Lyrics Spotlight - "Darkness On The Edge Of Town"

"I lost my money and I lost my wife,
Them things don't seem to matter much to me now."
- "Darkness on the Edge of Town", Darkness on the Edge of Town

"Darkness on the Edge of Town" is perhaps one of Bruce's most underrated songs.  Of course, I don't actually mean underrated by the fans, who rated it as Bruce's 11th best song, but underrated by me.  In beginning to write this lyrics spotlight, there were several lines I could've written expanded thoughts on, and perhaps I will at a later date.  But, for now, I'd just like to spotlight this somber line.

Now, granted, the narrator of this song has lived a much tougher life than me.  I still have my money, and I have not lost a serious girlfriend, much less a wife.  But, whenever I hear this long, it strikes me in a completely different way.  I see it as a re-prioritizing of one's life.  Things that you valued at one point no longer seem important.

I am an avid lover of nostalgia.  I love looking back and exploring my past.  I still try to remain connected to my youth, such as reading comic books and watching basketball games.  Heck, I even get nostalgic when I read old posts from this blog!  However, there have been times when I've dug up something that I used to love, and find myself muttering, "Them things don't seem to matter much to me now."  Here's a recent example:

In my neighborhood, there is a delightful store called Pop Fuzz.  This store specializes in carrying second-hand pop culture items from the 80s and 90s.  I could go on and on about all the random crap that I love in this store, but every time I visit there, my eyes are immediately drawn to these:

Those are movie trading cards from the late 80s and early 90s.  For me, the Batman trading cards always held a special place in my heart.  You see, whenever I visited my grandmother's house, my cousin, my brother, and I would take a trip down the block to a local delicatessen.  Here, we would get assorted snacks, Slush Puppies, and, of course, Batman trading cards.  I must have had hundreds of those things.

So, flash forward to the future, and I naturally caved, ponying up the $0.75 and buying myself a pack.  I rushed home to open these suckers...and boy oh boy was I disappointed.  Granted, there was a temporary amount of joy - I loved the feeling of unwrapping a brand new pack of trading cards - but this lasted about as long as the flavor of Fruit Stripes gum.  I flipped through the cards, which were just poorly framed movie stills printed on floppy cardboard, and was completely baffled about how I would have spend hours looking and sorting through them as a child.  "Them things don't seem to matter much to me now."  It goes to show that all trips down memory lane are not made equal: while some memories you should never let go, others are perhaps best kept in their own place and time.