I know this blog is supposed to be about people you encounter everyday, but I feel for this post specifically, it's important to recognize that the people that affect you can be the authors of your favorite books, or the singers of your favorite songs. This one is for Bruce Springsteen. (Cheesy, I know-I promise, it gets better.)
Bruce,
The first time I heard your music, I was a little kid. My dad was working on his car in the garage and he was screaming, "Born to Run" at the top of his lungs. He would later tell me that he saw you play at a bar in Kenmore Square in the seventies and has since been a fan. This story isn't about him though.
I met Bill Bryan the summer of 2007. He was a park ranger on Georges Island in Boston Harbor along with my then boyfriend, Jerry. I worked on the ferry boats, and being a surly man about 10 years my senior, he liked giving me extra sass because I was his friend's girlfriend. While I don't remember the exact moment Bill and I met, I do remember how we became friends.
That summer, I was invited to stay after hours one night. I loved that island. I still do. It reminds me of some of the best days of my life, to-date anyway. Bill had his IPod playing, when your song, "The Rising" came on. I heard the song several times since its release and I loved how exalting it was. I guess Bill did too because we both started singing it immediately when your voice kicked in. We stopped whatever we were doing to look at each other, mildly shocked at hearing the other's voice. With a mutual, "I FUCKING LOVE THIS SONG," we became friends. That's all it took.
In the years that followed, Jerry and I would break up but Bill and I would remain friends. Whenever one of us had a bad day, we would send the other a link on YouTube of you singing that song, to remind us to be strong like the firefighters you were singing about. I know very few people will go though anything close to what they did, but I guess what I'm trying to say is that if a human just like myself can climb up an indefinite amount of stairs, knowing they're going to die in hopes of saving someone else, than we can handle law school applications, or the illness of a parent, or burning the third consecutive batch of cookies.
Sometimes one of would hear the song on the radio and immediately call the other one just to say,
"I heard our song. Love you."
He died last year, suddenly, exploring one of the abandoned forts on the Boston Harbor Islands that he loved so much. He was 36.
You know after he died, I couldn't hear your song. It hurt too much. I couldn't listen to anything. The white noise of Boston was hard enough to get through. I would mumble at people under my breath simply because they were smiling. While he would have loved that, being the snarky bastard that he was, I know that's no way to be.
Three months after, I played your song on my own IPod. My goal was to get through the whole thing, even if I cried, just to prove to myself that I could. The weird thing was, I got through it no problem. I didn't even cry. In fact, I laughed. I laughed because I had so many memories tied to that song. Every time Bill and I were together you bet "The Rising" was played at least twice- once for sort of sober and the other for definitely drunk. We would dress up in Civil War costumes and slur the words, drinking Naragansett beer out of tin mugs. We would scream it at the top of our lungs on those harbor islands because we knew few people could hear us, and listen to those words, your words, echo back to us from the ocean. Sometimes, when we lived in different states, Bill would call me and put the phone on speaker just so we could both listen to that song together. We closed those calls with an, "I love you," like we always did when we parted ways, even through technology.
I write this because typically there aren't open letters that say good things, and I know you probably have better things to do other than read a story of sorts from some silly twenty-something living in northwest Chicago, but I feel like you or someone, anyone, really should hear this. As someone who's passion it is to connect people through words, I understand you never really can fathom the magnitude of what happens once that song gets recorded, that painting gets finished, or that story gets edited. It goes where it goes and you just hope it hits someone somewhere and it sticks.
I know that was far from your intention when you wrote that song, but you gave Bill and I our initial connection and in turn a whole bunch of memories. In the wake of his death, you gave me three minutes and several seconds of an unparalleled comfort that I am yet to find anywhere else. Every time I hear, "The Rising," I am hurt by the loss of my friend and healed by the fact that he existed, sometimes to the point where it still feels like he's still around.
Whenever I hear your song, Bill's song, it's almost like something deep inside myself be it my link to the universe or a longing of a friend, gives me the strength to keep moving despite the obstacles. It keeps me smiling in the face of a challenge no matter how big or how small it may be. For that, Bruce, Mr. Springsteen, The Boss- I am incredibly grateful. Thank you.
-Jess Krista Merighi.
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