"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.
