Summer Loves: Pan and Springsteen

Does a dream become a lie when it doesn't come true? Do we need illusions, appearances, the constructions of our feelings and our psyche to achieve what we yearn for? Difficult questions that go beyond the scope of this Summer Clinic, but at least they serve to remind us and keep them in mind. That's what "The River ," the song that gave its name to the double album Bruce Springsteen released in 1980, speaks about. The song, loosely inspired by events that happened to his sister and her husband, exemplifies the working-class outlook that its creator could exhibit before becoming a multimillionaire.

A couple, almost children, who fall in love, but for whom reality (an unwanted pregnancy, the same job their father held, the factory closing) makes it impossible to remember their dreams, that Arcadian moment of freedom and true love, to avoid hurting them. Or to pretend it doesn't matter. As Oscar Wilde wrote, "When poverty comes in the door, love jumps out the window."

'The River' exemplifies the working-class outlook that its creator could exhibit before becoming a billionaire.

From what CMx tells us, it could have been The River, just as it could have been any other song. We have her, working remotely from a shared apartment with two men. One of them, Marc, works as a baker at night to pay for his studies. The other, Grego, "dedicated himself to meditation, involved in the guidelines of a yoga community." Reality is sometimes—very often, in fact—a terrible writer, because the casting of roles in this comedy—or tragedy—of rooms, doors, and desires, whether confessed or not, is very unbalanced, at least as CMx presents it.

Let's examine the situation. On one side, we have Marc, the soldier, and on the other, Grego, the poet. The soldier is the one who fulfills his duty, the worker, the sensible one. He works to study, that is, absolute realism, stability, and the future. And to make matters worse, he earns his living with his hands, kneading and baking bread, a telluric and ancestral activity, but at the same time, necessary, current, and far removed from all cynicism. Our soldier's hands work the bread that, according to Judeo-Christian tradition, the father, the chief of the tribe, crumbles with his hands and distributes among everyone.

And the poet. The one who lives outside of reality, the one who inspires dreams and fantasies, the one who points out that convention and the everyday are walls you must overcome, if not tear down. If what CMx tells us were a story and not a real-life anecdote, we could argue that someone who spends his days meditating and in a yoga community is little match for a guy who works tirelessly baking bread to feed his community and pay for his studies. But that's how it was.

We could have gone for tantric sex and uninhibited sexuality, but the soldier didn't give the poet much time to seduce CMx. We're told she wasn't aware that the soldier and the poet harbored dreams of winning her attention and love, and, although she doesn't admit it in her email, we can guess that she didn't have a clear preference either.

Whatever it was, we reached the momentum. One day, Marc arrives earlier than usual, carrying freshly baked croissants for breakfast with her. They do so, they laugh, they flirt, and they end up closing the door to her room, putting on The River as a soundtrack and devoting themselves to the solace of bodies and amorous desires. Grego, the poet, the yogi, was also in the apartment, perhaps like Kung-Fu Panda practicing the crane pose. In the days that followed, no one commented. Everything seemed to be business as usual, if not for Grego, who expressed his displeasure and a furious repulsion until then not expressed by The River , hurt and resentful that the triangle had opted for the soldier, the sensible and hardworking one, yes, but who could also exhibit poetry from the everyday, those freshly baked croissants.

The saying goes that the devil is in the details. Doctor Love agrees.

The saying goes that the devil is in the details. Doctor Love agrees. What disarms you is a failure in what you consider the security of knowing the other person. In this case, croissants, which indicated sensitivity and the ability to think about how to please the other person, to hit their stride. It's true that freshly baked croissants in the morning are the Chernobyl of romantic indifference.

The soldier played his cards well. And then, the most heterosexual, redneck, and unambiguous Springsteen did the rest. Faced with these weapons, there was little the poet, who also wanted to join CMx but couldn't bake his croissants in time, could do.

Summer Loves, in full

Enjoy the previous episodes of Carlos Zanón's summer series here.

Love with a pool Carlos Zanón