On not meeting Bruce Springsteen

Earlier this summer I came close to bumping into Bruce Springsteen on a side street in London. Then I ran away, and wrote this instead.

Since then, I've spoken to people who did meet Springsteen on that same street. I've watched others meet him in other places. At meet & greet book signings promoting the release of his autobiography, on the east and west coast, including California. Tickets gone before I could blink. And I've realised what a classic fool I was to walk away from the opportunity to meet him on more spontaneous terms. 

I've stood at a bar with Benedict Cumberbatch, and said nothing. Shared a cafe table with James McAvoy while he ate a slice of cake, and said nothing. Been in a bar with Matt Berninger, said nothing. Yes, I'm a fool. But god, none of that comes close to how much I regret not hanging around to say hi to Bruce Springsteen. 

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June 21, 2016


I’d always assumed Springsteen moved from hotel to hotel while travelling on tour. Then I learned that during Europe tour dates he sometimes settles in a certain London hotel for a bit and ‘commutes’ to shows. So he’s living in the same city as me for weeks at a time. 

Anyway, today is midsummer. I’m running errands in the city centre, except right now I’m sitting outside a cafe to try and calm down. Because I walked past that certain hotel earlier, half unintentionally, and there outside the entrance were a handful of Springsteen anoraks, clutching tatty records and looking poised to jump. Like an appearance of the man himself was imminent. I didn’t know what the hell to do so I just kept on walking. I couldn’t stop and wait with them on the pavement: the idea frightened me, repulsed me… and enticed me. I didn’t want to meet him. I wanted to meet him.

So I carried on walking like I didn’t give a fuck. It wasn't long, however, before my feet seemed to wander back down that street again, the other side of the road this time. 

But the Springsteen anoraks had gone. I’d just missed him, then. I didn’t know how to feel about this.

Meeting Springsteen would be the best thing to happen to me, and the worst thing: a dream and a nightmare. On one hand, the teenage dreamer inside me despairs at the thought of a life without some kind of contact with him. Another part of me also feels like I absolutely have to meet him, connect with him somehow, at some point. It’s almost non-negotiable. A bit like when Dylan would trek out to visit Woody Guthrie in hospital. (Leaving aside the fact that, unlike Dylan, I'm not a folk singer on the cusp of reshaping American culture, but whatever.) It's rare to have the chance to meet your hero and most people would jump at it, so I feel lucky to be able to have that choice. To know that you’re within metres of somebody who’s incredibly meaningful to you is a big comfort. And it’s exciting, of course. But it’s also unreal. Bruce Springsteen - along with all the days and nights spent at his shows - all of that is on another plane of reality, and it jars painfully to consider bringing that plane down to real life.

Yeah, to meet him would be wonderful, but not in that slightly sad, stale context. With a few seconds, a scribble of a pen, and another selfie. It’s not that meeting him this way would destroy my idealistic notions of him, or ‘cheapen’ him, or anything high-minded like that. It’s simply that the idea of meeting Bruce Springsteen is too big a thing for my head to comprehend. It’s too much. It makes my brain cells crumble. To link all the years of listening to and learning from his music, and all the hours watching him play and talk, and all the thoughts and words and lessons he's given me - to link all of that with standing on a street corner interrupting a rock star’s day for a few sweaty seconds, among a cluster of balding males - no. It can’t be like that.


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KATE. YOU IDIOT. 

Aarhus, Denmark

Aarhus, Denmark, July 2016, the morning after the Springsteen show in Horsens. Our flight doesn't leave until late afternoon; four hours to see as much of Aarhus as our withered feet'll allow. The city comes as something of a surprise. It's Copenhagen that's spread itself out across social media, from the marble-countered coffee bars and chic hygge all over Instagram, to yet another shot of colourful Nyhavn on your Facebook feed. (I'm just as guilty: stay tuned for my own belated post on the capital.) But Aarhus? Who knew! Granted it doesn't have the size, historical and cultural significance of Copenhagen. If you're looking for Danish city lifestyle in a nutshell, though, Aarhus is a good bet. Canals, coffee, cobbled lanes, a university, art, medieval churches, beaches, and a lot of bicycles.  

Danish brunch at Cafe Faust. 'My tongue's confused, I've eaten so many different types of food in one meal,' you say. It's cloudy, only just warm enough to eat outside by the Aarhus River canal, which opens out into the docks and the Kattegat sea. Here a cruise liner sits out of scale with the dock buildings, corrugated containers, cranes and rail tracks. Tough to get a view out to the horizon unless you step on an actual boat.

In the other direction, the canal tightens and bends through Midtbyen, the city centre. We follow the water this way, through the shopping district, past long lines of cyclists and tall brick apartment buildings, towards the ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum, the city's art gallery.

Art lover or not, the ARoS is worth visiting because it affords good views over the city, by way of both its height and its famous circular rainbow walkway, perched like a halo about its rooftops. The walkway is a fun novelty, the kind of thing I would've got overexcited about as a child. And that's the point - it's a family attraction, so it's busy and noisy, and I actually prefer the views from the rooftop itself, looking out over Aarhus as dark silhouettes walk a rainbow above my head. 

From the landscape of orange and grey rooftops we head back inside the museum. There's a Robert Mapplethorpe exhibition on that I'd missed when it was in London, and a Grayson Perry retrospective. The Mapplethorpe show is really good, of course, and it even ends with a 'dress like Patti Smith' section.

The cobbled streets that form the Latinerkvarteret, the oldest part of the city, lace their way around huge medieval churches, department stores, tiny shops, and countless cafes, linking the station with the university. Møllestien is often cited as the city's prettiest street: a picture-perfect cobbled mews, all colourful cottages, trailing hollyhocks and roses, bicycles propped against spick and span exteriors. The residences here date from the eighteenth century (the street itself of Viking era) giving you a sense of the city's age, though Latinerkvarteret architecture stretches back as far as the sixteenth century and before.

Of course, hidden amongst all this history are several record stores, in the kinds of buildings where you have to stoop to enter, the interior full of musty darkness, unexpected steps and alcoves. There's nothing worse than finding a good record store when you have a plane to catch - what's the word for that half-hearted rummaging you do when you know you should be on your way?

It wasn't just the record stores; I didn't have time to see as much of any of Aarhus as I'd like. Those few hours left me with the sense of Aarhus as an easy-going university city, full of history and culture, like Exeter or York in the UK maybe. The kind of place you spend a few days in, not to 'see the sights' but to slow down, dwell in Danish hygge, make your way round every bar and coffee shop, linger on the streets. Apparently there are good beaches not far away too. I don't know what it'd be like in the dead of winter, whether it'd have enough of Copenhagen's capital city energy to sustain a worthwhile trip. And if you want a photo of Møllestien with the hollyhocks in bloom, you've gotta go in July.

On our way to the airport bus we pass a group of Springsteen fans. They spot my River t-shirt and we talk in broken English about last night's show. They're on their way to Sweden, to see him play in Gothenburg. I am jealous. I don't want to go home. I want my run of cinnamon buns, street haunting, and Springsteen to continue forever.

A mix for unrequited lovers

Disclaimer: I'm not suffering from unrequited love. The other day though, I had reading and work to do, and thus a form of procrastination was required. I felt like making a mix but I had no inspiration for a theme or concept, no grand life event (like moving countries) to occasion. I went for a run. One of the songs that came on shuffle was Robyn's Dancing On My Own, a pop song whose greatness I'll always defend. Immediately following came Future Islands' excellent I'll-still-be-listening-to-this-when-I'm-forty Seasons (Waiting On You), and there was the spark. Unrequited love!


This mix starts and ends with wanting. Except the first kind of want, Springsteen's Dylan cover, is sweeping, twinkling, lamenting; that bittersweet thing only really good songs do, when they straddle two opposing emotions simultaneously. You're resigned to sadness, but you're kind of enjoying it. Bowie's Heroes is another song that does this, and The National's Sorrow: 'it's in my honey, it's in my milk ... I don't wanna get over you'. I always think of the 'you' here as referring to sorrow itself, as well as an actual person.


The kind of wanting this mix ends on, Brandon Flowers' Still Want You, is more hopeful. Like, 'throw as much shit as you can at me, and I'll still be here, wanting you, and I know you'll probably end up wanting me back'. It reminds me of a quote from Tove Jansson's The Summer Book:


'"It's funny about love," Sophia said. "The more you love someone, the less he likes you back."
"That's very true," Grandmother observed. "And so what do you do?"
"You go on loving," said Sophia threateningly. "You love harder and harder."'


This mix will take you on a journey between those two kinds of want; a journey of tears, rain, dancing, desperation, anger, loneliness, glowing lights, and time. Enjoy.


And if there're any glaring omissions, or you just want to share your favourite songs of unrequited love, I'm all ears.


A mix for unrequited lovers

1. I Want You (Bob Dylan cover)  /  Bruce Springsteen
2. Seasons (Waiting On You)  /  Future Islands
3. I Can't Believe It  /  The Animals
4. Release Me  /  Oh Laura
5. There's No One Crying Over Me Either  /  American Wrestlers
6. Crying  /  Roy Orbison
7. Time Moves Slow (ft. Sam Herring)  /  BADBADNOTGOOD
8. Hard To Find  /  The National
9. Dancing On My Own  /  Robyn
10. Still Want You  /  Brandon Flowers