I went back and forth for weeks on whether to submit an idea for the fall's planned Glory Days Symposium. The idea started as a comparison of Springsteen storytelling to the evolution of narrative journalism into crowd journalism (with narrative existing now and crowd existing then, just in different proportions). Then it became more about how Bruce's life development mixed with change in storytelling challenges. Then it became how a storyteller living in the real world felt the content and connected/isolated identity pressures of that world today. And there it had to stop because with about two minutes to go before the already-extended midnight deadline last night, I had to submit an abstract. 

The worry that had sent me back and forth was being unsure how I'd compete with the academics who drive things called symposiums. I can do Powerpoint at conferences, but my longest college paper was at most 25 pages. And it was the longest by a mile. But the tipping point on this trouble was e-mailing the coordinator late Sunday night and getting a great, friendly response within minutes. Sure, he said, we've had some non-academics before who did fine, so give it a shot.

So, okay. Why not? Even if the abstract falls big-time to Harvard and Monmouth, playing with the ideas and trying to focus them was fun.

Anyway, if you don't know the reference (tight Main Point '75 audio and ridiculous L.A. '85 video with fortune-teller and bear costumes):

I stood stone-like at midnight suspended in my masquerade / I combed my hair till it was just right and commanded the night brigade / I was open to pain and crossed by the rain and I walked on a crooked crutch / I strolled all alone through a fallout zone and came out with my soul untouched / I hid in the clouded wrath of the crowd but when they said "Sit down" I stood up / Ooh-ooh growin' up…

Abstract:

The clouded wrath of the crowd is a lot more cloudy than it used to be. Enveloped in this century's wealth of societal conversations, we hide by fact, not by choice, and we have to grow in a paradoxically connected world where everyone and no one notices our story. Do we sit down? Stand up? It's hard to tell the actions apart anymore. 

The challenge for the narrative follows closely. How does the storyteller begin to speak for the masses or even for self? Cultural and personal lenses come in a diversity that exceeds our comprehension. Unable to take it all in, we each push a great deal away and turn inward, observing ourselves and publishing these observations more than ever. Technology for self-expression — in e-mail, blog, song, video, comment, or tweet — has driven the propagation of lenses and perspectives but also allowed us this placement in the narrative sprawl. The storytellers among us, the ones who want to look across the land, have to collect, interpret and filter before even beginning to create the narrative — and far before any storytelling can occur. 

The challenge for the storyteller has always been to live in the world, and now the world is distributed and crowded. For Springsteen, he's seen both aspects in his career but never at the same time until now. The wild, bicoastal cast of characters in his early work came in his first decade of music, and the true crowds came in the second. As the masses packed in, the characters became archetypes or angled examainations of self. 

But in this decade, as the crowds have stayed and as new-media researcher Jay Rosen's "people formerly known as the audience" have amplified themselves to new levels, we have seen Springsteen's song storytelling run in three previously unexplored directions: to deep character minutiae, to a place beyond character and — in a flip of part of the '80s approach — to self as angled examinations of characters. Springsteen the storyteller has always lived deep within the crowd, but decreasing visibility there has forced new narrative resolutions. 

While Springsteen may claim to stay away from the Internet proper, digital's social explosion and its narrative effects have clearly influenced a vinyl troubador's new stories.

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