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Many people die with their music still in them. Why is this so? Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live. Before they know it, time runs out.— Oliver Wendell Holmes |
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I can be reached at romanlily ~at~gmail.com. Or you can join the notify list here. |
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November 20, 2004
Nothing to win and nothing left to lose
It was dark tonight as I left work at the end of the day. A steady rain was picking up. I hadn't been outside all day. It felt like I was stepping into a Winnie-the-Pooh cartoon, starring as Eeyore.
By the time I had sloshed through the torrents of rain to get to the parking garage, my head was throbbing. I got into the car and turned on the radio. The song on that came out of the speakers was U2's "With or Without You," from 1987's The Joshua Tree, a song I've probably heard 700 times before.
I've probably heard it 700 times before, but I decided to just listen to it for the 701st time.
During my freshman year of college, I kept a little free-flowing collage on the door of my dorm room. I'd tape up snapshots of boys I liked, photocopies of favorite poems. In October of that year, I taped this Rolling Stone cover to my dorm room door:
Achtung Baby had come out the year before, and Zooropa was on its way. It was 1992. I remember getting special permission from the dean of women at the college to drive down to U2's concert in Atlanta (this was an exceedingly strict college, remember). It was one of the first live concerts at Atlanta's new Georgia Dome. It was a huge concert, with Public Enemy opening and U2 taking the stage larger than life, Bono appearing to the screaming masses wearing his mirrored suit just as pictured on the magazine cover.
I still remember standing next to Andy Jones at that concert, both of us shouting joyfully along with every word of every song. Bono sang in circles around a belly dancer who swayed on her platform, wearing a sequined gown and gold finger cymbals, while we all joined him in chanting and dancing: She moves in mysterious ways.
U2 is a big band in my life. Maybe the big band. They have been important to me for just about as long as I've been been conscious of music.
Most of my affection for U2 was born when I first heard The Joshua Tree. A remarkable piece of music, it's undoubtedly my favorite rock album of all time. It has made a huge impact on people of my generation. (A few weeks ago we had a couple over for dinner. At one point we took turns going around the table naming our top 5 rock albums of all time. The Joshua Tree figured prominently on each person's list. And I don't think that was just groupthink.) Rolling Stone gave the album a rare 5-star rating when it was released in 1987, and today, 17 years later, it still sounds remarkably pure and vibrant, poets still speaking their heart and bleeding for it...
Perhaps The Joshua Tree is like the first miracle of Christ, the act that defined his ministry to the world. In Christ's first public act, he turned water to wine. And maybe U2's first real public miracle was the same. They took the most basic elements: earth, sky, God, a man and a woman — and shaped them into something essential, something new, something of remarkable richness and depth.
There is no emotion that goes untouched in this record. That's the thing about it. It moves deeply and thoughtfully through every spectrum of human emotion. There is a deep joy that lifts your heart like a bird to the skies. There is doubt and depression and loss, sorrow of the deepest depths. There is ambition, rage, disappointment and hope. Hope more than anything.
Out in the rain on the way home, the song was unfolding. "With or Without You" is a deceptively simple song. It starts with a spare pulse, joined by four simple chouds that repeat throughout the whole song. Rolling Stone called it a "rock & roll bolero that builds from a soothing beginning to a resounding climax." It starts with a few mournful lines about heartbreak, lost love. A high, whistly guitar floats along above the melody. There's an angel whose wings might be broken, but she hasn't yet fallen to earth.
By the time Bono hits the second verse
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Through the storm we reach the shore
You give it all but I want more
And I´m waiting for you |
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you begin to sense the intensity of his pain. A bottomless pit is opening up in this man — there is a brokenness, a yearning that will never be satisfied. Then his voice jumps up an octave, and the wave of emotion grows stronger. The drums sound in the depths, and Edge's lonesome vocal follows close behind Bono as he sings:
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And you give yourself away
And you give yourself away
And you give and you give and you give yourself away |
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It builds and builds, wave on wave, Bono's voice gaining strength and then breaking, over and over again. And your own heart breaks and mends with his.
I can't remember at what point I first become convinced that Bono wrote this song especially for me. It's the hallmark of a true songwriter, I think, that makes you feel like he has reached into your heart and crafted a beautiful, thoughtful piece of music in response to your very specific pain and confusion and turmoil.
On Saturday there were a bunch of chores I needed to do. I was tidying up the living room and decided to put The Joshua Tree on. For all my words about it, I really don't listen to the album very often.
So I put it on, and started sweeping. "Where the Streets Have No Name" started up. Seventeen years after my first listening to this song, I still get shivers when I hear the organ at the beginning. I love the reverent way that the song opens, and then builds and builds until it finally bursts open in a hymn of praise, Bono stating his motto with blissful abandon:
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I want to run
I want to hide
I want to tear down the walls
That hold me inside |
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On Saturday, I sang along throughout the whole song, then I realized that I wanted to hear it again. I started it over again, and sang along again. Finally I put the broom down, sat down by the speakers, started the whole album again, and turned the volume up very, very high.
I just wanted to listen to the whole thing. I wanted to attend to this masterpiece. I wanted to dive into that ocean, hear it all over again for the first time.
I think that one of the major themes of the album is the pain of an uncelebrated life and the rapture of truly living. When Bono sings, I want to feel sunlight on my face, you know that you do, too. He wants to push us beyond just a selfish lust for life. He reminds us that we all have an opportunity to live a bold, rich and imaginative life, a life like no other.
(It's impossible for me to hear that line and not look forward to all the living that I still have to look forward to.)
I pose that if The Joshua Tree included just one of the 11 perfect songs that made it so famous, say, "In God's Country," and was packaged with 10 other radio-friendly, "so-so" songs, it would still be an important, enduring album. But the thing about The Joshua Tree is that every song is perfect. Every one! And then you put all of those on one album: it's like a greatest hits album accidentally packaged as a regular studio release.
Something transcendent happens in these 11 songs. When I hear this music, I'm reminded of Moses encountering God in the burning bush.
So I take off my shoes. And I listen.
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