Creating the character called “Bruce Springsteen” has been a 50-year project for Bruce Springsteen, and an immensely successful one. But at 71, the man himself faces the same truth facing all of us, the one from which no amount of celebrity can protect him.

As a teenager, Springsteen was a member of a rock band, the Castiles. In a new documentary, Bruce Springsteen: Letter to You, he notes with a combination of sadness and resignation, that he is now the only living member of the quintet. Springsteen says at the end of the film, “What can I say? We’re taking this thing till we’re all in a box.”

He says age brings the clarity of standing on the train tracks at midnight, staring at the lights of an oncoming train:

It dawns on you rather quickly, there’s only so much time left. Only so many star-filled nights, snowfalls, brisk fall afternoons, rainy midsummer days. So how you conduct yourself and do your work matters. How you treat your friends, your family, your lover. On good days, a blessing falls over you. ... You stumble into those moments … and you realize how lucky you are, lucky to be alive, lucky to be breathing in this world of beauty, horror and hope. ... Go, and may God bless you.

Springsteen leaves us with a sense that this might be it for him. His valedictory tone suggest he is aware more than ever before that any day could be his last. There’s a scene of him saying goodbye to his band. “Someday we will close our eyes and the gray evening sky will unfold above us, bringing that long and endless sleep.” Even a “rock god” must bow to mortality.