I'm No Hero; That's Understood | All the Redemption I Can Offer is Beneath This Dirty Hood

Charles de Foucald - Monastic & Martyr (1916)

This week I read an interview in Esquire with Bruce Springsteen, in which the iconic rocker describes his mental health journey as well as his lifelong struggle to process his complex relationship with his father. A remote, hard-edged drinker, the elder Springsteen was enraged by what he saw as the weaker facets of his son's character.  It wasn't until he was near death that he tacitly, sparingly acknowledged Bruce's better points, saying only "You've been good to us."

“All I do know is as we age, the weight of our unsorted baggage becomes heavier . . . much heavier. With each passing year, the price of our refusal to do that sorting rises higher and higher. . . . Long ago, the defenses I built to withstand the stress of my childhood, to save what I had of myself, outlived their usefulness, and I’ve become an abuser of their once lifesaving powers. I relied on them wrongly to isolate myself, seal my alienation, cut me off from life, control others, and contain my emotions to a damaging degree. Now the bill collector is knocking, and his payment’ll be in tears.”

That constant, unfulfilled quest for validation took its toll, and the rocker described two breakdowns, the more recent just ten years ago, and credited decades of therapy and the unwavering support of wife Patty Scafila with his survival.

I could say more about that, but the interview tells it far better than I could, and you could find more detail in his autobiography.  Later this month, his Broadway stage show, an abridged version of the book interspersed with a dozen or so of his songs, will air on Netflix.  

Having learned these things about him, a man whose music has contributed so much of the soundtrack of my own life, brought back many of the same feelings I wrote about earlier this year. 

As an ardent music fan, I've realized I have a tendency to fill in the blanks in what I know about artists' lives; their characters get shaped in my mind by their lyrics, their stage banter, and whatever they choose to share with the media.  When they do or say something that departs from who I've decided they are, it's jarring.  The rash of premature deaths in the past year notwithstanding, this happens in smaller ways more often by the occasional revelation, misplaced statement, or decision.

Something like this happened this week.  I learned something about another artist whose music I love, which suggests that we'd be in a pretty fundamental conflict on certain social issues if we actually knew each other, which we clearly don't.

And I don't know what to do about it. Unlike some artists, this person's convictions are not widely known, and thus I have little to go on other than scant facts and assumptions you can draw by association. I don't know enough about the situation to decide if it changes how I feel about this individual as a person. If it did, it would change my relationship to the music, which felt yesterday like a house that had been robbed. That would have a follow-on effect on how and with whom I spend my time, especially over the past year.

Part of me wants to go hardcore, only because of the time I spent fighting on this particular issue and in this particular space.  On the flip, I'm reminding myself that no promises were made or broken here.  We are not friends; I do not have the right to expect my values to be shared or my allegiance to be reciprocated.  The music is out there, take it or leave it; anthems by flawed heroes for flawed fans, maybe that much sweeter because of the wrinkles and scars we can compare to our own.

Root, Root Root for the Home Team

Albrecht Dürer (1528), Matthias Grünewald (1528), and Lucas Cranach the Elder (1553) - Religious Artists

Tonight's adventure was a minor-league baseball game between the Newark Bears and the Southern Maryland Blue Crabs, both members of the independent Atlantic Baseball League, at Bears & Eagles Riverfront Stadium in Newark. I had helped a friend try to promote a group outing to the game, but as it panned out it was only four of us. In the meantime, I had one eye on the Stone Pony because the Gaslight Anthem was performing and -- given a certain amount of mutual admiration that's been going back and forth between lead singer Brian Fallon and Bruce Springsteen -- there had been some chatter that the Boss might make an appearance.

Most folks I know do not go to Newark on purpose. It has a bad reputation which is for the most part deserved. However quite a bit has changed in the past few years in the downtown area, which will hopefully continue to boost the circumstances for the people who live in the city.

The first major undertaking was the construction of a massive opera house, the New Jersey Performing Arts Center. A few years later, it was joined by an 18,000-seat arena for the New Jersey Devils NHL franchise. Both facilities bear the logo of Prudential Financial, the largest corporation with operations in the city. Because this is Jersey, of course it couldn't happen without a few deaths, a few accusations of corruption, and a whole lot of upheaval. But the arena is done, the Devils (and -- for now the New Jersey Nets NBA team) and the Seton Hall men's basketball team have taken up residence there, with concerts and other events filling out the schedule.

Here and there, other signs of life are popping up. The McCarter Highway (NJ Route 21) which connects the city to the airport to the south and Route 3 and Passaic to the north, has been repaved with new lights and streetscaping, and former abandoned lots are now bustling new bodegas and furniture stores. Plans for a new hotel, the first to be built in the downtown area in nearly 40 years, were announced in February. And the city's population slide by almost a third since the riots of the 'sixties, has finally reversed.

Now, where were we again? Oh yes, baseball game. The Bears (named after a Yankees farm team who played in the Ironbound section of town from the 'twenties to the late 'forties) are not associated with any major league team, but sport pinstripes perhaps as a nod to that connection. In addition, we initially thought there were two teams sharing the stadium (hence the "Bears and Eagles" but in fact too is a reminder of the past: The Eagles were a team of the National Negro League who shared Ruppert Stadium with the old Bears. The current organization has a nice wall of fame above the grandstand with prominent contributors to both of these teams.

I have to agree with my dad that people who have not given minor league baseball a try are really missing out. For starters, it's an incredible bargain. Arriving at the stadium, we found a parking deck right next door for $5. Tickets to the game are only $10 each, and, sadly, we were able to sit right behind home plate because there were not many people there on this beautiful weeknight. Food and beverage prices were sane, unlike what one pays at major-league venues. The area surrounding the stadium is a business district, quiet at this hour. Outside the gates are the Broad Street train station and the Rutgers business school. From the stands, one can see the Manhattan skyline on a clear day, and to the north, the trains of the Morris & Essex line chug past on elevated tracks. A Hampton Inn hotel and some attractive new townhomes across the Passaic River in Harrison peek over the outfield wall (and -- by the by -- Harrison has it's own professional sports venue now, a 20,000 seat soccer stadium which is home of the New York (ahem) Red Bulls). From Section 105, this certainly didn't feel like a blighted city one should be afraid to visit.

Then there is the simple fact that you are -- because of the scale of the place -- much more connected to the game. Unless one happens to be privileged enough to score seats right down front, the experience at Yankee or Shea stadium is fun but I feel more removed from the action than when watching the game on TV. Here, we could hear the banter between the officials, watch the on-deck batter warm up, and -- in our case -- witness a player interact with regulars who he knows by name. The players seem move between teams more often than in big-league ball; I checked out the history of outfielder Randy Gress, and I won't be having his name put on a jersey anytime soon: he's played for ten teams in three years!

All the regular shenanigans like the seventh-inning stretch, games on the field for the kids, and "YMCA" are faithfully executed to keep the energy up. We were treated to a good game against well-matched teams where the lead passed between them several times, and ended when the Bears' pitcher Manny Mejia hit a two-out two-run homer in the bottom of the 10th. By this time I was listening to the live stream on the team website because a Certain Party's bedtime had come and gone. But he had also enjoyed himself and we all decided could definitely see making this a regular activity.

If you enjoy baseball you owe it to yourself to check out either the Bears or a team in your area. Sharing the Atlantic League with the Bears are the Somerset Patriots and the Camden Riversharks whom my sister and her family cheer on (read her thoughts here), and there's also the Trenton Thunder (affiliated with the Yankees), the New Jersey Jackals based at Montclair State University, among others. It's a great, cheap night out and they could use the support.