Elemental, My Dear Big Man

Nine years already?  

Where does the time go.  I know where it goes.  Same place it has always gone, which is racing past at one million miles per hour.  

Nobody captured my audience's imagination or their hearts like Clarence. 

Clarence was, Clarence was a figure out of a rock 'n' roll storybook, and 

together, we told a story that was bigger than any of the ones I had written

in my songs. It was a story where not only does Scooter and the Big Man

bust the city in half, but we remade the city.  We remade the city shaping it

into the kind of place where our friendship and our love for one another

would't have been such an exceptional thing.

First night I saw Clarence he came walkin' out of the shadows towards the

band stand, nodded to me, got up, stood to my right, for the very first

time. He picked up his saxophone, and when he played - when he played,

he whispered that story in my ear. And then we whispered it into your ear,

and we carried it together for a long, a long good time. The Big Man was

big. Everything about him. His personality, his size, his laugh, the sound

of his saxophone. When I first heard it, I thought it was the biggest sound

I ever heard.  And it was. His heart, his problems - they were big. 

But he was elemental in my life. And losing him was like losing the rain. 

If I were a mystic, if I were a mystic, I guess Clarence and mine's friendship

would lead me to believe that we, we stood together in other older times,

ya know and uh, in other lives, along other rivers, in other ancient cities,

in other fields, workin' side by side, with the sun settin', doin' our modest

version of God's work. 

I'll see you in the next life, Big Man.

-Tenth Avenue Freeze Out (Springsteen on Broadway)

Bruce Springsteen