WATCHING BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN

I was raised out of steel here in the swamps

There is a chill in the air as Bruce Springsteen comes on stage in Stade de France, Paris (48 degrees North, 2 degrees South). It is the chill of grief. The text on the grave of Sartre and de Beauvoir in Montparnasse reads travaux en cours. Madiba lies dying in Johannesburg (26 degrees South, 28 degrees East).

Bruce Springsteen sings Glory Days and the concert-goer sees a man in front of him, wearing a green jumper, with tears in his eyes.

When Bruce Springsteen sings Wrecking Ball, the man in the green jumper, a farming man, with strong, brown hands, sheds tears down his tanned cheeks.

Now my home's here in these meadowlands where mosquitoes grow big as airplanes

He sways in time with the music, as does his wife beside him, in the packed seats of the stadium. They exchange smiles and she gently caresses a tear from his face, as if to say je t'adore.

Through the mud and the beer, and the blood and the cheers,

I've seen champions come and go


So if you got the guts mister, yeah, if you got the balls


If you think it's your time, then step to the line,

and bring on your wrecking ball

Each day the wrecking ball of life swings and strikes. Even Bruce Springsteen feels its icy breadth as it careers past him. The concert-goer senses an ending in his songs and his thoroughly energised performance.

Bruce Springsteen shakes hands and warmly backslaps the members of his superb band as they leave the stage. It is the gesture of a generous captain on a winning team. He speaks good French in a Jersey accent. He is at home at the heart of the spectacle, yet he is a toy figure to the concert-goer, even as he sounds clear and loud.

The man in the green jumper is more human. The woman with him, both of them, are present and alive. Though infused with griefs and ghosts.

Here, where the blood is spilled, the arena's filled, and giants played their games


So raise up your glasses and let me hear your voices call


Because tonight all the dead are here.

Is this what Samuel Beckett knows, even now, buried with his partner Suzanne Déchevaux-Dumesnil, under a simple slab, further into the cemetery at Montparnasse?

Yeah, we know that come tomorrow, none of this will be here


So hold tight on your anger, you hold tight on your anger


Now when all this steel and these stories, they drift away to rust


And all our youth and beauty, it's been given to the dust


When your best hopes and desires are scattered through the wind


And hard times come, and hard times go


Upraised arms on the pelouse in front of the stage sway from side to side, fingers spread and stretched, as sunflowers daily angle for the sun and wave in the breeze. The band is the wind, Bruce Springsteen the sun, we the tournesoleils, yet green in the fields of hope, as the chill of death descends and confirms the swinging of the wrecking ball.

Bring on your wrecking ball


Come on and take your best shot,

Let me see what you got


The concert-goer, almost three years out of an Intensive Care Unit, when the wrecking ball of illness struck him a hard, yet still a glancing, blow, cries salt tears.

A de-railing blow, a re-aligning blow, a warning blow. A blow for all time.

The concert-goer sees the man in the green jumper smile and cry. The concert-goer wonders at the power of music, the burdens of grief we all carry and the manner in which lives turn to face and fade in the chilly sunlight and the booming air.

Je ne peut plus continuer comme ça. I can't go on like this.

On dit ça. That's what you think.

http://www.springsteenlyrics.com/

Warten auf Godot/En attendant Godot/Waiting for Godot: Samuel Beckett; play; suhrkamp taschenbuch; Frankfurt am Main; 1971

www.facebook.com/DaveDugganWriter