Comfort

Now on the street tonight the lights grow dim

The walls of my room are closing in
There's a war outside still raging
You say it ain't ours anymore to win
I want to sleep beneath
Peaceful skies in my lover's bed
With a wide open country in my eyes
And these romantic dreams in my head

Bruce Springsteen, No Surrender

Riding into work the past few mornings we have had a disc in the CD player that is labeled “Hockey”. I burned it a few years back to motivate Primus when he was heading to away games. Got to get that energy up, gotta get those juices flowing. The songs are his favorites and include Warren Zevon singing Hit Somebody, the Faces singing Street Fighting Man, Tom Waits singing The Earth Died Screaming and the Talking Heads singing Psycho Killer and Life during Wartime.

Over the years we developed an odd little tic of fast forwarding/skipping the track when we heard the opening chords of Psycho Killer. Invariably when it played all the way through Primus would pull a 10 minute major or a game misconduct. It just seemed to happen that whenever he heard that song, the events on the ice got ugly, U.G.L.Y.

Now that the season is over it has been deemed safe to play the WHOLE disc in the car on the way to school. At the end of the disc are a couple of less aggressive songs. One is Steve Forbert singing You Cannot Win If You Do Not Play (good hockey theme, eh…goes well with that hockey maxim “100% of shots not on goal, don’t go in.”). Another is Bruce Springsteen’s No Surrender.


I pulled the Springsteen song off my iTunes library. Thing is I have about 20 copies of the song from different venues. What I ended up with instead of the pounding version on Born in the USA is an acoustic ballad. (A hockey prep disc should not let up, eh?) Each day as we take the kids to schools if No Surrender comes on both Primus and Secundus sing along with passion. The part of the song that they both emphasize is the line “I learned more from a three minute record than I ever learned in school”.

Me I am drawn the phrase in the opening quote above, “I want to sleep beneath peaceful skies in my lover's bed with a wide open country in my eyes and these romantic dreams in my head.” It is without any doubt I say that when I was their age I would have been singing right along with them about the three minute record. Life flows on like a river. Knowing that I am sure when they get to my age the lyric that matters most to them will be different too.

When I was their age I noticed not one damn thing about the seasons, about flowers, well about anything except what was in my own little world. In reality I haven’t really matured all that much but I am noticing the seasons. There is beauty in a simple lamb’s ear plant that transcends so much angst and rage. Romantic dreams, peaceful sleep, lamb’s ears some day they will want these things too.