Why have millions of people worldwide felt these words (and their accompanying music) represent them?—so much so that they’ve stood on their chairs in concert arenas and sung along to them at the top of their lungs:

“Tramps like us, baby, we were born to run!”

I believe the answer is in what Aesthetic Realism, the philosophy founded by American poet and critic Eli Siegel, shows is the deepest, most urgent desire in every person: our desire to like the world honestly; that is, with all the facts present. That can seem like a tall order considering how frequently we meet obstacles and difficulties in life. And it can be especially hard at this time as a heartbreaking war has broken out in Eastern Europe and Covid-19 has upended our lives in so many ways.

Aesthetic Realism shows that, even so, the world itself can be liked, because it has an aesthetic structure: the oneness of opposites. That is what every successful work of art illustrates. “In reality, opposites are one;” Eli Siegel stated, “art shows this.” In its musical structure, Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run is a thrilling oneness of obstacle and release, heaviness and flight, repulsion and attraction, enmity and love—and, as such, we can learn from it happily.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying that it is easy to make sense of where we’re against the world and where we’re for it. But Aesthetic Realism shows greatly that when something corresponding to these opposites can be heard as one in music, we feel, however unconsciously, it’s possible to make sense of them in ourselves.

In a wonderful semester of the class The Opposites in Music, taught at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation by Barbara Allen and Dr. Edward Green, we studied notes from a 1975 class taught by Eli Siegel in which he discussed his essay “Questions for Everyone” in relation to music. He took up, for example, Question #3: “Have I sometimes felt that I hated everything?” He said music comments on this question because it consists of elements that are different from each other and, however harmonious they may be, they are opposed to each other as well. “Hate,” he said, “arises from the fact that things are different. Everything can be in a state of enmity.”

Born to Run is an exhilarating expression of the desire in people to break free of everything that stops us from truly being ourselves—those stultifying restraints coming from both outside and within ourselves. The music is an intense relation of high-spirited energy in a battle with something terrifically muddy and weighty. Listen, for example, to the opening: a quick series of drum beats and a heavily descending bass give way to a pulsating organism of struggling sound. The bass plays one relentless note over and over, a piano pounds out a rhythm on a single chord, the saxophone and other instruments drone out a thick blanket of inert sound, while drums, electric guitar and glockenspiel try with all their might to break free, with that familiar “Born to Run” anthem-like figure, spiritedly rising and descending against that thick wall of sound. Listen:

As the verse begins, we hear a slow, metallic strum of a guitar chord, and it’s like we’ve come to a clearing in the forest (though the bass still reminds us of thickness, difficulty). In the opening words, Springsteen represents people’s furious objection to an economic system that tells us, “Your whole life will be used to make profit for someone else.” And, as in many Springsteen songs, the attempt to break free is expressed in terms of hot-rod race cars:

In the day we sweat it out on the streets of a runaway American dream.
At night we ride through mansions of glory in suicide machines.

Then, on the words “Sprung from cages,” there is a sudden, wonderful uplift as piano and glockenspiel play exhilarated, up-and-down arpeggios, and the bass, which before was so heavy, is now dancing—positively lyrical. Still, the uplift and exhilaration are felt in the context of weighty opposition: that low, buzzing sound like molasses, which tries to push the singer back, even as he struggles against it. Then, at last, the first glimpse of triumph shines through on the refrain: “Tramps like us, baby, we were born to run!”

The terrific push for freedom continues in the second verse, as the singer asks a girl, Wendy, to join him. Then a grunted count of “1-2-3-4!” propels us into an inspired saxophone solo played by Clarence Clemons and, just as it reaches its height, the accompanying music suddenly turns darker for the middle section of the song. The fight between restriction and freedom is not resolved. No escape yet.

Sitting in my room in my family’s house in Yonkers, where I played this record hundreds of times in the late 70’s, I did sometimes feel I hated everything. But I didn’t have a beautiful enmity, as art always does. Mine was sloppy and it was ugly, because its purpose was to despise the world itself and see it as unworthy of me, which, I learned from Aesthetic Realism, is contempt: the “disposition in every person to think we will be for ourselves by making less of the outside world.” I used the fact that my family could be confusing to look down on people generally and see them as not worth knowing. And I felt people were out to trip me up or make fun of me. My mode of counterattack was to have a running stream of mocking thoughts about other people in my mind. But I didn’t know that this was the reason I despised myself so much.

In Aesthetic Realism Consultations, I came to see how contempt was hurting my life, and I’m so grateful to say I changed and became far happier than I ever imagined I could be. Aesthetic Realism enables one to look at a feeling of against-ness, outrage, even hate and ask, “Is my objection on behalf of greater justice, beauty, kindness, or is it for the glory of my narrow ego?” We can learn to have these opposites—for and against—in a way that makes us proud.

In Born to Run, there’s a sense throughout that the ferocious anger it expresses has within it a belief in a beautiful, likeable outcome; and the music sustains that. Still, the hate is unmistakable. “When people want to get away,” Eli Siegel said in the class I’m quoting from, “there is some hate.”

In the brooding middle section, the accents now land on the 1st and 3rd beats, giving a sense of struggle, incompleteness, yearning. The words describe teenage frustration—an agonizing relation of inertia and restlessness—with images of the New Jersey shore:

Beyond the Palace hemi-powered drones scream down the boulevard.
Girls comb their hair in rear-view mirrors and the boys try to look so hard.
The amusement park rises bold and stark;
Kids are huddled on the beach in the mist.
I wanna die with you Wendy on the street tonight in an everlasting kiss!

This is melodramatic, but I take it as a saying that one sincere moment is worth a lifetime of fakery.

The band now goes into a wrestling match of epic proportions, with one force trying to take off, and another force struggling to hold it down. Finally, the taking-off contender is beaten to the ground in what sounds like an unbreakable stalemate—and then something mighty happens: there is a terrific release. This is the moment near the end of a Springsteen concert (at least the ones I attended in the 70’s), when all the house lights come on in the gigantic arena and we see the whole crowd and ourselves at once and realize—this song is us! Right here! Right now! It happens on these words:

The highway’s jammed with broken heroes on a last chance power drive.
Everybody’s out on the run tonight but there’s no place left to hide.
Together Wendy we can live with the sadness, I’ll love you with all the madness in my soul
Oh, someday girl, I don’t know when, we’re gonna get to that place where we really wanna go and we’ll walk in the sun…but till then…
Tramps like us, baby we were born to run!

I have been amazed to see that this recording is a compound of struggle and freedom all the way from the first note to last. Even in this triumphant last section the highway’s “jammed” and “there’s no place left to hide.” It doesn’t present an easy answer, but it does present a fight—even a feeling of hate—as having a pleasurable, beautiful form. And having looked at it in terms of the opposites, as always happens, I love it more than ever!

Here comes the big finale:

Learn more: AestheticRealism.org

Like millions of people, I am very taken by Ed Sheeran’s giant hit record of 2014-15, Thinking Out Loud, and I believe the reason for its tremendously popularity is the way it puts opposites together—specifically, casualness and passion, intensity and ease, large feeling presented within a careful framework. We respond to this because deeply it represents what we want in our own lives, in keeping with this great principle of Aesthetic Realism, the education founded by the American poet and philosopher Eli Siegel: “All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves.”

Thinking Out Loud doesn’t have the typical pop arrangement of verse/verse/chorus/verse, etc. Instead, it consists mainly of two large sections, each of which contains four short mini-sections that are melodically different from each other, but that build upon each other quite naturally to deliver the passionate import of the song. So, with all the emotional stir of Sheeran’s delivery, we’re also deeply pleased by a satisfying structure—including how the second half exactly parallels the melodic outline of the first.

The song begins very quietly with just a touch on the strings of a guitar chord; and Ed Sheeran’s voice is almost conversational, like a man speaking to a woman over a café table, as very spare and quiet guitar chords continue to play underneath his words. Listen:

Here, the melody rises and falls very modestly — yet there is wonder and yearning together with warm confidence in the way each line rises from the third up to the sixth, and then settles down to the tonic. So while the melody has an easy, casual way about it, there’s already a growing fervency.

Piano, drums and bass are now added to the mix as the momentum gathers. In the lines of the next mini-section, there is a pattern of notes that eagerly strive upward, settle down to something more anchored, and then rise again. There’s a pleasing relation of rushing forward and pause, as his passion continues to build.

We just heard the transitional phrase: “And I’m thinking ‘bout how…” which will lead us into the next mini-section. The melody is again different, with each line beginning with a tightly struggling, high-pitched phrase that then resolves.

And here the song hits what I — and I imagine a lot of other people — feel is its most beautiful moment. It’s on the transitional phrase “So, honey, now.” The way Ed Sheeran sings that word “now” — it seems to just flow out of him so naturally, you could almost say easily, and yet it is so passionately sung; like he’s singing it with every atom of his being:

Following this wonderful outburst is a last mini-section which I guess could rightly be called the chorus. It continues the large, excited feeling that has been reached. In the words there is a relation of intimacy and width:

Take me into your loving arms
Kiss me under the light of a thousand stars
Place your head on my beating heart
I’m thinking out loud
Maybe we found love right where we are.

In the cascading melody of each line there is a sound of struggle and gratitude, pain and triumph at once. Yet somehow, with all the feeling exploding forth, the song never loses its easy-going quality that has been there from the beginning. One reason I think is, again, those long pauses between the lines, as well as the spareness of the instrumental accompaniment. There’s a sound of casually luxuriating in one’s large emotion:

I love Aesthetic Realism for showing that we all want to put opposites together every moment of our lives. We want, as we’re taking it easy, to feel it is on behalf of vivid, lively respect for the world and people. And we want to feel, too, that we are capable of large emotion, and then, when we do have large feeling, that we can be truly at ease, not uncomfortable and looking for a chance to smooth things out.

I’m so fortunate to have heard criticism of the contempt that caused me to divide these opposites of ease and excitement and to go back and forth painfully between them. And I want to change more. In one class, Ellen Reiss, the Aesthetic Realism Chairman of Education, said to me very kindly:

The thing in you that wants to be passionate about the truth and beauty in this world is you.  The other thing is an imposter.

I count myself one of the lucky people living on this earth to know that having big emotion about the world outside of me is the same as true comfort for my own dear self. And I aim to feel this more and more as my life goes on.

The title of this song, “Thinking Out Loud,” itself puts together the opposites of quietude and outburst that I’ve been writing about, while also illustrating what Eli Siegel has shown are the opposites central in rock and roll: private, secret, inner feeling made into a public announcement.

Then there’s what the song is actually saying. In the first part, he tells a woman that when she grows old he’ll still love her; and in the second part, he says that when he grows old, he believes she’ll still love him. And each part culminates in his saying, “So now, take me into your loving arms” and the rest of that passionate chorus, concluding with, “I’m thinking out loud, maybe we found love right where we are.” So, like the qualities we find in the music itself, there is in the words passionate feeling together with a kind of rock-solid confidence and ease. I’ve thought about that last line and the phrase, “right where we are.” It seems to say that love can be found in the world as we find it here and now — not in some other time or place of our imagination.

I’m immensely grateful that because of what I’ve learned from Aesthetic Realism, I’m more in love now with my dear wife Carol McCluer than at any time in our marriage. That is because we’ve learned from Aesthetic Realism that our care for each other needs to be based on care for the world itself.

As you’ll hear, the second large section exactly parallels the structure of the first section that I described — both melodically and with the repeat of certain rhymes and phrases in the words, making for a satisfying relation of sameness and difference. As the song goes on, more and more is added to the accompaniment, causing the feeling to build: the piano gets busier and stronger for example, and backup singers quietly join the lead singer, sometimes harmonizing with him, other times backing him up with rich harmonies on the syllable “Oooh.” Then there’s a guitar solo. It, too, has that relation of fervency and measure that is in the song as a whole. And it leads to the concluding chorus, where Sheeran is joined even more strongly by the backup singers, whom I like to see as standing for the outside world ratifying his emotion.

I respect the singing of Ed Sheeran. I feel he is unafraid to have and show large feeling, and I love his style. I don’t know whether it would be right to call this recording great. Maybe not, but — like millions of people — I know that I like it very much. It shows that ease and large feeling can be beautifully together. And as such, it stands for what we all most deeply want. Here is the remainder:

Learn more: AestheticRealism.org

The great Aretha Franklin has died, but the powerful, soul-stirring effect that her singing has on us will live on for all time.

I believe Aretha’s singing thrills us so deeply because, at her best, she puts together opposites that we are hoping to make sense of in our lives. What I’m saying is based on this principle of Aesthetic Realism, stated by its founder, Eli Siegel: “All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves.”

When, for example, we hear one of Aretha’s high-energy rockers (such as Chain of Fools, Since You’ve Been Gone, or Respect) or some of her more meditative pieces (like I Say a Little Prayer or Natural Woman), we hear a beautiful togetherness of power and grace, straight-line simplicity and tremendous richness of meaning, a single self and the wide universe. And we want this: We want to feel powerful and graceful at once; to feel that our most intimate feelings are connected with the unlimited world.

In Aretha’s best singing, there seems to be no separation between her own feeling and the sound that meets our ears. She reaches us from the depth of her very self. She tells the truth in sound.

I believe we love her singing because it has us feel maybe we can break out of our own self-containment and get to a large, passionate feeling about something or someone, and through doing so, feel more truly ourselves.

God bless you, Aretha Franklin. And thank you for the beautiful honesty you bring to the art of song.

Learn more: AestheticRealism.org

This summer marks 55 years since the amazing live recording of Stevie Wonder performing Fingertips, Part 2 (at age 12) first mesmerized our nation.

To commemorate that auspicious beginning in 1963 and to celebrate the love for Stevie Wonder felt by people worldwide, I’m proud to post a video of a paper on Fingertips, Part 2 that I gave as part of a presentation, “What Music Says about Our Lives—A Celebration!” at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation in New York.

Hope you enjoy it!

I’m amazed it took until this year for the great British rock band The Moody Blues to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

But they’re in now, and they surely do belong!

In 1967 they did that daring thing: they created a rock album Days of Future Passed with an orchestra consisting mainly of classical instruments, calling itself the London Festival Orchestra. And it wasn’t just that this combination was new; it was done with such beauty, such grandeur, and with such authenticity—a certain rightness in the combination—that it made this record a landmark in the history of music.

After the lush orchestral overture (The Day Begins), the band comes radiating forth with Dawn Is a Feeling that has in it the expanding, energetic inevitability of the rising Sun. And by the time we hit Peak Hour, the full force of the Moody Blues as a bona fide rock band reaches high noon. Onward through the buoyant joy of Tuesday Afternoon and the poignant yearning of Nights in White Satin, orchestra and band keep intermingling, effectively heightening each other and making for an album like no other. And in all of their subsequent albums, that sense of sweeping largeness joined with the urgent immediacy of rock and roll, flourished and took many new forms.

I think the greatest thing about the Moody Blues is the overall sense their songs frequently give us that we are in a world that has goodness, beauty and meaning—a world that is on our side. This comes through not only in the message of the songs, but in the deeply convincing music that delivers that message.

As you, my readers, know, my writing on this site is based on this principle of Aesthetic Realism stated by its founder, Eli Siegel: “All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves.” Again and again in their best music, the Moody Blues make a beautiful one of gentleness and ferocity, continuity and rhythmic punch, high and low, yearning and joy, definite and indefinite, a single self and the wide universe. This is why we respond to their music with such pleasure: it does what we are deeply hoping to do.

Aesthetic Realism shows that all art is a presentation of reality as worthy of our honest respect and love; and as such, it points the way for how we hope to see all the time.

Today I celebrate the Moody Blues and thank them for providing an abundance of material for doing just that.

Learn more: AestheticRealism.org