Hamburg’s Senator for Culture Carsten Brosda (SPD) has been working intensively on songs by the musician Bruce Springsteen for several months. “I’m currently writing a book in which I try, among other things, to explain political values with songs by Springsteen. It works surprisingly well,” said the 48-year-old of the German Press Agency in Hamburg.
He’s been writing the book for a long time, but it’s far from finished. It is scheduled for release in fall 2023. “That’s my plan too. But that only works in the gaps that you have.” But if they don’t appear or he doesn’t have any inspiration, then it just doesn’t go any further. “I don’t do it full-time and can sit down at my desk in the morning and stay there until 2 p.m., like some other people can do. I don’t write a line between 8 a.m. and 2 p.m. But I write between 11 p.m. and 1:30 a.m. – and that also depends on how the previous evening at the theater was.”
In general, the book is an attempt “to search for narratives in books, songs, films, plays and other works of art that are all around us, which are not at all political on the surface, but which of course contain political ideas in themselves”. It’s about meaningful stories that are told everywhere, but not necessarily interpreted politically. Such stories, which can also educate a community, are often found in Springsteen’s songs. “You can explain freedom with Bruce Springsteen, for example. There is an immediacy of emotion when you listen to “Thunder Road”. That works great.”
Brosda does not necessarily want to meet the musician Springsteen personally, who will also appear in Hamburg in 2023. “That’s always the classic question. Do you actually really want to meet one of the people you have such a fanboy moment for? Or isn’t it better to live with the illusion that they are the way you thought they were?” He doesn’t have the compelling need to meet him. “If that somehow came about, I certainly wouldn’t say no.” Springsteen speaks for him through the works he has created. “And some of those are great stories.”