Roll of the Dice: I Wish I Were Blind

“There’s a world of love, a world of beauty, a world of fear and a world of loss and they are the same world and that person is wending his way through that maze and at that moment he’s very in touch with both of those things. [“I Wish I Were Blind”] gets that picture.

 

— Bruce Springsteen to David Hepworth, Q Magazine, August 1992

I have a love/hate relationship with Human Touch, and “I Wish I Were Blind” epitomizes it.

On one hand, we have a tender, vulnerable ballad with gorgeous vocals that you can lose yourself in whenever you want company in heartbreak, and with a title that warms the heart of every English teacher who refuses to give up on the subjunctive mood.

On the other hand, we have an overproduced, artificial, as-early-nineties-as-it-gets track that (for me at least) makes it impossible to connect to the song. And most unforgivably, it squanders the great Bobby Hatfield, who provides blue-eyed soulful backing vocals buried so far down in the mix that he might as well have phoned it in.

(This earlier outtake features Hatfield much more prominently. I’d consider it the definitive version if it didn’t also feature an overlong and overwrought coda.)

For more than a decade after it came out, I hated this song. It didn’t work for me on the album, and it didn’t work for me in concert. Although Bruce’s MTV Unplugged performance of it featured some fine guitar work, “I Wish I Were Blind” just didn’t move me.

That changed in the summer of 2005, when I was fortunate to catch one of its rare live outings when Bruce brought his solo acoustic tour to the Rose Garden in Portland. I was captivated by Bruce’s performance, introductory shtick and all. (No, it’s not unfair, Bruce.)

With only an understated keyboard accompaniment underneath Bruce’s vocals, the pathos of his lyrics comes through in a way they never did on the album track.

By the second verse, I felt like I was hearing “I Wish I Were Blind” for the first time. And from the moment he switched over to the piano, my heart was breaking for our poor narrator, who until now seemed worthy only of parody rather than pity.

I realized with surprise that like “Real World,” it wasn’t the song I hated, it was just the track.

“I Wish I Were Blind” works best (and possibly only) as a solo performance. I mean of course it does–just listen to the lyrics:

I love to see the cottonwood blossom in the early spring
I love to see the message of love that the bluebird brings
But when I see you walking with him down along the strand
I wish I were blind when I see you with your man

I love to see your hair shining in the long summer’s light
I love to watch the stars fill the sky on a summer night
The music plays, you take his hand, I watch how you touch him as you start to dance
And I wish I were blind when I see you with your man

We struggle here but all our love’s in vain
Oh these eyes that once filled me with your beauty now fill me with pain
And the light that once entered here is banished from me
Oh and this darkness is all baby that my heart sees

And though this world is filled with the grace and beauty of God’s hand
Oh I wish I were blind when I see you with your man

We are listening to the torment of a man who found true love, lost true love, and now has to watch true love pair with somebody else. Even when he’s not alone, he’s alone. That loneliness is underscored when this song is performed solo and underplayed when with a band.

I’ve often heard these lyrics criticized as bordering on cliché. Let’s be honest: there’s no border here. Bruce does a cannonball into a pool of clichés with this song. But that’s the point: this guy has got it bad. He’s so lovesick that he can only speak in sappy metaphor and valentine verse. The song only works because the lyrics are so trite.

Our narrator bemoans and bewails his way through the song in Orbisonian style, unable to bear the sight of his ex-lover with another and yet obviously doing nothing but watching.

And that’s the tragedy of the song: he cannot look away. Because even though the sight of his ex-lover brings him pain, she is still the greatest source of beauty and light in his life. He can’t separate the darkness from the light, and he can’t even taste the simplest of pleasures without opening the floodgates to a torrent of pain.

There’s no resolution in this song. Heck, there’s not even a story. It’s just a guy torturing himself with his inability to move on. And sometimes that’s exactly what we need to hear, because at one point or another we are that guy.

So if, like Bruce’s Norwegian fan, you ever find your misery in need of some company, “I Wish I Were Blind” is the song to turn to.

Just make sure you turn to the solo version.

I Wish I Were Blind
Recorded: September 1989 – March 1991
Released: Human Touch (1992)
First performed: May 6, 1992 (New York City, NY)
Last performed: February 23, 2014 (Hunter Valley, Australia)

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