Worried About U.S. Tribalism? Go See Springsteen

There’s a moment in his Broadway show when Bruce Springsteen steps away from the microphone in the middle of a song. He continues to play his guitar, continues to sing, and walks to the edge of the stage. What’s he doing? It took a moment for me to realize that he was trying to create a sense of living-room community in a theater on 48th Street. He wanted his audience to hear him singing directly. With no filter. Nothing but air between his mouth and our ears.

The notion of community permeates the show. At the beginning, Springsteen describes his “magic trick” as his ability to demonstrate that “us” actually exists. The specific “us” — the specific community — to which he is referring is not entirely clear. But for the artist who describes his life’s work as “judging the distance between American reality and the American dream,” my mind immediately turns to the U.S. as a national community.