Hey Pretty Darling, Don't Wait Up For Me -- Gonna Be a Long Walk Home

There are days when I'm completely lost.

I doubt my instincts, my reasoned judgment, my sense of hope. I stare from behind the wheel of my car at a metallic liquid swirl of humanity, oozing along New Jersey's clogged roads. Each life inside, disconnected from one another and the madness of more distant lands.

I live in a country divided by pride and shame — and blinded by both. I recognize my neighbors, but I do not know them. My country feels vibrant, but something is dying inside.

Is there anybody alive out there?

You're damn right there is.

When I went to see Bruce Springsteen open his "Magic" tour in Hartford, Conn., last week, I already knew the answer to that question — one he's been asking in one form or another since I was born. It's a question that echoes throughout the new album's first single, "Radio Nowhere," probing the void of American alienation and issuing a challenge to connect.

The song demands attention. It pleads and promises. Like his best songs, it offers a token of faith to escape the cold darkness. "I just want to feel some rhythm!" Bruce belted to the back of the old hockey barn.

Over the course of the show, the unsteady undercurrent of the new songs shake through the wall of sound. Springsteen is not just singing about girls in their summer clothes, sunsets, motorcycles, breakups, barmaids, lost soldiers and hometowns. As much as he's ever done, he's peeling the thin skin off of his country and exposing it to the elements. The songs might jump and swerve, but the aftertaste proves disarming and corrosive. What's happened to this great nation? Where are we going? How did we get here?

I was born here. Like Bruce, here in New Jersey. And like Bruce, I've always peered toward the edge of town, looking elsewhere, wondering, imagining. The best art teaches us something about our world, about human nature. Springsteen songs do more. They let you inhabit other lives, recognizing universal foibles and emotions through the behavior of strangers.

I grew up a white, privileged suburban kid. I've never known real hunger, real suffering, enduring danger or genuine hopelessness. I've never robbed a bank, raced cars, gambled away my life, fought in a war, married the wrong woman, worked at a car wash, or watched my brother's taillights disappear into Canada after he bashed a man's head in.

But thanks to Bruce, I somehow know these people. I feel more complete as a person. More compassionate and hungrier for real experience.

In concert, the E Street Band blows the lid off complacency. The set list takes us from the angry grief and desperate hope in the days after Sept. 11 ("The Rising") to the disastrous squandering of goodwill and good sense that defines our current adventure in Iraq ("Last to Die"). The songs puncture America's daydream, a fantasy in which our leaders do not imprison people indefinitely without due process, in which the rule of law can't be discarded with a signing statement and the machinations of hack toadies, in which we do not torture prisoners, in which fear does not trump bravery and liberties do not sell at a discount under a red, white and blue banner promising safety.

It's appropriate that I saw Springsteen in Connecticut — an old friend in a new place. I'm moving there next week to start a new job, share a home with my girlfriend, meet new neighbors. Maybe I'll get to know them better.

I hope something changes, and this country comes together, rediscovers what made it great, veers away from the cliff and arrives in The Promised Land.

"Here everybody has a neighbor," Bruce sings. "Everybody has a friend. Everybody has a reason to begin again."

Some days I'm completely lost. And some days, with a little help, I'm ready to make the long walk home.