For some light relief from you-know-what, for anyone who needs that in the next few days.
(There’s precedent here and here, to identify just a couple of past topics.)
So, what if you had to choose a musical alias or handle for yourself here on The Hive at TPM? Not your favorite song per se, but a song that you think captures some important aspect of you and your life, and that you choose to have represent yourself to the rest of us?
So, for example, instead of @jabbot, I might choose this for my alias or handle.
The only rule or request here is that you have to give some explanation. So, why “Blood Brothers” for me? Lot’s of reasons, but I’ll offer just two or three.
First, it strikes me as honest — life is really hard, it says: “Now the hardness of this world slowly grinds your dreams away / Makin’ a fool’s joke out of the promises we make / And what once seemed black and white turns to so many shades of gray / We lose ourselves in work to do and bills to pay.” And I do strive to be honest, however often and however much I fail. It’s just something I value and have thought a lot about (e.g., my doctoral dissertation was on deceit in Roman society).
Notwithstanding the darkness here in “Blood Brothers,” the song also offers hope and optimism, which I cling to because I need them: “But the stars are burnin’ bright like some mystery uncovered / I’ll keep movin’ through the dark with you in my heart / My blood brother.”
Plus, I met my wife of 33 years in Springsteen’s New Jersey, where she and I were in college together, and though I’ve never been one for attending concerts — I grew up in a very, very small town in a rural area, so it just wasn’t a thing — she and I have been to hear Bruce and the E Street Band three or four times, each one memorable, none more so than the night he played this song on a dark stage after Danny Federici had died.
