Words and image from summer 2011. Photo: Nebraska.

It’s the song of the summer of 2011, which is hard for me to grasp, even now, having listened to the entire “Born to Run” album countless times and knowing that I will likely listen to it countless times more before the summer is fully out. And probably even after still.

My teenage self is horrified. Mortified. She was right about many things, especially music, but not always. Either that, or this is the first sign of my decline. The second is the introduction of harem pants into my wardrobe along with colourful, bejewelled sweaters. If I start to morph into my mother send for help.

I think it was this line that did it:

“So you’re scared and you’re thinking that maybe we ain’t that young anymore…”

I turned 38 recently, and in the days leading up to it and for sometime afterward (maybe even now), I was feeling fearful and helpless about aging. I am aging faster than I’d like. There is less and less time left. Human life is not long enough. I experienced a lot of death at a young age so I am not worrying about death for the first time in the way that people do as they grow older and come face-to-face with health concerns and the undeniable proof of their own mortality. Instead, I am adding a new set of reasons for worry. Before it was recklessness, accidents, and cancer. Now it’s all of those reasons and more. 

I feel a melancholy that is wrapped around everything right now and there is something about that album that captures it, although it is not expressed in the over-indulgent 80’s era saxaphone on songs like “She’s the One” and “Night.” 

Definitely not there, thank god, because that is the third sign.