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By lunchtime I was thinking: it feels like I'm getting a migraine...and the massive sudden change in weather would back that up...but... I can't have a migraine! I just had one on Friday!

Yeah that's not how it works. I do feel like it's "not my turn yet," though. Hmph.

And yet here I am to tell you that my favorite musician is being threatened by the administrator of the country he and I are both from, for what Springsteen said in the city where I am now.

I refuse to read any more about this but D, who sent me this link, has been updating me since on it. The Boss keeps saying the government of his country is a threat to life and liberty every night on stage and Trump keeps insulting him on Truth Social: apparently now his skin is like a wrinkly prune.

Today D told me that Springsteen and the E Street Band have released an EP of what Bruce said and a few relevant songs from that first gig outside the U.S.

I listened to (most of) it while I was trying to work this afternoon. I'm just so delighted that it was in Manchester, which prides itself on being a city of rebellious and momentous music. (If only the gig had been at the Free Trade Hall instead of Coop Live! but it still makes me think of Bob Dylan and the Sex Pistols...)

I listened to the introduction, some of the lines I'd read about, and then the song and it struck me that "Land of Hope and Dreams" is a song closely connected to Clarence Clemons's death. It couldn't be as good a song as it without stemming from a profound lifelong love that Springsteen talks so movingly about in his autobiography and in Springsteen on Broadway, and that love existed between a Black man and a white man, about whom a Springsteen biographer said "They were these two guys who imagined that if they acted free, then other people would understand better that it was possible to be free."

And the song has taken on this whole new life, which I'm glad of even if I'd rather The Big Man got to live a longer life.

I listened to the intro for the other song, I was trying to eat my lunch and I ended up with my eyes closed, unable to do more than listen and breathe. And after talking for a few minutes, he quotes James Baldwin -- "There isn't as much humanity in the world as I'd like. But there's enough" -- and then says "Let's pray." And for some reason, the next track didn't start. And that was the end of that one. So I just sat there, over my bowl of leftovers, imagining this happening a few miles down the road and a few days ago, I felt like I was there.

But suspended in this weird silence that went on for a long time before I realized that something technological had gone wrong.

I read all about his Catholic childhood in his autobiography and recognized a lot of it myself, but neither of us have retained it. Silent prayer isn't his style. Going right in to the next song is. And that's what he did.