Ark of the Lost Angels

Bruce Springsteen at Nationals Park, Washington DC, May 29th, 2026. _{(Credit: Author)}

Nobody does a show quite like The Boss. I saw Bruce Springsteen in Washington DC a week ago. And in the middle of the show, the rain started to come down. It made my first time hearing his song, “The Streets of Minneapolis” a moving experience. The song is about the murders of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis last year, and the chants of “ICE OUT NOW” from the crowd in the middle of the show got me thinking. 

A lot is often said of armchair activism, and I think some of it is fair. Especially with an administration that routinely disregards the public’s opinions in favor of their many ghoulish designs to reshape the nation along the blueprint left behind by the scattered ashes of the Third Reich. But there is something powerful at coming together as a group with common sensibilities just for a moment to share in frustration and triumph. Music wouldn’t exist without protest songs, stories, and shared sentiments amongst humanity. 

And here’s something about Springsteen that struck me while listening to him up there. I never got his music before. In terms of great American songwriters of that era, I always preferred Billy Joel, because I think Billy Joel is the superior storyteller and his songs felt catchier to me. But the thing about Springsteen is that he makes you feel what he’s trying to say. This is a man who sings about the salt of the earth because he lived among them and grew up as one of them. He’s the lucky guy that escaped his dead man’s town because he happened to strike it lucky as a musician. I’ve been to where he got his start. There’s a long strong history of musical talent on the Jersey Shore. So, why was Bruce the one that became a worldwide phenomenon and the voice of a generation? 

It’s a question I continued to ponder as the evening wore on, the music kept rolling, and the rain came tumbling down. Now I could be poetical and say it was a baptism of sorts, but that would be overwhelmingly pretentious. The answer struck me a short while after “Streets of Minneapolis.” Bruce has something to say, and his music is his vehicle to say it. Whether it was about himself or life or his country or his hometown or whatever, there was something behind the words and the tunes. Even the catchy ones that got radio play, or have been horrendously misconstrued by people, all of Bruce’s work is a series of stories about an America he knows and more importantly loves.

Which made me circle back around to the armchair activism. I think it’s disingenuous to discount everything done from peoples’ homes as invalid, just as I think you’re a bit lame if you claim going to a bleedin’ concert is fighting fascism. Therein lies the problem, making a substantive contribution seems to be the only way to go about it in the eyes of society these days. But a regime doesn’t fall because a few people do a lot. It falls when a lot of people do just enough. 

There’s this quote that’s been floating around the internet. Some user on Tumblr spoke about a professor they had who said “You all have a little bit of ‘save the world’ in you, that’s why you’re here in college. I want you to know it’s okay if you only save one person, and it’s okay if that person is you.” That’s a quote that has always stuck with me. Even if it turns out to be apocryphal, or made up by the original poster all those years ago, I think it’s an important sentiment to hold. And I think a lot of people have this vision that unless you’re on the line at all times, burning yourself up and out to save the world that it isn’t worthwhile. Sometimes it’s good to just be reminded that everyone is struggling with their own challenges, and most of us are struggling together despite what certain subsets of the population would have us believe. It’s a reminder that the struggle for survival is a shared one, and it’s what brings us together.

So now Bruce comes back into play. Because being around this many people who feel the same way can be helpful. It’s a large reminder than one is not alone in many of these struggles. No emotion is unique. Someone has felt everything you have ever felt or will ever feel. That sounds like a negative but it’s really not. It guarantees the certainty that you are not alone in whatever you feel right now at this moment. So it stands to reason that by going places where those big emotions of yours are shared, the collective burden becomes easier to carry. That there’s hope in the people out there. That the hope you feel isn’t a fool’s errand because you’re the only one who feels it. 

And I understand that there’s absolutely nothing in these words that is revolutionary. I didn’t come to these conclusions in a vacuum. But we’ve seen the death of the age of subtlety. That was evident no where more than at Nationals Park last week. We now have to spell things out because artful metaphors and delicate subtlety are still beyond some people. The train continues barreling towards us and we still haven’t moved. It’s going to hit us. Hell, maybe it already has. The nation has tough times and even tougher choices ahead of it. Great things that will require many people to accomplish, even if it is unpleasant and difficult.

But I think that America needs to be loved and celebrated. That’s not to say there aren’t a lot of things to criticize about the nation, there are. Criticism without a desire to improve, however, is only meant to destroy. There are things about this country, its ideals, what it’s supposed to stand for, and its history that are always going to be worth preserving, cherishing, and fighting for. And therein lies the truth of Springsteen: he is mad as hell because of how much he loves this country. And that’s the tact that I think we should all be taking. This is our home, and it’s under siege. It’s flawed, so very flawed, but what nation isn’t? It makes us fools if all we work towards is wanton destruction because of all these things we don’t like. The only thing to fear is fear itself. Hope will always be stronger than fear. Fear cannot be allowed to win. 

That’s what I got out of Bruce Springsteen. Amidst the rage against the current administration and the classic stories of Americana colored by a nostalgic haze for a nation gone by that never really existed stood one truth to me: that this country is made up of so many people struggling alone together and that they need to remember that they aren’t actually alone. There was so much anger in that stadium that night. But there was also a lot of hope, apt for the tour named after the song “Land of Hope and Dreams.” I think that night gave me hope in the America that Springsteen has always tried to inscribe in his songs: a nation of honest, hardworking people who look out for each other. I have my opinions on whether that really matches reality, but I don’t think it needs to. It’s an aspiration for us to have, as a nation, a population. It’s the idea of America put to song in a way that feels real, relatable, and reachable.

After going to that concert, I don’t think there’s anyone else who could so succinctly summarize America the way Bruce Springsteen does.