bruce springsteen movie, nebraska, born in the USA, serial killers, spree killers, industrial poisoning, american greatness
yesterday i was grateful for seeing the new bruce springsteen movie with friends, and for our waitress e who makes a point of acknowledging and supporting my feminine presentation...
today i am looking forward to restorative yoga with maryanne and getting my nails painted red for halloween...
as i watched the springsteen movie, a kind of sadness came over me... it focused on the period between stardom and super stardom... the period when he wrote and recorded the songs for nebraska and born in the USA... the music is mournful, proud, frustrated... working class struggle permeates... it's a portrait of america that was already slipping away from greatness...
i am listening to the nebraska album as i write this... the title song is about a teenage spree killer, charles starkweather... his spree unfolded from 1957-1958... i am reminded of murderland by caroline fraser... fraser's thesis is that an unusually high number of serial killers operating during the 1970's and 80's was the result, at least in part, of industrial pollution... all of the killers she talks about lived in downwind plume areas of industrial smokestacks... and we were all taking lead into our lungs during that time, leaded gas being a thing until the 90's... the broader point she makes in the book is that industrial corporate america knowingly poisoned people while telling them there was nothing to fear from their discharge... industrial corporate america was as much serial killer as the killers their poisons helped created...
the "greatness" of the usa was built on industrialization which simultaneously poisoned the population even as it generated wealth... usually the poor and working class who lived near industrial facilities... reading murderland suggested to me that the seeds of decline were built into the rise to industrial greatness... we got wealthy... we got sick... i wonder if the present insanity can be related to the poisoning of the boomer population... whether there is some truth in the idea that boomers fucked things up... because too many of us were fucked up?...
this line of thinking suggests we are collapsing, not just going through a phase... i hope that isn't the case, but it's hard not to draw the conclusion...
gloomy thoughts for a rainy day...
the springsteen movie was awesome by the way… highly recommended…