Do your best to make these things real

Today I waited for hours in the center of the Ben Franklin Parkway. Police barricades had stopped traffic and it was too hot for October. By the time the sun fell behind the trees my back was sore from standing on the pavement and my calves ached from reaching on tiptoe to see past the heads of the people in front of me, to see the man on stage.

Then everything froze as a few familiar harmonica cords were played and, all together, tens of thousands of people began to sing every word of "Thunder Road". The voices began hesitantly, just a low murmur over the parkway of people breathing...

Roy Orbison's singing for the lonely, hey that's me and I want you only, don't turn me home again, I just can't face myself alone again...

But the Boss told us to "Go ahead, take it" and with this permission the sound grew, words that I have had in my memory for as long as I can remember music...

You can hide 'neath your covers and study your pain, make crosses from your lovers, throw roses in the rain, waste your summer praying in vain for a savior to rise from these streets...


It was one of those rare, surreal moments where your surroundings seem to vanish and you're caught up, for a little while, in the music and the idolatry and the lyrics that seem to speak your own sorrow. It was like falling in love for just a few moments or leaving everything behind, like Mary climbing into her lover's car to look for the promised land on a deserted road somewhere across the river from here.