Pure happiness by Ruth Neuwald Falcon

“You won’t believe what I was up to last night,” a Seattle friend texted me yesterday. Along with her words came two pictures, one of The Boss onstage, the other of my friend’s 29-year-old son, who had surprised his mom with their tickets. On her boy’s face was a look I know well. I’ve felt it on my own face, and I’ve seen it on the faces of friends I’ve gone to E Street concerts with, and on the faces of strangers who quickly became friends, if only for a night, at those same concerts.

It’s a look of pure happiness, a look you sometimes see on the faces of small children but rarely on those of adults.

There’s a softness in it too, a delight in the moment, an awareness that there’s nowhere else on earth you would rather be and you know it and are so grateful to be there. It’s why people go to as many Bruce concerts as they can, fueling up with whatever it is they need to continue with their “real” lives. For my friend, it was excitement. For me, it’s joy.

Bruce happiness. You can trust that it will last, at least for the duration of the concert. He’s got this. The band’s got this. The audience’s got this. We’re all in it together. We know our cues (like when he points the mic away from himself and toward us) and we know our lines, our yeah-yeahs, our ooh-ooh-oohs. His freedom and joy in the moment, while at the same time always being the consummate professional, allows us to break our bonds of self-consciousness and we let our bodies move, our voices join his. Our faces open, and our hearts.

There’s a moment in every show, when the lights in the arena come on for Born to Run and a great roar goes up from thousands of throats. There’s something glorious about this moment, something deeply inclusive and acknowledging of the value each of us has. We all matter, those lights tell us. This is our concert.

He’s going to be at the MVP Arena in Albany on March 14. So will I. And I suspect I’ll have more to say about him, and the band, and my history with them, before then.