Jungleland

30”x 30” 100% silk scarf design • Personal work

Designed for myself, this is a square silk scarf design featuring motifs from Springsteen’s song Jungland, off his iconic album Born to Run.

Imagery includes lyrics and composite vectors using scanned vintage photographs of Exxon stations in New Jersey during the gas shortage of the 70s. In the song, Springsteen paints a picture of his built environment as mythic space: gas stations, highways, alleyways, turnpikes are all teeming with operatic human dramas. I have long been fascinated by how New Jersey both is and is not a “real” place in music. The emptiness of the photographs inspired me to work up this design, which features my favorite lyric, the moment at the end of the song where Springsteen doubles back and condemns himself:

"AND THE POETS DOWN HERE DON’T WRITE NOTHING AT ALL / THEY JUST STAND BACK AND LET IT ALL BE"

It’s a searing, painful finish that comes after verse after verse of vivid observation. I’m obsessed with it. Death, love, sex, commercialism, and the role of the writer to tell a good lie as truth unfolds in front of us. What more can you ask for? Springsteen forever. The scarf printed well, too.