James Griffin: The coolest of religious experiences

James Griffin. Photo / Dean Purcell

I have in my hand a taonga. A treasure. Well, it's a treasure to me anyway. And I don't have it in my hand, obviously, otherwise how would I be able to type? Figuratively, I have it in my hand, whereas in reality it sits on the desk beside me, awaiting my love.

There is a picture of a man on the taonga. He is wearing a white T-shirt and a black leather jacket and he stands in front of some venetian blinds. He has his hands in his pockets. He looks both youthful and world-weary at the same time. He could use a haircut. His name is Bruce - the worst name for a rock star ever.

The taonga in question is Bruce Springsteen's newly released multi-disk CD/DVD box set The Promise: The Darkness on the Edge of Town Story. It arrived for me yesterday, in a box, all the way from America, because I asked them to send it to me and paid them some money to make it so, may Bruce bless the miracle of ordering stuff by mail.

I can't remember when I fell in love with Bruce, but love it definitely is. Not gay love, just to be clear on things, but a love that goes beyond gender to a place more spiritual and ethereal. Mind you, the way Bruce is looking at me right now, from the cover of the box, with those dark, come hither eyes ...

I'd like to think my love affair with Bruce began the instant I first heard the power chords that kick off Born to Run and that by the time Bruce had finished singing the first line ("In the day we sweat it out on the streets of a runaway American dream") I was hooked. And by the time he'd finished the second line ("at night we ride through mansions of glory in suicide machines") I was his forever.

The truth, I'm sure, is far more prosaic and probably involved someone lending me a tape, telling me to "check this guy out - he's pretty choice, eh?" And it was probably because he sang songs about cars and girls that I went over to the Bruce side.

I do know for sure that it was Hastings in the late-70s and that somehow, listening to Bruce on the cassette player in my mum's Nissan Bluebird as we drove round the ring-road on Friday night made me and my mates seem just a wee bit cooler. We weren't but it didn't matter because we had Bruce and he had more than enough cool for all of us - even with the name Bruce.

As if to prove how uncool we were, compared to Bruce, one friend (now an esteemed man of medicine) and I spent a Hastings afternoon re-writing the lyrics to Racing in the Street into a spectacularly un-PC Hawkes Bay version. Paul Henry would have been proud of us that day, as we paid homage to the Bruce in one of the few ways at our disposal - by completely bastardising his song. The shame, the shame.

I met Bruce once. Well, when I say "met" there were 25,000 other people meeting him at the same time and he was quite some distance away from me, that night. I guess, to him, I was just another punter, sitting in the pissing rain at Western Springs. But for me it was a one-on-one encounter with the man of my dreams. I was almost as tragic as Andie McDowell in Four Weddings and a Funeral in not noticing the rain, because I was in my church - even if the church was a run-down speedway (not in the Utah desert) with concrete seats that are, literally, a pain in the arse - and Saint Bruce was preaching directly to me.

After this spiritual experience, many Bruce believers decamped to the house of an esteemed man of words and a goddess, to dry off and share a spiritual experience of a different kind, in the course of which, said man of words claimed that Darkness on the Edge of Town was, in fact, an early rap record by a white rapper from New Jersey. He also claimed to be able to rap along with the album from start to finish, given enough spiritual guidance. I may descend upon the man of words' house again, with The Promise under my arm, to put this odd boast to the test.

But before I do that, I guess I should actually listen/watch The Promise, instead of just staring at it longingly. It's almost like I don't want to defile the perfection of this moment by actually taking the precious CDs/DVDs from their resting places within the packaging and placing them into something as crass as a machine.

But I'm sure Bruce won't mind if I do.