our hearts and these romantic dreams in our heads. Cuz we made a promise, we swore we'd always remember - no retreat, baby, no surrender.