It has been 18-years since September 11th, 2001. Those born the day many died violently in New York City, Washington DC, and Shanksville, Pennsylvania now are old enough to vote, per the Twenty-sixth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, in America. Bruce Springsteen wrote a 15-song double album reflecting the tragedy on July 30, 2002 called The Rising.
Lonesome Day opens The Rising by setting the tone for an album clearly responding to the events of eighteen years ago. The narrator, Bruce, sings of the loss of his love and the loneliness felt in the moments immediately following the tragedy. Even in the midst of the tragedy and grief, Bruce advises against revenge as the bitter fruit of deceit and betrayal, two feelings the narrator feels in addition to aggrieved and lonely.
The song Into the Fire plays clear to the contemplative, reverential dirge of heroism to the firefighters running into the New York City World Trade Center on September 11th. The refrain honoring the fallen firefighters who ran into the fire, up the stairs to their deaths, is honored here with wishes of sharing the strength, faith, hope and love of those who made the ultimate sacrifice.
Waitin’ on a Sunny Day, though written before the attacks of September 11th, speaks to a theme that resonated with Bruce Springsteen of wanting to be happy again. The notion of it raining with no clouds in the sky being tears for your eye could be perceived as the tear of someone in the World Trade Center towers. The upbeat sound juxtaposes with the largely mournful songs inhabiting much of the remaining album.
Nothing Man takes the narrative perspective of realizing that the way tragedy can take your life in an instant, and coming to the conclusion that yours has amounted to little or nothing. The clear impression of the opening stanza is losing one’s life in the attacks. Bruce realizes how in lockstep he has been with so many others in his life, and bemoans the tragedy of not having made something meaningful for himself. The feeling I take is one of emotional warning, and self-pity.
The song Countin’ on a Miracle clearly calls upon the September 11th tragedy. Bruce the narrator seeks the miracle of his lost love, his fairy tale love as lost in the attacks, to come home to him. The song is filled with uncertainty and hope at the same time.
Empty Sky quite clearly is a song of mourning from the morning of September 12th, where the physical want of love leads to the desire for revenge. The crying from the ground of the narrator’s fallen family, with the mourning of harmonica, and the clear message is of conflict in terms of hurt, anger, yet the yearning for healing, health, for good over evil.
In Worlds Apart is the most experimental song on the album with heavy Middle Eastern and Qawwali singers. The song experiments in form as well as with the concept of two romantically involved partners from opposite sides of the divide, and the conflicting views of what exactly the divergent cultural forces in play after the tragedy central to this album leaves the love of the two narrators. The song offers the consolation of aiming for love, whatever it can give in circumstances so challenging.
Let’s Be Friends (Skin to Skin), in bringing an end to what Bruce Springsteen envisioned as the first of the “two” albums of The Rising, almost continues the song Worlds Apart from a more western perspective. The answer to the suggestion concluding Worlds Apart, of “letting love give what it gives,” moves from the prospect of physical love – “The time is now maybe we could get skin to skin” – to the conclusion of the more platonic “Come on, let’s be friends.”
The song Further On (Up the Road), which starts the second of the two albums of The Rising, feels like the personification through men of two warring cultures fighting over wealth, prosperity, lifestyle and jealousy. The lust for gold brings many American metaphors of the divide between Eastern and Western cultural disagreements through seeds sowed, bullets cold, blood and cold, searching through the dust of a desert with fever, and the end to come with an allusion either to a morning gun battle, or reconciliation. The larger point feels like Bruce is preaching that if we listen long enough to hear that the cultural crisis begotten on September 11th can be a conversation rather than additional death, if only we grow to let it.
The Fuse opens with drawing down a flag to half staff, which is a sign of mourning following death. With a long funeral of cars following behind this, Bruce sings of the feeling to “come on let me do you right,” as the fuse (of retribution) is burning. The underpinning of Bruce’s anger, the narrator of the song’s anger, is that the narrator’s love is one of the victims of the tragedy from eighteen years ago.
Transitioning like a club over the head, Bruce rings in that feeling with the song Mary’s Place, which is a love Springsteen has referenced in songs such as The River and Thunder Road. In feeling the loss of Mary in the fuse, Mary’s Place starts off with an allusion to Buddhism and the seven steps (pictures in the song), which unmistakably suggests Bruce firmly standing upon his own feet against the testing rains of grief with what Bruce dubs the compassion of eleven angels, as in Buddha’s eleven faces. Firmly arming himself with a message of compassion, Bruce musters a redemption of faith in rising, spiritually, after his own personal tragedy.
You’re Missing clearly returns to the immediate aftermath of Bruce the narrator feeling the loss, his personal loss of Mary, following a tragic disappearance. The physical longing for Mary gives way to the spiritual missing, which gives way to transforming the loss across multiple realms, physical then moral then spiritual again. The dust on Bruce’s shoes (from disuse or roaming the September ruins?) lead to teardrops of recognition, comprehension, continued drifting.
In previewing the final song of the album The Rising, in the song My City of Ruins, the song The Rising offers what feels to me like a natural, almost optimistic pop song of the next step of rising up from the ruins of a city that has been besieged by neglect or by attacks on September 11th, 2001. The Rising allows another tribute to Bruce’s beloved, Mary, who comes up through this album and before this album. Rebuild, sings Bruce. Be the change you want in life, sings Bruce.
Paradise takes the provocative view of Bruce, the narrator, seemingly sympathizing with a suicide bombing in a crowded marketplace, waiting for paradise. In daydreaming of the love he has lost, of the smells, sights, and kiss presumably again of Mary, and the hollow, empty nature of this paradise is delivered with clarity not until the last five lines of the song. Seeing an emotional emptiness in Mary’s eyes, it is in life, breaking above the waves with the sun on his face, that is the fullness of going on.
My City of Ruins was written about the resort town of Asbury Park, New Jersey. The song was of the city that had deteriorated through Bruce Springsteen’s childhood and young adulthood. Parallels to the devastation in the places attacked on September 11th, 2001 made for a natural parallel for this gospel-reminiscent dirge, especially with the organ-tones and hypnotic, hymn-sounding encouragement to rise-up. The heart of New York City was a natural second and immediate focus for the song, which ends the album The Rising.
Some of the harsher criticism of the album The Rising lies in its length (fifteen songs) as well as in the concept that not every song holds up eighteen years later. The specific details are at times difficult to parse out, at least in terms of spelling out their power, though the passage of time allows the contextual vagueness that can be read into some of the music makes the individual songs able to stand alone, perhaps adding something special. Allowing listeners to find their own meanings, and then come to an attempt to offer context in a sharing such as this, has power.
While The Rising isn’t my favorite Bruce Springsteen album, and it quite possibly lands outside my top four Springsteen albums, the album succeeds on most avenues for saying relevant things to the aftermath of the attacks of September 11th, 2001.
Matt – Wednesday, September 11, 2019
Matt Lynn Digital 