There are a myriad of places I could start this article since the song has always elicited intense memories and conjured such stirring emotions.
On a philosophical level, it’s about the perils of chasing your desires, something we are accustomed to seeing as a virtue, but which can, unbeknownst to many, become a curse. In his childhood, it’s ‘Big Jim’ the catfish that throws him overboard; in later life, it’s his obsessive jealousy over a girl he falls for.
On a personal level, when Springsteen mentions ‘Doreen’, the beautiful girl he was swept away by, I can’t help but be cast back to a special someone I was madly in love with – my first ‘proper’ love – a Yorkshire lass called Louise. This song, in that sense, has always been the one that rekindles everything we had together, even if it was truncated when she eventually went home to England. It’s so etched in my mind – the past engraved. A path so strict, I walk.
If I had to limit myself to just five Springsteen songs to take with me for the rest of my journey, I would choose With Every Wish. I could quite contentedly have it on repeat for a good while, which I have done on occasion. It’s hard for me to even describe its effects, since, as I alluded to, it leaves me in a whirlpool of emotions – hope, regret, and thoughts about what you’d do differently if you could restart this play we call ‘life’ all over again.
I always feel a bit jumbled in the head by it – but the real clincher in this song is how it closes. It becomes a hopeful meditation. You have a second chance – you have a thing called redemption by way of an amazing ‘Grace’. Life presents us with hundreds, if not thousands, of opportunities to turn it all around. This is the grace. It’s represented in the song by ‘someone is waitin’ with a look in her eyes‘ – perhaps the ‘angel of the lake’ whose waters will quench your thirst.
This is always where the song leaves me so affected. I like to think that the someone waiting might be Doreen, as if she’s come back to him decades later, even in spirit form, perhaps transfigured with wings like an angel. To think that she’s out there somewhere in the middle of the forest on the other side – like Persephone, who represents ‘rebirth’ and the ‘feminine’ in nature – the embodiment of spring.
With Every Wish is from Bruce Springsteen’s 1992 record Human Touch, released alongside Lucky Town. I always agreed with the Rolling Stone review of the two albums, which argued that ‘the aims of the two albums would have been better realized by a single, more carefully shaped collection’. There are at least ten songs from both albums that could have been combined to form one classic Springsteen album, perhaps rivaling his best ever.
[Verse 1]
Ol’ catfish in the lake, we called him Big Jim
When I was a kid my only wish was to get my line in him
Skipped church one Sunday, rowed out and throwed in my line
Jim took that hook, pole, and me right over the side
[Verse 2]
Went driftin’ down past old tires and rusty cans of beer
The angel of the lake whispered in my ear
“Before you choose your wish, son, you better think first
With every wish, there comes a curse”
[Verse 3]
I fell in love with beautiful Doreen
She was the prettiest thing this old town’d ever seen
I courted her and I made her mine
But I grew jealous whenever another man come walkin’ down the line
[Verse 4]
And my jealousy made me treat her mean and cruel
She sighed, “Bobby, oh Bobby, you’re such a fool
Don’t you know before you choose your wish, you’d better think first?
‘Cause with every wish, there comes a curse”
[Verse 5]
These days I sit around and laugh at the many rivers I’ve crossed
But on the far banks, there’s always another forest where a man can get lost
Well, there in the high trees, love’s bluebird glides
Guiding us ‘cross to another river on the other side
[Verse 6]
And there, someone is waitin’ with a look in her eyes
And though my heart’s grown weary and more than a little bit shy
Tonight I’ll drink from her waters to quench my thirst
And leave the angels to worry
with every wish
“The more I live, the more I learn. The more I learn, the more I realize, the less I know.”- Michel Legrand
Observation Blogger 
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