July 3, 2015: The 4th in Focus: “Sandy (4th of July, Asbury Park)”

[To celebrate another 4^th of July, a series on different cultural contexts for this very American holiday. Leading up to a special July 4^th post this weekend!]

On how Bruce captured the more intimate side of independence day.

You didn’t think I could write a series about iconic images of America and not include the Boss, did you?! One of my most memorable youthful July 4^th experiences, the fireworks show after a Richmond Braves minor league baseball game, featured star-spangled fireworks set to “Born in the U.S.A.”—yet another failure to listen closely to Bruce’s ironic anthem, of course, if also an association encouraged by Bruce’s own red, white, and blue album cover among other things. A fair portion of the ashes from those fireworks ended up in my cup of soda, which it’s hard not to read as a metaphor for the gap between the show and the song, the inspiring American spectacle and the far darker historical and social realities that “Born in the U.S.A.” seeks to capture. Indeed, Bruce read Ron Kovic’s memoir, and was inspired by it to write a much less well-known song, “Shut Out the Light” (1983).

As it turns out, in the course of his long and prolific career Bruce has written two songs that even more overtly feature independence day, and offer far different and more personal images of the holiday. From the double album The River (1980) there’s the haunting “Independence Day,” a song that may or may not be set on the actual holiday but uses it as an extended metaphor for the speaker’s decision to leave his hometown and the limited world and legacy of his father (to whom he addresses his determined but apologetic reflections throughout the song). And from The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle (1974) there’s the bittersweet “Sandy (4^th of July, Asbury Park),” in which the jaded young speaker pleads with his star-crossed lover that they should leave “this carnival life” and start anew, all while “the fireworks are hailing over Little Eden tonight/Forcing a light into all those stoned-out faces left stranded on this Fourth of July.”

Besides being one of Bruce’s most beautiful and poignant songs (and featuring Danny Federici at his absolute best on the accordion), “Sandy” reflects an essential but easily overlooked truth: that the Fourth of July, like all communal holidays and occasions, is perhaps most consistently meaningful through its resonances in our individual lives, journeys, and memories. For me, the 4^th will always mean both that childhood Richmond Braves game and the first time the boys and I stayed out on the Needham town common to watch the town’s fireworks show, images of community and connection in each case. For Bruce’s speakers, on the other hand, the holiday is a moment to declare independence from the communities that have produced and influenced but also limited them, to seek their own new journeys and identities as did America in that foundational moment. But across these disparate experiences, texts, and meanings, the 4^th becomes an occasion to reflect on who we are, where we’ve been, and where we’re going—an underappreciated, frequent, and very valuable side effect of holiday celebrations.

Special post this weekend,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Contexts or connections for the 4^th you’d highlight?

July 2, 2015: The 4th in Focus: “Speaking of Courage”

[To celebrate another 4^th of July, a series on different cultural contexts for this very American holiday. Leading up to a special July 4^th post this weekend!]

On the July 4^th setting and climax of one of my favorite American short stories.

I’m going to keep this post relatively short, as I’d love for you to read the story on which it focuses, Tim O’Brien’s “Speaking of Courage” (that version has been annotated by, it seems, a group of high school students working with the whole of O’Brien’s novel/short story cycle The Things They Carried, in which “Speaking” appears). So go read that amazing story if you would (even if you’ve read it before, it benefits from re-reading), and I’ll see you in a few!

Okay, welcome back. One of the interesting choices O’Brien makes in the course of “Speaking of Courage” is only gradually to reveal the story’s July 4^th setting, leading up to the striking final image of Norman watching the town’s fireworks display in a very specific and complicated location and way. While Rov Kovic made the Fourth of July a central, titular organizing metaphor for his memoir of war and the gaps between its myths and realities, that is, O’Brien links his story’s strikingly similar narrative of war’s contradictions—its ideals of heroism and the brutal realities that lie beneath those images, literally and figuratively—to independence day, and more exactly to the ways in which we collectively commemorate that holiday and through it our national mythos, in a far subtler but just as significant way. As with so many of O’Brien’s pitch-perfect short stories, the true payoff is in the final sentence: “For a small town, he decided, it was a pretty good show.”

O’Brien’s book deals most directly and centrally with the Vietnam War, and with the project of war writing and memory captured in “How to Tell a True War Story.” Yet what “Speaking of Courage” makes plain—or rather makes subtle and circular and complex but crucial nonetheless—is that every American war story is also a story of America, of our collective memories and our communities, of the stories we celebrate and those we forget. If Norman Bowker’s is a particularly shitty story (pun entirely intended), it’s also a hugely telling and powerful one, a vital reminder of what war means and does, and of what operates just beneath the surface of our national commemorations and celebrations. It should be, it seems to me, required reading on every July 4^th.

Next 4^th focus tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Contexts or connections for the 4^th you’d highlight?

July 1, 2015: The 4th in Focus: Fireworks

[To celebrate another 4^th of July, a series on different cultural contexts for this very American holiday. Leading up to a special July 4^th post this weekend!]

On the history, symbolism, and limitations of an American tradition.

As detailed in this Slate article, the intersection of fireworks and the 4^th of July literally goes back to the first, 1777 celebrations of the holiday (the first because in 1776 July 4^th was the date of the Declaration’s actual dissemination and readings, rather than a holiday commemorating that occasion). I’ll have more to say about the John Adams letter referenced in that piece in my weekend post, so here I’ll keep this paragraph short and say that you should certainly check out that Slate piece by senior editor Forrest Wickman for a clear, concise depiction of the longstanding histories (both American and international) of fireworks.

While fireworks might have been present from those earliest Independence Day celebrations on, however, I would argue that their July 4^th symbolism really took hold after the War of 1812, and more exactly after Francis Scott Key wrote “The Star-Spangled Banner” in the aftermath of the side of Fort McHenry during that conflict. After all, the central image of our national anthem is a contrasting visual one, of seeing the flag through the darkness—eventually “by the dawn’s early light,” but even more importantly by the glow of “the bombs bursting in air” that “gave proof through the night.” It’s a compelling and powerful image, the idea of a light in the darkness that allows us to keep an eye on our national ideals. And whether fireworks actually create a flag of fiery lights (as they often do for the 4^th) or simply burst in the night sky for our collective vision and inspiration, they capture this defining national image in a visceral and affecting way.

Visceral and affecting as fireworks might be, however, what they are not is thought-provoking; indeed, as with many spectacular entertainments, they require us not to think at all in order to get the most pleasure from their spectacle. To be clear, as a fan of Star Wars and the James Bond films, among many other spectacles, I don’t have any problem with such entertainments being part of our culture and society. But as a commemoration of our nation’s independence day, such a spectacle does seem to represent another example of what I’ve elsewhere described as the easy form of patriotism, the kind that asks nothing more of us than our awed appreciation. So while such awe can and perhaps should be a part of our July 4^th celebrations, I’d love if there were space as well for more reflective engagement with our history and community. Am I arguing for Frederick Douglass-shaped fireworks? Maybe not—but I could definitely get behind a brief reading from “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” before every July 4^th fireworks ceremony. Give it a couple years and it’d be just as much a part of the tradition as those fiery bombs bursting in air.

Next 4^th focus tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Contexts or connections for the 4^th you’d highlight?