A great rock band searches for the same kind of combustible force that fueled the expansion of the universe after the big bang. You want the earth to shake and spit fire. You want the sky to split apart and for God to pour out.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the passionate energy and creative force that a great rock band strives to evoke in their music.
Bruce Springsteen likens the electric and powerful performance of a great rock band to the cosmic energy that ignited the universe after the Big Bang. He suggests that true musical greatness comes from a force that is intense and transformative, capable of moving both the earth and the spirit of the audience in profound and spectacular ways.
In practice
In a speech about the impact of music on culture.
I played in front of every conceivable audience you could face: an all-black audience, all-white, firemen's fairs, policemen's balls, in front of supermarkets, bar mitzvahs, weddings, drive-in theaters. I'd seen it all before I ever walked into a recording studio.
I imagined the hard things that pulled us apart _x000D_ _x000D_ Will never again, sir, tear us from each other's hearts.
Tonight this fool's halfway to heaven and just a mile outta hell_x000D_ And I feel like I'm comin' home.
The artists we love, they put their fingerprint on your imagination, and on your heart and your soul.
Well I got this guitar and I learned how to make it talk.
I was always concerned with writing to my age at a particular moment. That was the way I would keep faith with the audience that supported me as I went along.
The artist produces for the liberation of his soul.
It sometimes takes a foreigner to come and see a place and paint it. I remember someone saying they had never really noticed the palm trees here until I painted them.
There she weaves by night and day, A magic web with colors gay. She has heard a whisper say, A curse is on her if she stay, To look down to Camelot. She knows not what the curse may be, And so she weaveth steadily, And little other care hath she, The Lady of Shalott.
From my spirit's gray defeat, From my pulse's flagging beat, From my hopes that turned to sand Sifting through my close-clenched hand, From my own fault's slavery, If I can sing, I still am free. For with my singing I can make A refuge for my spirit's sake, A house of shining words, to be My fragile immortality.
The commitment to working at poetry is important because a poet is a maker, and a poem is a made thing. We have to honor our feelings by working to transform them into something meaningful and lasting.
The only way to avoid being unhappy is to close yourself up in Art and to count for nothing all the rest.
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