Everything Dies, Baby, That’s A Fact

The first time hearing Atlantic City from Bruce Springsteen’s 1982 bare-boned acoustic release, Nebraska, was a special moment for me. As an avid music fan, I believe moments like those only happen a handful of times in one’s life. Those songs that freeze you in time. Those songs that single-handedly remold you and allow you the freedom to think of the world and your life from a different perspective than you’ve had before.

The entire album features a cast of characters who spend their entire lives operating on that very thin line between good and evil. Even the evil characters on this album don’t invite hate, they invite questions about circumstance. Is there inherent good and evil? Or only circumstantial? Is a poor man who can’t feed his family bad for stealing? Or would he be bad for letting his family starve? These questions are posed throughout the entire album, and specifically in Atlantic City. A man in such desperation that he begins to do “favours” for the unruliest of people in order to secure some kind of future for himself and his lover, some kind of hope.

This song formed the framework for my writing. As an industry kid with blue-collar parents, I’ve seen firsthand these types of characters. Maybe in some ways I’ve been one myself. A child feeling trapped by a future written in stone. One that he feels he has no control over, no way of changing. And in that desperation, you act out. But not because you’re evil, but because you’re scared. You’re terrified of what will happen to you if you don’t fight the constricting force of your own fate.

That thin line has provided me with all the inspiration for my writing. I have no interest in writing about characters who never tread that line. The fairy-tale heroes with hearts of gold beating inside of their chiseled frame. In many ways, I also have very little interest in writing about characters who are a hundred per cent pure evil either.

My aim, my goal, is really to make you think about these folks. Whether I succeed at this or not is up to the reader. But for me, I want the reader to put themselves in the shoes of these characters and have an honest conversation with themselves about what they would do if these situations were to happen to them. If the shoe was on the other foot.

If you were to spend your entire life with your back against the wall, would you always make the honourable decision? Or would you sometimes resort to your most primal instincts in order to live another day? These are important questions. Questions that Springsteen asks in Atlantic City, and throughout the entire album. Questions that inspire me to write every day.