Into this Tunnel of Love…I think I am already there

Tunnel of Love
Bruce Springsteen

My mom introduced me to this song on a trip back from the Lake. It’s the title song from Bruce Springsteen’s album Tunnel of Love, the album he wrote after going through a very public divorce with his first wife. The album also features Brilliant Disguise, one of our family’s favorite Springsteen song. So far it is one of the songs I have listened to at least once a day here in Norway.

Fat man sitting on a little stool
Takes the money from my hand while his eyes take a walk all over you
Hands me the ticket smiles and whispers good luck
Cuddle up angel cuddle up my little dove
We’ll ride down baby into this tunnel of love

I can feel the soft silk of your blouse
And them soft thrills in our little fun house
Then the lights go out and its just the three of us
You me and all that stuff were so scared of
Gotta ride down baby, into this tunnel of love

The line “you me and all the stuff we’re so scared of” is my favorite. It makes me think of my relationship with my Kristen. What we’re thinking, what our expectations of each other are, what are our hopes, and how things can scare us in our relationship and make us question what we may think is fact. For example, this whole thing of me being in Norway.

Theres a crazy mirror showing us both in 5-d
Im laughing at you you’re laughing at me
There’s a room of shadows that gets so dark brother
Its easy for two people to lose each other in this tunnel of love

Everyone has baggage and things that they are not proud of. Even the happiest person on the planet, or the happiest couple has baggage or something hidden. This is what I assume needs to be risen above later in the song. What he is referring to is how people can get caught up in this chaos that is love and lose each other. I don’t want this to happen with the KU and me. The darkness for Kristen and I, IMO, is me being in Norway and the uncertainty if Kristen is going to come and visit me, who I am meeting, things that I am doing, when we have always done a lot of things together. I think this will be good for us both (of course I say that now), because I can’t say “This is going to ruin us”…because it isn’t, Kristen and I are strong enough to handle this, and if she comes and visits me here we will be that much stronger.

It ought to be easy ought to be simple enough
Man meets woman and they fall in love
But the house is haunted and the ride gets rough
And you’ve got to learn to live with what you cant rise above if you want to ride on down in through this tunnel of love

Also that line in bold, the “you got to learn to live with what you can’t rise above”. The never-ending issue of compromises, negotiations, and sacrifices that people make when they’re in love. For example this summer, Kristen wanted me to spend a couple of days down at a lake cabin that her Dad had rented for the weekend, just a couple of days before I left for Norway. This entire summer I had spent almost every weekend at the lake doing projects with my family (see previous posts), so I was tired of going to cabins, and didn’t really want to go Dassel and then be rushed back to go to Oslo.

So, I pitched a fit and was able to make a compromise between Kristen and I that the last weekend I had, the two of us would have the lake to ourselves. It worked, we had a great weekend together alone, and got a chance to talk about what the rest of the next 3 months would be like.

Kristen has started looking into flights for October. I am going to Bergen soon with some people in my group for some hiking and site seeing then flying back (which I still need to book my tickets for YIKES). I was thinking the KU and I could tour around areas of Oslo I know and explore some of Norway, then go to Sweden or Denmark and see if those could be places to possibly settle down later in life. Ideally for the two of us would be Germany for our backgrounds are more German than Scandinavia, but who knows what will happen.