Last week, I worked a Dental Convention at Xcel. For three days, I woke up at 5am to take a nauseatingly early bus to St. Paul. I left almost every day crying, overwhelmed with boredom and exhaustion. I had spent ten hours printing off nametags for dentists, dental assistants, dental hygenists, dental spouses, dental kids. With a sassy black woman munching ginger snaps on one side and hyper annoying RenFester for life coughing up phlegm on the other, between almost every page of Kitchen Confidential and Pedal Pusher, I stared out the window of the RiverCentre as the same image played over and over again in my head.
I saw our car pulling into the lot across the street. I saw all of us inside that car, busting out of the Honda and dancing across the street, me inevitably wailing the wrong lyrics to my favorite songs. I saw us standing in those lines for the wristband, eating greasy bar food and drinking cold beer in the soft summer spring fall blistering winter light, nervously fidgeting until the pit number was drawn. Running in as only a herd of middle class white honkies could. Securing our spot as close to the stage as we could get, amongst our people, all of us chattering away as we waited to be baptized by these sweaty waters of rock’n’roll.
I spent ten hours watching cars pull into that lot and not one of them was the Honda. I spent my breaks crawling in between a secret stash of shut down soda machines I found in a dark corner of the convention center, clutching my phone as I alternately called Sha and Tabatha. Because I needed two people that had been with me for a long time, had seen the best and worst of me, had danced with me at shows, had screamed lyrics with me. Two people I had grown up with, surrounded by music.
Being at Xcel for ten hours and not having a Bruce Springsteen concert at the end of the day was just hard. Instead, I felt sorry for myself, I’ve barely been able to take photos, write, and for awhile even get my ass up to go to shows. Without that, I honestly feel like nothing.
Today, WonderTwin, an E Street sister, woke up me up to tell me that Danny Federici had died. Bruce’s E Street brother, his band-mate and close friend for over forty years, a legend for so many people. The Phantom. The little monkey man with giant blue eyes who played an absolutely fierce accordian and keyboard.
I have spent the past three weeks, seven months, twenty-six years perfecting the art of enthusiasm, on a constant quest to make the most out of my life. Sometimes, I feel very young. When I talked to Jim today, and he once again referenced how they were dropping like flies, I realized I am young, definitely too young to grasp that cynicism. Too me, even though he had cancer, he was supposed to live forever...or at the very least long enough to grow REALLY old with his family and his friends, with his music.
I don’t know what my life would be without this music. What grabbed me from that first instant were the lyrics. What kept me every day after that, for the past seven years, was the passion on and off the stage…that palpable connection between me and my insides, me and my mom, me and my closest friends, me and my hero, me and thousands of other freaks for this rock’n’roll giant that is and always be Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band.
When you are at those shows, you can't help but feel this insane amount of love. They play for themselves, for each other and for us. And it's an amazing gift that will continue to live as long as we continue to relish in every single recording Danny stood next to Bruce, his Jersey brother forever.
Danny...you'll ALWAYS be the man!
In the past month, a lot has changed. Spring is here. Once again, I can't sit still. I'm getting a lot of great photography opportunities that keep me insanely busy. And I've been surrounding myself with family, friends and lots of music. It's really good.
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