Somewhere between late-evening study sessions, fencing practice, and a boat made of plywood and caulk, Bruce Springsteen became the unexpected soundtrack to my spring semester at Swarthmore.
The eerie, haunting guitar and harmonica of Nebraska gradually became a surprising comfort in the cold, dark early weeks of the spring semester. Although far removed from the Badlands of Wyoming, the Canadian border, and the other fallen-behind locations Springsteen sings about, the album’s constant theme of escape provided a beautiful backdrop to reading Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children in the Underhill Library (pictured above).
As the semester continued and the days grew slightly longer, my listening shifted from the sparse and lonely to something more bombastic. While I’ll never be a huge fan of the overproduced, market-shaped Born in the U.S.A., the album’s fairly consistent tempo and themes made it ideal for warm-ups before the tri-weekly fencing practices that defined the early months of spring. The first four tracks, in particular, played a crucial role in getting me through the run, stretches, and other exercises before we moved on to fencing itself. Even so, I can’t help but wish the title track had been acoustic and quietly tucked into Nebraska instead.
Outside the Lamb-Miller Field House, where fencing is located, another association takes shape—this time not through sport, but with boat-building. Try as I might, I now permanently associate the sprawling masterpiece The River with hours spent working in the Swarthmore MakerSpace on my entry for the Crum Regatta—a plywood boat sealed with caulk—with the whine of the $15,000 SawStop table saw providing a new bassline from “The Ties That Bind” all the way through “Ramrod.” I usually paused the album there, lacking the patience for “The Price You Pay” and “Drive All Night.” Though I do sometimes feel guilty about forcing my fellow boat-builders to endure an uninterrupted stream of Springsteen, the (mostly made-up) rules of the MakerSpace dictate that the first person on the scene controls the speaker. And quite frankly, few should object to the lyrical brilliance of Darkness on the Edge of Town.
If The River belongs to the sawdust of the MakerSpace, Darkness lives elsewhere entirely—within the calm order of a second-floor study room in Singer Hall. To this day, the album’s tracks are inseparably linked to organic chemistry reactions: “Badlands” for converting alcohols into alkyl bromides, “Promised Land” for opening epoxides, “Racing in the Street” for oxymercuration-demercuration. All of it is underscored by the hum of central air and the sweeping view of Singer’s atrium. The brooding tone of Darkness continued a thread begun in Born to Run, which—despite its glory and popularity—was one of the most challenging albums for me to fully grasp. Yet, I remember the exact moment it clicked: walking alone through the Crum Woods during the week before final exams, when “Jungleland” suddenly sounded like it was meant for that exact moment, and for me.
It is probably for the best that the emotional tribulations expressed through Tunnel of Love are never really appreciated by me, at least not yet. But that’s part of what makes Springsteen such a lasting companion at Swarthmore—there’s always another album and experience waiting for the right moment to reveal itself. For now, I’ll keep letting his music thread itself through the corners of my Swarthmore life: the cold quiet of Underhill, the rhythmic blur of fencing warm-ups, the dusty chaos of the MakerSpace, and the calm discipline of Singer Hall.