Bruuuuuuuuuuuuce

A few years ago HERE I rolled my eyes at the fan-created doc Springsteen & I, although it had one scene that got me:

Springsteen & I is a documentary that needs to explain why it exists, but I thought of this when I saw the great scene when the kid tells Bruce's he's been dumped, and Bruce gives him a hug. And he fucking means it.

 Of course that made me think of the famous 1980 story of him visiting a random fan's house:

Springsteen lore has it that Bruce was once spotted in a movie theater watching Woody Allen's Stardust Memories (which comments on artist/fan relations). The fan who saw him challenged Bruce to prove he didn't regard his own fans with the contempt as the Allen stand-in in the movie by coming to meet his mom and have dinner. Bruce did so and supposedly still visits the fan's mother every time he's in St Louis.

What this doesn't mention is Bruce was in awe that the kid opened HIS life up to him, just like the many, many kids who did every day:

"You meet somebody and it's like an open well. In ten minutes I'll know more about him than his mother and father do, maybe his best friend. All the things it usually takes for people to know each other just go away, because there's this feeling that it's so fleeting. They tell you the thing that's most important to them right away. It's just a real raw, emotional thing; it's like the cleanest thing you ever felt. You have a communication, a feeling, and I don't know, you just gotta love the guy. If you don't there's something the matter with you.

And it ain't some starry-eyed thing, and it ain't some Hollywood thing, and it ain't some celebrity thing. This guy, he loves you, and what's more, he knows you in a certain way. That's the thing that makes me strong. I get strong when I meet somebody like that."

And then for all my turning up my nose at the Springsteen & I doc, he drops this, hich is fucking amazing.