“We need you now.” I want to believe that is how it started. Choose to believe that is how it started. “We need you now.” Want to believe that a stranger said those words from a rolled down car window in traffic and the words were heard. Heard by a man from New Jersey who writes from his soul and then sings from there, too. “We need you now.”
It is my choice to have those words of truth pierce the artist as well as the man. It is my own legend to have him hear and feel and ponder. Ponder why people he never met mentioned him in eulogies for other people he never met. Ponder why he meant so much to people who died so suddenly in ways that broke his heart and shattered his reality. Ponder his grief and their grief as it somehow became our grief. Ponder until it gnawed through his shock, penetrated his anger, pressed his fears to the side, and enflamed his passion. A passion he needed to understand, then harness, and then share. So he did.
He called and asked the ones that knew them who they were. They knew who he was, after he explained he really was who he was, and they shared. He drank of their sadness and shared their load for a nanosecond that felt too short. He spoke of it. Dreamt of it. Paced the riverside with it. Sat on the dock with it. Hugged his guitar with it. Reached for his pen while still inside it. Afraid it would be too much. Afraid it would be too little. Afraid to do nothing. Afraid to do anything. Afraid he was going to miss the mark and they would have died for nothing. They were gone. He was here. “We need you now.” He cried and asked himself who the fuck he was. He answered that question in the only way he could. He was just a guy from Jersey that sings and people listen to him. He was just like those people….nobody until somebody notices. So he wrote.
Wrote some new stuff cause it was there inside of him and needed to be born. Revisited some old stuff. One he thought he wrote about one place but that written for right now. So he sang that one and felt the life in it all over. Reached for one by Sam Cooke that felt light and sad at the same time. About a place people went to feel good. God knew they needed to remember those places still existed. He reached for some of his older stuff and realized he was right about them. They were more than he knew at the time. They were needed now. The more he looked, the more he found. As he looked, he had a vision of the Album that he needed to record.
Soon, he was brave enough to speak of these things with others. They got it right away. They got it with tears and silence and what the hell are we waiting for moments. They reached for their instruments and began to heal.
“We need you now.” One sentence that inspired Bruce Springsteen and resulted in “The Rising”. It started in pain and was delivered in agony and sadness and more. It shined and healed in the very birthing. It was right. It was his best. “We need you now.” It was what he needed to do. It was his way of dealing with it, honoring them, and remembering he had to do his part. So he did. Legends are like that.
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