Born to Run - Bruce Springsteen

This Christmas, I got Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen as a present.  I'm never sure what came first, the chicken or the egg, writers and poets or my own interest in identity?  But Bruce Springsteen was one of those people who got me thinking as a teenager.  His Born in the USA album was something I had pretty much on repeat during my first year in high school.  The album wasn't new, but the thoughts; about war and Vietnam,  racial conflict, unemployment, what it means to live in place, and identities we are born into - were new to me.

Born to Run does focus on identity - or rather, it looks at what motivated the original thoughts, and the process of working on the various recordings.  It also focuses a great deal on relationships, what it means to be a person in a social, political, work related or family context, and the troubles we sometimes have along the way.  Bruce Springsteen has always written about relationships, but Born to Run emerged out of a long process of therapy and self-exploration.  The result is a coherent story about where he came from, the journey travelled, and those he met on the road.

We are introduced to the complex, drunk, neglectful and sometimes terrifying father, his very capable mother with her Italian work ethic, sister Virginia, who married young, and whose early life inspired song The River, baby sister, Pam, and all those friends he met along the way.  Bruce Springsteen also introduces us to his many different identities.  We get to know the sensitive child, the determined teenager, the traveller, the reflexive and politically aware young adult, the lost wanderer who searches for home, and the family man.

There's the story of broken down cars, lost dogs, and a whole lot of hitchhiking.  In some ways, the book reminded me of On the Road and I imagine Bruce Springsteen intended this, comparing himself to Sal Paradise by drawing up images of Dean Moriarty on his first trip west.   Sal's wanderings came between marriages, and he searched for the ghosts of lost fathers.  Bruce Springsteen's journey included marriage, and involved an exploration of fatherhood, Catholicism and even the great navy blue sky, seen from a stadium floor before playing to a once only imagined audience.

But Bruce Springsteen, while having the energy Sal only writes about, focuses more on his internal life.  He shares his depression, his anxiety, his search for meaning, his determination and his desire to make a difference.  Music is a passion, and he brings the adrenalised experience of playing to an audience to life, sharing the highs, the fears and the doubts of standing on a stage in front of crowds of people.  He shares the importance of getting the girls to dance, or having that one person in the audience who sings along, so that the fluid motion which occurs between a performer and his audience starts to build.  Bruce Springsteen isn't a passive observer of everyday life.  He constantly engages with the world around him.  And he wants to make a difference.

Throughout the misunderstandings his work produces, his determination to carry on, and the plotting of a path into the future, Born to Run shares what it means to have a passion, to be vulnerable (or not) and to battle your own demons in a divided world.  He doesn't romanticise everyday life in the way Sal Paradise does.  Instead, he reflects.  And as a teenager, he encouraged me to do the same.

CUT OFF: The artist IMPREINT and perceptions of homelessness

The cardboard sign sitting outside of a red telephone box looked curiously lonely.  Where was it's owner?  I searched for him for a few moments, looking for his outline inside the box.  Was he making a call?  Did he choose to go to sleep?  Where was the man who had prepared himself to go out for dinner at an expensive restaurant?  Why did I assume he was a man?  

IMPREINT, the artist behind the signs, in a project called Cut Off, succeeds in making normality strange when he presents us with the image of a homeless person's sign.  This sign refuses us the right to the gaze.  Sometimes we gawp at homeless people, wondering what has happened.  Sometimes we choose to look away.  But the choice is always ours.  I thought about how often I have looked at homeless people, questions in my eyes, but no real words of acknowledgement.  And I thought about how furious or enraged I would be, if the situation was reversed.  

The homeless live amongst us, often cast into shame filled spaces where begging for change comes with an apology.  IMPREINT draws attention to the social norms which cast homeless people into the margins, into shelters, soup kitchens or street corners, but never expensive restaurants.  In a world where we think of work as making a profit, people who are not able to generate income are very often seen as failures, drunks or addicts, deserving only the very least.  We draw on the myth that the poor are lazy in order to lessen our own guilt.  

Are poor people lazy?  Men who work in the hot sun for very little money work hard.  Sometimes, they are unable to make ends meet.  Sometimes work is irregular.  What do we call work anyway?  What do we call failure?  Why should people who have very little be cast into marginalized spaces?  Why should we able to gawp rudely, prejudices written onto our expressions?  

Who is this homeless man?  He is unseen.  Any impression I had of him was created by my own stereotypes and pre - judgements.  IMPREINT brought up the face or the image I gave to 'the homeless' and forced me to confront my own preconceptions.  I questioned what I believed, and why I thought this.  I questioned my right to stare.  All that seemed normal to me, or common sense, came into question.  I questioned my own hypocrisy in deciding what poor people need.  

Finally, I thought about the request for food, and not money.  IMPREINT shakes up our perspective on what a homeless person deserves, but the sign still asks for food.  Money helps when it comes to transport, shelter, health, and the opportunity to wash or shave in order to be treated as fully human.  A homeless person would be far less likely to acquire a good meal if he was unable to wash, after all.  It would be harder still for him to find work.

By throwing all of our assumptions up in the air, and asking us to reflect on our own reactions, IMPREINT asks us to reflect on our prejudices, and to question whether they are really harmless?  Is it okay for me to define my humanity as so different to that of another person's?  Is it okay to look at a set of circumstances (which may happen to anybody, but are more likely to happen to people without social support) and declare somebody else as  'other' or less worthy of a meal?  Is our everyday way of seeing the homeless the only way of seeing?  

IMPREINT showed me that my narrow definitions or ways of seeing were not the only ways.  Perhaps next time I gaze at a homeless person, I will do so differently.  Perhaps, if we learn to see ourselves as interconnected, capable of seeing the world as we wish it to be, and of making an effort to bring this world to life, our gaze will be less harmful.  Perhaps, as Impreint's beggar shows us, the only way of creating a new reality is to imagine a less discriminatory world, and work hard to bring that world into reality.