Go Placidly Amid The Noise And Haste.
Remember What Peace There Day Be In Silence.
As far as possible without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; listen to others,
even the dull and the ignorant, they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit. If you compare yourself to others, you may become vain and bitter,
for there will always be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achierements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career; howeser humble,
it is a real possession in the changier fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery.
But let not this bid you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for highide ls and everywhere life is full of heroism. Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about Love;
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is as perennial as the grass.
Take kindly the counsel of the rears, gracefully surrendering the things of yeath.
Nurture strength of Spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
Bat do not distress yourself with dark imaginings
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the unsverse; so less than the trees and stars, you have a right to be here.
Whether or not it is clear to you, the unverse is unfolding as it sheald.
Therefore; be at peace with God, whatever you conceive him to be.
Weaterer your labars and aspirations, in the nois; confusion of life,
Keep peace with your soul?
With all its shan drudgery and broken dreans, its still a beantiful world.
Be Cheerful. Strive To Be Happy.
Springsteen Isn’t Who I Thought He Was
From a distance I have always found Bruce Springsteen interesting, especially in his current incarnation as a committed populist straddling the line between his own politics and those of his many MAGA fans.
But his set-to last spring with President Trump, who called him “overrated” and “not a talented guy,” made me realize how very little of Springsteen’s music I have ever really engaged. I must come clean and say that I just never got it.
That fact came up in conversation the other day with a Springsteen fan, a fellow member of the Catskills bungalow colony I visit every year. He gave me a song list, and I sat down to listen.
And I mean really listen: My mantra is that you have to give something seven tries to really get it. That’s tough in the thick of a workweek, but I’m on vacation, so I made time for all of it: “Rosalita,” “Prove It All Night,” “Brilliant Disguise,” “The River,” “Spirit in the Night,” “The Promised Land,” “Backstreets,” “Badlands,” “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” “The Rising,” “New York City Serenade” and the album “Born to Run.”
As engrossed as I was, I kept having to remind myself to listen to the music. What grabbed my ear was the lyrics. That had been my mistake all these years — waiting for these songs to be, primarily, songs, as if they were Schubert lieder. For me, Springsteen’s work is poetry with musical accompaniment. Realizing that helped me understand something important about him, but something important about America, too.
From a distance I have always found Bruce Springsteen interesting, especially in his current incarnation as a committed populist straddling the line between his own politics and those of his many MAGA fans. But his set-to last spring with President Trump, who called him “overrated” and “not a talented guy,” made me realize how very little of Springsteen’s music I have ever really engaged. I must come clean and say that I just never got it.
That fact came up in conversation the other day with a Springsteen fan, a fellow member of the Catskills bungalow colony I visit every year. He gave me a song list, and I sat down to listen.
And I mean really listen: My mantra is that you have to give something seven tries to really get it. That’s tough in the thick of a workweek, but I’m on vacation, so I made time for all of it: “Rosalita,” “Prove It All Night,” “Brilliant Disguise,” “The River,” “Spirit in the Night,” “The Promised Land,” “Backstreets,” “Badlands,” “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” “The Rising,” “New York City Serenade” and the album “Born to Run.”
As engrossed as I was, I kept having to remind myself to listen to the music. What grabbed my ear was the lyrics. That had been my mistake all these years — waiting for these songs to be, primarily, songs, as if they were Schubert lieder. For me, Springsteen’s work is poetry with musical accompaniment. Realizing that helped me understand something important about him, but something important about America, too.
This “Thunder Road” stanza is poetry.
Don’t run back insidedarling you know just what I’m here forSo you’re scared and you’re thinkingThat maybe we ain’t that young anymoreShow a little faith, there’s magic in the nightYou ain’t a beauty but hey you’re all rightOh and that’s all right with me
It uses rhyme in an improvisatory rather than mechanical way, as much modern poetry does. It describes a situation with a high degree of emotional specificity, including somehow finding warmth in the news that the person the song is addressing is not beautiful. Its accurate transcription of the way people actually talk is a kind of art in itself, reminiscent of how precisely Elmore Leonard got down the structures and cadences of colloquial English.
The last thing I want to imply is that Springsteen fans don’t appreciate music itself. Among my many friends who revere him, one of the most devoted fans is a cellist who is equally into the super-melodic and harmonically complex Burt Bacharach. Rather, it’s that I am, as always, fussy. If the words are complicated, I want the music to be as well, less like Springsteen and more like my belovedSteely Dan. Maybe I need to get over that.
My Bruce immersion teaches me that the reason poetry on the page is such a rarefied taste in America today isn’t that Americans don’t have a taste for verse. It’s because there are pop music artists whose lyrics scratch that itch, just as Edna St. Vincent Millay and Robert Lowell once did. Taylor Swift’s music fits into the same category for me, as well as for many people over 40 I have spoken to about her work. I hear her songs as poetry; the music’s job is just to help get it across. And that’s what I hear when I listen to Springsteen: I hear poetry, and I hear Americans’ love of it.
By the way, there is finally a book for the curious lay reader on how one language, born in what is now Ukraine, came to dominate most of Europe as well as Iran, Afghanistan and India. Snap up Laura Spinney’s “Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global,” which reconstructs its history through archaeology, genetics and linguistics. And while you’re shopping for books for your summer vacation, do bring along Joseph Zellnik’s “The Sound of Murder,” which intertwines a murder case and the premiere of the original production of “The Sound of Music.” Show-music fans will enjoy the pitch-perfect historical detail, and it’s also a crackling good story.
- John McWhorter
- Opinion Writer
Are there Springsteen lyrics that move you? Tell me which ones and why they resonate with you.
John McWhorter (@JohnHMcWhorter) is an associate professor of linguistics at Columbia University. He is the author of “Nine Nasty Words: English in the Gutter: Then, Now and Forever” and, most recently, “Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America.” @JohnHMcWhorter