Bruce on Broadway
When my hubby told me he registered for the lottery to see Springsteen on Broadway, he explained that we’d be notified via text if we were picked. I thought oh, it’s like Powerball...if your numbers come up you get to go. For free! Leave it to Bruce to arrange this for his fans. :)
I don’t know what I was thinking but that’s what I thought. Free! I’m a smart girl but some things just seem to wiz right by me.
Anyway, we got that text. It wasn't until I saw the actual tickets that I realized it was anything but free. So be it. The older I get, the less sh*t I give. Spend it before I die.
We booked a flight.
I emailed Bruce’s publicist to try and pre-arrange a back stage meet after the show. There’s so much I want to tell him. And hey, I’m not only a fan. I was a fellow Grammy Nominee in the same category as Bruce.
She answered quickly and congratulated me for the Nom. but said she was unable to make a meet happen. Rats. What was I thinking? Everyone and their mother wants to kiss his ring. Oh well. We’d go an enjoy the show. That show was a few days ago and I'm still digesting.
Unlike a movie that you start critiquing as soon as you leave the theatre, there were no words as Adam and I walked back to the subway. To say I “loved it” or it was “great” is a gross misunderstatement. To give you details would spoil things should your number come up…so, I’ll share with you some peripheral goings-on-in-my-head over the course of the performance.
First of all, before the curtain even went up, I overheard a Boss-Nerd sitting next to me sharing all-things-Bruce trivia with his friend. My ego, smarting from the meet and greet rejection,couldn’t help but share with him that thing in common between Bruce and I AND the TV screen screenshot captured on an iPhone the day the GRAMMYs were announced.
He was impressed. My ego ever so slightly rebounding from that bit of showing off. He then told me he was a songwriter and asked if he could send me a song. Oy.
Other things:
Bruce is really funny.
Bruce plays the piano!
Bruce is getting old.
So is everyone else.
I wish Carly Simon would do one of these.
I wonder if I could do a one woman show too…Confessions of a Serial Songwriter. Except mine wouldn’t be on Broadway and I wouldn’t be Bruce Springsteen. Hopefully some people would come.
As I watched Bruce look at Patty adoringly (Ooops! Now you know she made an appearance), I thought of a lyric for a song that could be written from a girls’ perspective...a girl who wants her guy to look at her the same way Bruce looks at Patty. And it would go like this….
“I wanna be your Patty Scialfa / But will ya be there the morning afta?” —Sort of like a modern day “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow.”
When he sang “Dancing in the Dark” (ok last spoiler), I thought how funny it would be if a Courtney Cox puppet popped her head out from behind the curtain and danced her way across the stage.
Ok. All kidding aside....Over the years Bruce has touched me, rocked me, made me weep. If I had gotten back stage, what could I have said that he hasn’t heard before. “I love your work?” “Well done?” “I’m a huge fan?” “Boy, you’re such a good songwriter?” Give me a break. Plus, the man is 68. He needs to rest. If I really cared about him I’d let him go home to bed.
Maybe the Universe needed me to leave that theatre with acceptance, and the awareness that I had just had the privilege of witnessing one of the great poets of our generation intimately tell his story. Isn't that enough?
Sometimes you don’t get to go back stage. Sometimes you don't get to tell your idols what they mean to you. Sometimes you have to just walk out into the snowy night, head for the subway and whisper to yourself, “Thank You, Bruce.”
After all, if a tree falls in the forest, it falls. Even if Bruce doesn’t hear it.
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