I sit shotgun as he drives the perimeter of the carrot rows playing “Into the Fire” and pointing out that Bruce makes art out of heartbreak. His songs, a salve of solidarity, of hope. He tells me that Springsteen is the soundtrack that winds through a decades long love story with his wife. Jim, the owner of the farm where I work that summer, blares classics like “Born to Run” from his truck and muses and pontificates with a fan’s devotion in between chores.
“You see that?” he says, pointing to his forearm. “Brucebumps.”
The term Brucebumps, though entirely original and ingeniously his, is a sensation I’ve certainly experienced. A Born in the USA cassette on rotation in my mom’s yellow VW bug. His gravelly solos in “We are the World” recognizable to my kindergarten ear. On bus rides to soccer games, in the private stardom of karaoke rooms. I’ve had Brucebumps. And while that Bruce is woven through the soundtrack of my 1980s childhood in New York, it’s Bruce Hornsby that plays prominently on the soundtrack of my heart.
The summer after I graduated from college, I worked as a program director at my camp in the Santa Cruz mountains. I’d grown up there among the towering redwoods. Found faith, felt home. It was my tenth and final summer, both a homecoming and a farewell tour. And Bruce Hornsby’s Here Come the Noise Makers was the soundtrack.
I remember one evening vividly. Returning to camp from a day off, I drove the twists and turns of Highway 17 as the sun set in my rearview. Away from the life I was leaving in my college town, a relationship ending, a chapter closing. I could measure that drive’s distance in the number of times I played “Mandolin Rain” as it looped with my sinking heart.
I toted that same album with me to the Bahamas, where I moved a few years later. Where I found a different kind of love. Soaring and slow. A love that snuck up on me. Destined and unexpected.
On the 19th of this month we will have been together for 19 years. Our love has grown and changed. We have grown and changed. A steady simmer. Space to stumble, to shine, to surprise ourselves and each other. The hard work of building and sustaining. The peace we make with and for each other. The well of love we share for our son. A young son who sat and sang alongside us on a summer road trip with Bruce Hornsby’s “Dreamland” weaving through the drive.
Last year, The Palace of Fine Arts filled with Hornsby fans, some younger, most older. The two of us somewhere in the middle. Certain songs transported me to that summer of a broken heart and a wide open future ahead of me. To a time when I thought I knew what love would look like, what life would look like. Neither turned out the way I expected. And though the songs took me back, they also left me where I was, where I am now. Where we are. Changed, changing.
At some point in the show, Bruce moved unexpectedly from his piano to the middle of the stage and settled into one of three folding chairs. A row of dulcimers stood off to his right. To his left, the percussionist with spoons and a washboard over his front and the violinist with his body gathered around a mandolin. Played through different instruments and in new arrangements, old songs became new. Alchemy.
As Bruce played the Appalachian dulcimer, we leaned into each other. My forearm resting on his.
Brucebumps.