I have to tell you, tonight I went to one of perhaps the most surreal experiences of my life.  It involved an artist, a glockenspiel (like a xylophone), Bruce Springsteen videos of live performances – all from his Born to Run album, a hot sweaty air condition-less room, and an overflowing crowd of Brooklyn trendy art-types – somewhere in the bowels of Brooklyn.  Wow!  My head is still reeling….

To back up a bit – I mentioned a couple blog posts ago that I attended the Creative Capital artist retreat in the Berkshires a couple weekends ago.  It was an amazing time and I met the greatest group of people – among them was Cory Arcangel, who a couple people there told me is an extremely popular, sought after artist.  He’s a lovely person who focuses on digital media, including Internet and videogame hacks, digital art and video, and he’s currently working on a project called D.I.Y.W.I.K.I. – an opensource website that details what he does.

Anyway, I just befriended Cory on Facebook, and saw that he’d posted up an invite to an event he was having tonight at Light Industry, an artist space in Brooklyn – a part of Brooklyn I’d never been to.  Just to give you a little background on me and Brooklyn – I’ve lived in NYC for 18 years (meaning Manhattan) and only just started going to Brooklyn in the past six months.  I would joke that I needed my passport to cross the river.  (Some day I’ll tell you how I got my Brooklyn phobia – it involves the band Pavement and their UK label, 4 in the morning, and not being able to jump on poles in the East River to get to a boat.  Oh, yeah, and 3 foot rats….)   Brooklyn also has a reputation for being uber trendy, etc etc, so it’s something I’ve sort of avoided (like, no one in Manhattan tries to be trendy…).

But! – Cory was doing a live performance on a Glockenspiel to Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run album.  Being a huge Springsteen fan, having seen him live loads of times, and also having just met Cory and thinking he was good people, how could I pass this up?  So I convinced my colleague at Sustainable Table, Dawn, to cross the waters with me (okay, she lives there so getting there was no big deal to her), but I convinced her that seeing a glockenspiel performance to Bruce Springsteen music really was what was called for two days before her 40th birthday.  (Happy Birthday, Dawn!)

So Dawn and I trudged out to Brooklyn, arriving late to a sold out show (which wasn’t stopping anyone from entering), so we walked into the Light Industry space and joined the sold out Brooklyn 20-something crowd in the hot sweat-pouring-off-the-walls room.   First thing I noticed – I was the oldest person there!!!  Second thing I noticed – I seemed to be the only one who actually knew Springsteen’s Born to Run album!

But, first, the show.  It was amazing – I actually don’t know the right adjectives for it.  Cory showed videos of Springsteen live from his really early years (the amazing Springsteen era!) – they were projected behind him while he stood in front of the 100+ capacity audience with his glockenspiel (xylophone like thing).  Now, the Springsteen videos were amazing enough to watch (for my generation at least), but Cory would play his glockenspiel to various songs.  “She’s the One” was his best performance – Cory really seemed to get into trying to play his instrument along to an amazing Springsteen songs, one of those ones that are really impossible to not move to – and he did it to a packed room of Brooklyn trendy zombies who were stone faced, serious and not moving a muscle!  Oh, it was unbelievable!  I actually think most of the people in the room had never heard a Springsteen song before, let alone seen a video of him, so I’m sure they were nonplussed by the music that was playing – they were solely focused on Cory and his performance.

This is what made it so surreal for me.  Springsteen is called the Boss for a reason – he’s an absolutely amazing performer.  If you’ve never seen him live, I seriously suggest you do while he’s still touring – to see his older stuff, music from Greetings from Asbury Park, Born to Run, and especially Darkness on the Edge of Town – is to see rock and roll at its absolute best!  I think that type of rock and roll will die with the likes of Springsteen and his peers, and I think everyone should try to experience it at least once in their life.  (And if you think Springsteen might not have it anymore, I saw him on Long Island several months ago and my entire section nearly self combusted with passion and unbelievable energy that came from the stage.  So when you go to a Springsteen show, you go to a rock and roll revival that takes you to another universe.  It can’t be put into words – it can only be experienced.

So, here I am, in Brooklyn at a trendy art show, glockenspiel and all, watching amazing Springsteen videos from the entire Born to Run album, and I look around, and the entire audience is just sitting there.  They obviously weren’t there for Springsteen – like I said, I think this is the first time most of them had ever seen/heard of him – there were there to see an artist play a xylophone every now and then to his music.  To take this raw passion and energy, this lifeforce that literally changed my life in 1980 when I first saw him – I’m not joking.  I saw Springsteen the night after John Lennon was murdered in 1980 – when he performed Jungleland, I had nothing short of a religious experience.  I connected with the 20,000 other people in that stadium – we were all pumping our arms in the air during the musical interlude – all of us together, in unison, crying for the loss of John Lennon – and we were all united in love.  That might sound hokey to some people, but it was in the top 3 most amazing experiences of my life.  (I have to admit, seeing The Dalai Lama the first time tops the list hands down…). 

But I’m used to total energy, chaos, screaming and passion when there’s anything to do with Springsteen.  And here I am in Brooklyn with a bunch of trendy Brooklyn youngsters listening to great Springsteen music and watching a young artist (who did a great job, mind you!) playing his glockenspiel while no one in the room is moving – no one is bobbing their head or tapping their foot to the music.  They are sitting there literally like it’s a funeral, and my brain just couldn’t take it.  I mean, my circuits blew!  It was so out of my ordinary reality that I wasn’t able to make sense of any of it.

And I think if you ask some people, they might say that’s great art.  Something that takes you out of your self, your ordinary reality, something that challenges you and makes you not think – that might be what art is all about.  I wonder what kind of experience the others had, the ones who know nothing about Springsteen, who don’t know that he just played at Giants Stadium in New Jersey – I wonder what their reaction to this all was.  To me, art is so subjective, and I think good art challenges you to not think but to experience.  It’s when I lose the ability to conceptualize that I feel connected to other things – and Cory’s performance, on some surreal level, took me out of my ordinary reality and has me still grasping for what it was all about.  And perhaps that was the point.

Perhaps I’ll now go out and buy something like a glockenspiel and play it to Jackson Pollock’s paintings.  Or a harp – I think Pollock’s work would go well with a harp.  Now that would be a trip, wouldn’t it?….