Born to Run (Introduction) [Springsteen on Broadway]

It was a beautiful fall November evening
I was going to writing in my book,
And I drove back to my neighborhood where I grew up,
Looking for uh
I still don't have a fucking clue.

But uh, all I know is the streets were dead empty
and the whole place looked like it'd been locked down since 1955.
My corner church was silent and unchanged, no weddings, no funerals,
I, rolled slowly another 50 yards up my block to visit my great tree
And it was gone.
It'd been cut to the street since the last time that I had drove through.
So I got out of the car and I looked down
and there was a square of musty earth that held the remaining snakes of Its roots on the edge of the parking lot.
So I reached down, I picked up a handful of dirt
And I just kinda ran it through my hands
And my heart sank like, like a kid who suffered from irretrievable loss,
Ya know, like, like some
Some piece of me was gone.

Um, I don't know I guess I,
it was just it had been there long before I was,
I assumed it would be there long after I was gone, and I liked that.
It, it felt eternal.
It was at the, it was at center of our street and it had rooted
Our neighborhood for so long.

So I sat there for awhile just cursin' the county
And listenin' to the sounds of the evening come on
And I looked again and I realized it was gone but some,
Some essential piece of it was still there,
The air and the space above its roots.
I could still feel life, and soul, and the light,
My childhood friend there.
It's just that its leaves, its branches
And its massive trunk were now outlined,
Shot through by evening stars and sky.
But my great tree's life couldn't be ended or erased so easily,
from this place because it's history.
And history matters.
Its imprint was too great, it was too old, and it was too strong
It had been there too long, to be done away with so easily.
It had stood witness to everything that had happened on these small streets beneath its arms.
All the joy, and all the heartbreak, and all the life.

And when we live amongst ghosts,
Always trying to reach us,
From that shadow world,
And they're with us every step of the way.
My dead father's still with me every day
And I miss him and if I had a wish,
Ah man I, I wish he could've been here to see this.

But I visit with him every night, little bit, that's a grace-filled thing.
And Clarence, I get to
I get to see him be with Clarence a little bit every night.
And Danny, Walter, and Bart, my own family,
So many of them gone from these houses
That are now filled by strangers but the...

Soul, soul is a stubborn thing. Doesn't dissipate so quickly.
Souls remain.
They remain here in the air, in empty space, in dusty roots,
In sidewalks that I knew every single inch of like I knew my own body, as a child,
And in the songs that we sing,
Ya know. That is why we sing.
We sing for our blood and for our people,
Because that's all we have at the end of the day
Each other and, maybe that's what I'm looking for when I go down there,
I just wanna commune with the old spirits,
Stand in their presence, feel their hands on me.

One more time.
Um, anyway, once again I stood in the shadow of my old church ya know, you know what they say about Catholics
Yeah, there's no getting out.
Nah, no, they gotcha, they gotcha, the bastards got ya when the getting was good.
They did their work hard and they did it well,
'Cause the words of a very strange but all too familiar benediction came back to me that evening,
And I wanna tell you these were words that as a kid,
I mumbled these things, I sing-songed them,
I chanted them, bored out of my fucking mind,
In an endless drone before class every fucking day,
Every day the green blazer, the green tie, the green trousers,
The green socks of all of Saint Rose's unwilling disciples, ya know.

But for some damn reason,
As I sat there on my street that night,
Ya know, mourning, mourning my old tree,
And once again surrounded by God,
Those were the words that came back to me
And they flowed differently.
Was "Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on Earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day, just give us this day
And forgive us our sins, our trespasses,
As we may forgive those who trespass against us,
Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil, all of us,
Forever and ever, Amen".

And may God bless you, your family, and all those that you love.
And thanks for coming out tonight