Born to Interface Part 1 [Happy I-Day and ongoing review of Bruce Springsteen's book Born to Run]

Born to Interface Part 1

In true Brechtian form, one shall begin with a transparent description of how and why one read Springsteen’s book. Bring backstage to the front, as it were, while weaving ways forward for the nation and the party. Oh, and the planet.

I choose to write and upload Part 1 of this essay onto my political blog on the 15^th of August, 2017, the seventieth anniversary of India’s Independence. Independence Day. When Nation means India, and Party means the Indian National Congress Party, of which one is a member, a worker, dream-weaver, course-corrector and interpreter-of-things-in-retrospect. It’s a democratic party.

So one emerged from a many-year hiatus from long-book-reading (while reading and analysing news almost twenty-four-seven), to dive into Bruce Springsteen’s autobiography, Born to Run, that was released last year.

Back in the 1980s, 1988, to be precise, was the Amnesty International Human Rights Now concert tour that included Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band (the main draw at that time), and they performed at the Jawahar Lal Nehru stadium of New Delhi on the 30^th of September of that year.

Springsteen had caught the attention of school kids of my generation with his 1985 Grammy Award win and performance, and the Born in the USA album.

In the days when the country was barely forty years into independence, and found the need for a stringent version of democratic socialism, there used to be only one, and later two, government-run television channels. Doordarshan 1 and DD 2 ran with fixed timings, and the government relayed cultural events and programmes in keeping with whatever the country’s current foreign policy thrust required.

For one spell of Sundays, there were interviews and music of the Pakistani singer, Nazia Hasan and her brother; Russian ballets were a staple; the Japanese programme, Giant Robot for kids, as well as the American programme, Star Trek, and Carl Sagan’s futuristic shows were all watched, discussed, and absorbed. There were also British programmes like Fawlty Towers, Jane Eyre movies, and The Jewel in the Crown. And the Old Fox detective serial about the German Herr.

These are only snippets that I mention here, of the entire mix that was broadcast, in the true tradition of the Non-aligned Movement (NAM), that India valued, especially against the back-drop of the waning days of the cold war.

Then came Hot Tracks. From what I recall, just four songs every Friday, divided by an ad-break. The entire school (or so we thought), waited to tune in, and hold forth the next day, starting at the bus-stop, and thereafter (in this case, possibly into the hereafter, given that one is still writing on the topic!).

And there was Bruce Springsteen. On stage on the screen, singing Dancing in the Dark, and Born in the USA. A leftist aunt passing by said look at you, you’re a fan! And a gawking fan was described, and thus born.

One identified with the fact that The Boss (that’s the moniker), wrote lyrics for and about the working class and the masses. As a teenager, one saw one’s own role as a poet-politician in the making, much influenced by the fact that one’s family was a political one, and that we were in New Delhi because my dad represented our hometown, a faraway constituency, at India’s temple of democracy.

Some of my closest friends were kids of politicians, and politicians of all hues walked through our doors, giving one the opportunity to listen to debates and discussions that were to, in retrospect, have global impacts.

The then deputy-PM of the USSR and his delegation, for example, graced the government bungalow in New Delhi that we lived in those days, 15 AB Pandara Road, with their presence one evening for dinner. Socialistic Indian political leaders who went on to become ministers and leaders of parties, and of the country used to air their views on world politics and the state of what was described those days as the Third World.

Frankly, much of what they said sounded like another Bruce Springsteen song. This, along with the influence of Christian educational institutions, served to make one ponder, perhaps more than many of one’s contemporaries, over the state of the world, famines in Ethiopia, the Constitution of India, the state of the Environment, and the work of the United Nations.

As a teenager, one had UNEP Save our Seas stickers alongside every Springsteen poster that was available in Khan Market for room décor those days. One was in the school band, struggling to play the guitar, with our school, Mater Dei Convent, shining on at the inter-school Bang Club competitions, playing numbers like Come Young Citizens of the World, We Are One at the Siri Fort auditorium where Obama, in the next century, made his New Delhi address.

So when the much-awaited Springsteen Human Rights concert came our way in ‘88, thanks to Amnesty, off went the gang, all excited and decked up, to listen to, and watch The Boss!

More on the concert later, now back to the book at hand.

For those who believe in upholding the values of freedom, justice, equality (and diversity), it becomes evident (and that debate is held often and by many), that the best way forward is, indeed, the Rule of Law.

But for the rule of law to be truly actualized, you also need Truth (or Satya), a value that Mahatma Gandhi stood for. Honesty. Satya and Ahimsa. Truth and non-violence. And so we are a democracy that’s proud of our Defence Forces. They’re there to keep the peace. We owe our forces and our martyrs a country that practices good governance.

India has always played a pivotal role in world politics, and when we speak for the rule of law, we do not do so as lackeys of any greater power, but as the ever-evolving spirit of the roots of grassroots democracy that took a giant leap towards the parliamentary system when it drove the British away, and gave itself a Constitution and the present parliamentary system. (Ironically, some elements of colonial media are, as I write, referring to these dates in history as the days of India and Pakistan’s partition, rather than drawing attention to the freedom movement and the era of new democracy worldwide). And the historic musical event of a generation (that Springsteen refers to in his book) also requires a mention. The one as Max Yasgur’s farm. Better known as Woodstock. 15^th August.

We learn from Born to Run (Springsteen’s autobiography titled after a successful album by the same name, and an article on public transport that I wrote for a leading news daily in India in the 1990s), that before embarking on the Amnesty tour, the performers had to go back to school, in a manner of speaking, and study the human rights situations in all the countries of South America, Africa, Asia and Europe that they were to perform in.

Springsteen writes that Roy Bittan was the only one in the band with a college education, which is why he’s known as The Professor. Bruce himself had done a year at a community college, and was largely self-taught thereafter. For this, (or possibly despite this, and minus the self-consciousness of the demands of snobbery), Springsteen’s lyrics that speak of the blue-collar working class ring true. They stem from a world of real experience.

In India, for decades, the best education has been available to people only via the English language. This colonial legacy has served to empower those who speak English. In the 1980s, it was automatically assumed that those who spoke English were from the higher echelons of society (whatever that might be).

Today, The Republic has progressed to valuing the roots of it’s linguistic culture, though there’s a lot that remains to be done in the field of the rights of linguistic minorities. Especially tribal communities. The inter-relatedness between a language, and a way of life…a culture: human interactions, as well as human interactions with the rest of creation, and how different languages play different roles in shaping these…the basic thread of connection is probably understood through the prism of science. Sound, light, matter, and the sounds and syllables uttered by humans. Even in these sounds, languages vary. From individual to individual, continent to continent.

One syllable that prevails is breath, to use the language of science. Or, as understood through yoga, the syllable Aum.

When Bruce met a Hopi boy at the fringe of a Navajo reservation, and in answer to the question “how much” (to play the role of a tourist guide), the Hopi boy answered, in translation from the languages probably closer to the surface in his awareness, than communities whose grooves are in a different state of evolution: “whatever it’s worth to you”. A bit like the code of honour Springsteen talks about, to describe the method that one of his bands employed, to share the money that they earned.

There is, indeed, much to be said for incorporating the best practices from everywhere, while making decisions, especially those that impact entire civilizations. Case in point: The Constitution of India. And also how each country places itself and its people in the emerging scenarios as far as the world economy goes. The country of Bhutan, for instance, has a Happiness Index, which is an official concept in the country’s world of finance.

While one has been aware of much of the back-ground of Springsteen’s work and influences, it still came as a surprise to me, in the year 2017, to learn, from Born to Run, that Bruce:

a)       lived in a house, during his childhood, where the living area was heated by a kerosene stove;

b)      lived in a house where cooking was done on wood coals;

c)       had no hot water at home in New Jersey;

d)      was once so broke, as a struggling musician, that he couldn’t pay rent, and slept on the beach;

e)      lived in a neighbourhood where people only left their houses in suits if they were going to church;

f)        sometimes had girlfriends who used to tip him money for food;

g)       had never met anyone who’d been on an airplane…this was in the mid-70s;

h)      used to sometimes be slipped free broken ice cream cones by the Jersey Freeze ice cream guy

It appears that Springsteen takes pride in asserting this aspect of his identity in his overall language and writing, not just through his lyrics, but in his autobiography as well.

What some might consider to be the unduly macho tone of the rockstar’s remembered “way of the road” (people lending people their girlfriends, all said in utmost good humour, but decidedly darkly medieval), is tinged with what might be cringed at by some as the working class rebel’s benign linguistic crassness (talking to the -albeit intimate- public reading this book, about “the little round tit popping out from the T-shirt” of someone called Margaret). Similarly, the perceived political incorrectness of the context of the use of the word spastic…though it is possible that the fans reading the book would intuit that this is a sardonic allusion to how some sections of society used to converse at given points of time.

Born to Run traces Springsteen’s music, and that of the surrounding trends and events of contemporary music in a first-hand sort of way. The book, from this point of view, would be instructive, not only for practitioners of governance, administration, activism, and the promoters of the rule of law in general, as this article seeks to draw attention to, but primarily for students (and fans) of the journey of certain kinds of music through several decades. It is an experientially authoritative work on this count, and I’d put it on the syllabus, without going into further detail here.

The book is intelligently structured. Divided into three broad “phases”, there is a very slow chronologically sequential progression, but with eddies and whirls that flit back and forth in time. The three divisions have chapters, and sub-chapters. Most of these deal with: people in his life, or those who have influenced him (family; people from the music business whom he has interacted with, and, on occasion, formed friendships with; idols from the world of music); his bands, albums, songs, tours, and the stories and thoughts behind them; rites of passage in his life.

There is an interesting three-dream sequence presented entirely in italics. There’s also a capsule that  verges on a miniature genre-within-a-genre format of writing: his description of his seafaring trip with his father to Mexico. This could be described as an astutely crafted literary tool that has been fitted into the narrative with elan. The writer seems to be aware of having tossed in this ingredient, as he describes the incident itself as having fulfilled a part of his father’s seafaring fantasy.

Springsteen talks about his preoccupation with the interface between the personal and the political. To him, the political was centred around issues of identity in America. The other great influence in his life is his mother, and, of course, the omnipresent Catholic church.

In the book, there is a repeated use of not just church-inspired phraseology like “let the service begin”, but also an eternal dwelling on concepts of magic, miracles, mystery, mysticism.

From drawing attention to the wonders of science (refurbished radios), to guitars, to those of musical talent, it’s magic all the way. There even exists a Springsteen album entitled Magic. 

The father’s bar hangout is thought of as a mystical hangout of men; the mother is a miracle, the sounds of her getting ready for work are sounds of mystery; there’s talk of guitar wizardry; of words like voodoo to describe the music of one of his earlier his bands, Steel Mill; the mix of black and white influences in the music of the band when it had Boom as a drummer was magic; there was something shamanistic about Clarence’s role in the band; even running into an old school friend who used to be a cheerleader at school is described in mock-comic style as a miracle having occurred; the music of another early band, The Castiles, was “raw, rudimentary, local but effective magic”.

California introduces him to the concepts of the musician as a psychic facilitator, and to music being used as an instrument for consciousness-raising, but his catholic upbringing prevents him from comprehending these phenomena at the time.

He describes the world of the priests and nuns: “…a world where all you have is at risk, a world filled with the unknown bliss of resurrection, eternity and the unending fires of perdition, of exciting sexually tinged torture, immaculate conceptions and miracles. A world where men turn into gods and gods into devils….”

While referring to England as the musical mother country, the cities that had been home to their beat heroes are described as mystical destinations.

One is satisfied that one is not the only myth-maker on the loose!

[To be continued. This piece is Part 1 of an ongoing series]