As a fan, I don't want good albums from U2. I want great ones.
I think they want to make great albums, too -- masterpieces, works that can stand with the best the great bands of the past had to offer. But I also think this may become tougher the longer U2 stick it out.
I don't say this because I believe the standard assumption -- that a great rock band has a limited shelf life, that it can only be at its creative peak for a short time and then, if it does not implode, it must fade into irrelevance. Just because most bands don't last doesn't mean they can't last. Even so, I don't discount the negative impact the "live fast, die young" mentality has had on rock culture. "Old" bands like U2 have to fight harder as they go. That's why the marketing for All That You Can't Leave Behind was so aggressive. They showed up for promotional TV appearances -- on Total Request Live, on Farmclub -- that some would have considered beneath their dignity. They had to do them because "dignity" is an old-person word, and for a rock band, anything with the slightest scent of old-person about it is fatal.
Read the rest at @U2.
Everything I lose, I mourn. There was a little brass art deco lion that may have been a stylized key. It jumped out of my pocket one winter night when I was about 11 and I have never found anything remotely like it since, though at intervals I resume the search. There was a cloissonne necklace with the Egyptian goddess Isis pictured with rainbow wings. When I lost that, I went back to the store where I had bought it and discovered that those who had made it had "broken the mold."
These are the things that have stayed lost. Sometimes things come back. This week I was on a cycle of return. I had a United Nations pin from my friend A. who had gotten it when Kofi Annan's wife visited her school--it was gone for a couple of years but I found it this week wedged in the sole of my shoe after I cleaned the apartment. (Actually, the pin I found may have been one A. lost when she came to visit me. But she says I earned this one and she's letting me keep it.) A couple of days later my friend G. asked if I wanted the pirate shirt back that he had borrowed for Halloween some years ago. I had been wondering where it had gone...
My life is chaotic, I know, and the things I own are so jumbled together and randomly scattered that they might as well be thrown into the ocean. But oceans have tides, and the detritus sometimes returns. And then I can go treasure-hunting.
Where were you
When I was in the stony place?
You were the ache, the incompletion,
The undoing when all had been brought together.
You have never seen the structure
And those gathered within, to you, are holes;
When they walk they are less than shadows,
What they teach you will not learn:
The exquisite tension of denial,
The unexplored depths of surrender.
You will not see them,
You will not go in
Even as stone turns flesh, a heart,
Its vivid pulse my pulse
And the words not rote,
Not dust like books but beautiful,
And its loss would make the centuries weep
At the severed line of history
The war with precedent.
Be building, not breaking.
Go to it now with me.
Some background on this: in grade school we did the Stations of the Cross every Friday during Lent. We used these little brown booklets that had scripture passages associated with each station. Hearing these passages every week made it easy to commit them to memory. (Once I quoted from one in a note to my "secret Santa"--"A faithful friend is a sturdy shelter, he who finds one finds a treasure." I was such a geek that I really believed everybody had memorized the passages in the Stations booklet and that no one would guess I was the author of the note.) Those books were my first acquaintance with this bit from Isaiah. Purely from a poetical standpoint, I think it's extraordinary, the best possible use of a technique where two lines in a poem have basically the same meaning. (It's a very common poetic form in the Bible which I find tedious when reading long stuff, but with short passages it's rhetorically compelling and also makes passages easier to memorize.) Then consider how influential the main idea of it has become--that someone, if willing to be treated unfairly, can help others; that the loser is the winner in the end. The exact influence of this particular "song" is going to be a major plot point of my Nicodemus novel, so this is a useful background piece for that.
See, my servant shall prosper,
He shall be raised high and greatly exalted.
Even as many were amazed at him--
So marred was his look beyond that of man,
And his appearance beyond that of mortals--
So shall he startle many nations,
Because of him kings shall stand speechless;
For those who have not been told shall see,
Those who have not heard shall ponder it.
---
Who would believe what we have heard?
To whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
He grew up like a sapling before him,
Like a shoot from the parched earth.
There was in him no stately bearing to make us look at him,
No appearance that would attract us to him.
He was spurned and avoided by men,
A man of suffering, accustomed to infirmity,
One of those from whom men hide their faces,
Spurned, and we held him in no esteem.
---
Yet it was our infirmities he bore, our sufferings that he endured,
While we thought of him as stricken, as one smitten by God and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our offenses, crushed for our sins,
Upon him was the chastisement that makes us whole--
By his stripes we were healed.
We had all gone astray like sheep, each following his own way;
But the Lord laid upon him the guilt of us all.
---
Though he was harshly treated
He submitted and opened not his mouth,
Like a lamb led to the slaughter or a sheep before the shearers,
He was silent and opened not his mouth.
Oppressed and condemned, he was taken away,
And who would have thought any more of his destiny?
When he was cut off from the land of the living,
And smitten for the sin of his people,
A grave was assigned to him among the wicked
And a burial place with evildoers,
Though he had done no wrong nor spoken any falsehood.
[But the Lord was pleased to crush him in infirmity.]
---
If he gives his life as an offering for sin,
He shall see his descendants in a long life,
And the will of the Lord will be accomplished through him.
Because of his affliction he shall see the light in the fullness of days;
Through his suffering, my servant will justify many,
And their guilt he shall bear.
Therefore I will give him his portion among the great,
and he shall divide spoils with the mighty,
Because he surrendered himself to death,
And was counted among the wicked;
And he shall take away the sins of many,
And win pardon for their offenses.
--Isaiah 52:13-15-Isaiah 53 (New American Bible translation)
The copper glint catches my eye as I step out of Vicki's car. "Ooh, lucky penny," I say, stooping to pick it up.
Seems a strange place and time for it--the wasteland of broken glass and assorted debris on the side of Highway 70, Maundy Thursday, the morning a tire on my mom's car blew on my way to work.
Had it not been potentially life-threatening the near-accident would have been funny: the only reason I was driving Mom's car was because I'd just taken mine to the shop. I was trundling happily down the highway, not a quarter of a mile from my exit, when I heard the pop and the sigh of escaping air and felt the car's insistent pull to the right.
I find the penny back where I'd abandoned the little blue Metro. I'd talked my co-worker into driving me here to wait for the tow truck. The truck has arrived. I slip my penny in my pocket and open the cab door to sign the paperwork. I see another copper glint as I hop back out. "Ooh, lucky penny."
Soon the tow truck driver is kneeling by the Metro, lug wrench in hand. I've sent Vicki back to work. I wonder how I should keep myself amused. Shall I stare into space? Nah. I look down. Yes, there's another penny, and another. I walk the strip of wasteland casually; without the slightest effort I'm up to nine pennies. Nine will never do, of course. The fee for the inconvenience of this morning is at least ten cents. The tenth is in a spot I had passed over earlier; the eleventh shows up immediately afterward. By the time the man straightens up and puts the old tire in my mom's trunk, there are seventeen pennies in my pocket, all found within about a 25-foot stretch. "Hope the rest of your day goes better," he says before driving off, and I almost laugh out loud. How could it? I'm rich!
But I find four more pennies just outside the door of the tire shop that night.
read the rest at Thunderstruck.org.
You would only notice if you were watching them carefully. Peter often stares at Jesusówe all do. The preacher does not seem to be aware of it; while he speaks he isnít looking at anyone. But if Peter turns his attention elsewhere, Jesus watches him. I suppose heís making sure Peter isnít getting into troubleóa common enough occurrence that everyone guards against it together. Itís a shame he conducts this surveillance surreptitiously, since from the look of it Peter is begging to be seen. We all are.
There is strong physical resemblance between Peter and Jesus, so strong that sometimes they are mistaken for brothers. One difference is that Jesus wears a beard; Peter sometimes does but more often savages it away with his knife. Peterís real brother, Andrew, is a bit older than him and looks more like Jonah, their gruff old father. Looking at Andrew is like meeting Peterís future. Heís one of the Twelve but not in the inner circle. ìIs he jealous of Peter because of that, do you think?î I ask Mary while contemplating whom to approach at supper.
ìI wouldnít be, if I were Andrew. Thereís so much more scrutiny of Peter, James and John. He seems content in the background.î
ìBut Peter wouldnít be content with that.î
ìPeter couldnít be hidden away if he tried.î
James and John are brothers, sons of Zebedee, an even gruffer man than Jonah. Jonah talks tough but Zebedee is a brawler, even with gray in his beard. Jesus calls him ìThunder,î so James and John became ìsons of Thunderîóa gentle mocking, perhaps, as neither of them possess much rumbling wrath. John is the youngest of the Twelve, shy, socially awkward. Jesus treats him like a beloved baby brother; in return, John is intensely loyal to him, more loyal than anyone. Whatever Jesus says, John doesóeven if it means stretching far outside what his solitary nature prefers. And it does. John is often sent in every direction running errands for the travelers. He has to bargain for supplies and arrange for sleeping quarters. He never complains, but when he returns from his missions, you canít talk to him. He has already used up all the words he has portioned out for the day.
James is Johnís opposite, as relaxed and easygoing as his brother is tightly wound. While John is youngest, James is older than the rest, including Jesus. Not much olderóage-wise the inner circle is packed tight togetheróand James projects only the faintest aura of being superior in wisdom and experience. He is the sophisticate (the first trait I thought of was arrogance); John is the child. And while his brother is so close to Jesus that they seem to communicate in thoughts alone, James is the insider on the outside. From my distant vantage point I thought he was deliberately pushing Jesus away. Now that I view him from up close, I donít know if itís that or something else.
The three of them are a unit. You never see them apart. People run their names together into one: PeterJamesandJohn. Jesus is somebody else, even when he is with him. He is the first bright spark of a falling star; PeterJamesandJohn comprise the tail trailing behind.
When I approach, theyíre eating together. Their conversation is grunts between mouthfuls. ìWhereíd Jesus go?î I ask.
ìUp the mountains,î James answers. His tone make it clear that itís all right with him if that preacher wants to wander cold in the wilderness, but he knows where to get a cheery fire and broiled fish.
ìHeís praying,î Peter says, and his tone suggests he might as well have said ìHeís sticking thorns into his flesh.î ìAt least thatís what he told us he was going to do. He goes off like this all the time. You ever come by and Jesus isnít around, tell yourself, ëHeís praying.íî
ìItíll save us the trouble of talking to you,î John says, and the others snort into their fish.
Peter scoots aside to give me a place to sit. ìDonít mind him. Ask whatever you want to ask.î His arms sweep out. ìIím feeling generous.î
Iím very good at Rorschach ink blot tests. Iíve always seen more in something than what is actually there. The walls of the kitchen, for example, have random blue splotches and interlacing strands of gold. As a child I would pick out figuresóa man putting on a coat, an elephant taking a shower. I saw a monkey in old dried glue in the stairway, a bird lying prone in the wood grain of a church pew.
In high school I went through an abstract art phase. I cut patterned blue wrapping paper into random shapes and stuck them to my bedroom walls just so I could stare at them and tease out the images.
What are these things you can see when you stare at chaos long enough? They are not images of you, but in the world they may be recognized only by you. They were not there without the inkblot, the wallpaper design, the wood panel. You give birth to the image, in a way, when you invest meaning in the random.
How many pieces of wrapping paper did I have to cut, my scissors slashing in jagged lines, sharkís teeth, before I had my favoriteóa girl admiring herself in a mirror? I took a pencil and drew her, defining her with eyes and hands to make her a shared vision, persuading others to see it too. I am into persuasion, not the veiling of meaning. This is no private revelation.
If you and I both see the girl with the mirror, she is ours.
Today is the quarrying of granite,
Hard rock which cannot be pounded away;
Today the mining for diamond,
Rare, light-throwing, pressure-immune.
What caught time has sunk deep and fused so?
Should we forsake dead mineral,
Dig instead for what lives?
The same earth yields root-language,
Chants and guttural song amid
Blind, white, creeping under-thoughts.
Slime and rot matches warmth of loam.
We are nourished by decay.
Here's a theory: the most committed fans of a band-not the casual CD shoppers, but the true believers-get drawn into fandom because something about the band's character resonates with their own. They have something besides musical taste in common. You could expect U2 fans to share values or traits associated with U2-a hunger for social justice, say, or a need to communicate on a large scale.
Case in point: U2 are ambitious. They are possibly the most ambitious band out there (given how so few others are vocal about their quest to be Best Band in the World). So, too, U2 fan Heather Beekink is ambitious. She spearheaded a campaign to get thousands, if not millions, of fellow fans around the world to take to the streets. They would all do so on the same day and force government leaders to do more for Africa's multiple crises by the sheer power of raised voices.
Ambition doesn't always reward you with what you had in mind. It does, however, tend to get better results than apathy.
The story of the Dream Out Loud Protest/Rally, which really did happen November 12th [2002] at noon (even if not quite as it was envisioned), can serve as a primer for others out there with a gleam in their eye. If you're thinking big, pay attention to the hard-learned lessons of this experience.
Full article in @U2's archive here.