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What if one lifetime isn’t the only life you get to experience? Discover how music can transport us into other people’s worlds, expand our empathy, and reveal surprising things about ourselves along the way.
I’m Mindy Peterson, host of Enhance Life with Music podcast, where we explore all the ways music can make our lives better. And this is Microhance, a micro-dose of musical enhancement.
Bruce Springsteen is one of those artists whose music – I confess – I’ve never listened to much… yet I am fascinated by him as a person. It started when I interviewed Anne Abel about her book, High Hopes, her memoir about living with severe depression and how attending a Bruce Springsteen concert saved her life. Anne’s story and book sent me down my own Springsteen rabbit hole. And the more I learned about him, the more intrigued I became – not just by him as a musician, but by him as a person.
I recently read his memoir, Born to Run, and absolutely loved it. If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to be a rock star, or to live a day in his life, read this book because it really lets the reader experience Springsteen’s world (as much as is possible in words on a page)!
Springsteen has lived an extraordinary life, and I came away from the book with a sense of how fully he has inhabited that life. He came through poverty, hardship, and homelessness. He details the rigorous work ethic and persistence that eventually brought stability and then success.
I was struck by both his honesty and respect describing his upbringing and family of origin; and also his humility and ownership of his own relational missteps with band mates, friends, childhood connections, family members, and in his first marriage. While he doesn’t sugarcoat his tensions with his father or various band-members, he threads the needle in telling the facts while honoring the person and their perspective.
I respect that he lives out his beliefs, and his authenticity shines through in his lifelong commitment to the underdog, the working person, and in his transparency about his struggle with depression and the work he needed to do psychologically – and committed to with a therapist.
I especially loved reading his description of becoming a father for the first time in 1990, and how it changed his life. Springsteen writes:
“The endorphin high of birth will fade, but its trace remains with you forever, its fingerprints indelible proof of love’s presence and daily grandeur… Whatever the morrow brings, these things, these people, will be with you always. The power of choice, of a life, a lover, a place to stand, will be there to be called upon and make fresh sense of your tangled history. More important, it will also be there when you waver, when you’re lost, providing you with the elements of a new compass, encased within your heart.”
“Work is work . . . but life . . . is life . . . and life trumps art . . . always.”
I love that coming from someone whose life has been so completely devoted to music. Because it reminds us that music isn’t the destination. Life is.
Music is one of the things that helps us experience life more deeply, understand other people more fully, and discover more of ourselves along the way.
Not only was I inspired by how fully Springsteen has inhabited his life, I also appreciated how his memoir allowed me to enter his world and his lived experience, from his first encounter with contracts as a young artist, to going behind-the-scenes when he performed at the Super Bowl.
The book allowed me to enter a life I’ve never lived, to see the world through someone else’s eyes. And sometimes the best way to understand our own lives is to spend a little time listening to someone else’s. We only get one biological lifetime. But through music, books, stories and art, we can experience glimpses of hundreds of other lives. And we discover ourselves partly by encountering other people. Music can give us a glimpse into lives we’ve never lived – and, in doing so, help us discover how to live more fully as ourselves.
I’ll put a link in the show notes to Born to Run, as well as my interview with Anne Abel, and two previous Micro episodes inspired by my trip down this rabbit hole:
- Micro 53: The Power of Music in Political Discourse
- Micro 40: What Springsteen Taught Me About Living My Values
I’m Mindy Peterson, and I hope this inspires you to enhance your life with music.
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