Intellectual TortOIse (Or why U2 gets me ...)

I don't get to listen to music much these days as I can't really concentrate if there's anything playing in the background when I'm reading Middle English or Theory. But, since I've begun running (ok ... slogging as in slow jogging) more consistently, I've been able to pay quite close attention to the music piped through my earphones. I've got a U2 playlist (of course) on my ipod and something about the nature of Bono's lyricism struck me as I was listening to Stay (Faraway, So Close). These are the lines:

Faraway, so close up with the static and the radio
With satellite television you can go anywhere
Miami, New Orleans, London, Belfast and Berlin
from "Stay (Faraway So Close)"

How does Bono manage to string together proper names and achieve that sense of space and history that he does? Part of this relates to the way the line is timed. "Miami" and "New Orleans", are stretched out over two measures, creating an anticipation for more. And then, we get, in the next two measures, the expansive "London, Belfast and Berlin" - cities with tumultuous histories, and possibly located in dramatically different political-spatial realities - and the line is suddenly flung into the wide open spaces of satellite TV.* Of course, despite being able to achieve the epic and universal scope that they do, the lyrics of many a U2 song achieve that expansiveness precisely because there is always a concrete specificity of reference and image. I've always associated the lines quoted above with the bridge-like section of a much later song, "Beautiful Day":

See the world in green and blue
See China right in front of you
See the canyons broken by clouds
See the tuna fleets clearing the sea out
See the Bedouin fires at night
See the oil fields at first light and
See the bird with a leaf in her mouth
After the flood all the colors came out
from "Beautiful Day"

The phrase that really gets me in what essentially is a list is "Bedouin fires at night" largely because it contrasts the vast movement of flight over land and sea against really specific kinds of activity. I think way the lyrics zoom in and across (I'm thinking Google Earth here) are pretty spectacular because they don't compromise on the splendor of being able to observe detail from "such great heights" (as another great songwriter would put it). The fact is, the bridge ends with a stunning movement back in time with the dove of Noah's flood now making an appearance. Movement takes on mythical proportions, and like the spirit of God hovering over the uncreated expanse of the earth to be, the lyric manages to compress space and time and transform it into promise.

Just two more examples of the lyricism of the concrete. The first is from "Pride (In the Name of Love)", a song which enshrines the legacy of MLK.

Early morning, April four
A shot rings out in the Memphis sky
Free at last, they took your life
They could not take your pride
from "Pride (In the Name of Love)"

This final verse shifts out of the repetitive line pattern of the first two verses (which deal with universal situations of persecution and resistance -- "One man ..." could be Everyman) and focuses on the shooting of MLK itself. Even though it's factually wrong -- MLK was shot in the evening -- the date and location of the event, as well as the fact that the verse is addresses the dead King (and thus his legacy), creates another kind of precision: one that reminds the listener that the actual sacrifices of great men must never be in vain.

Finally, from one of the greatest U2 songs that hardly anyone likes: "Angel of Harlem". I know there's something pretentious about some Irish guys going on about jazz history and one of its tragic leading ladies, Billie Holiday. But I'm sure I haven't been the only person whose ears were opened by lyrics ("We got John Coltrane and a love supreme") to explore (and fall in love with) the music that inspired them. So, even if the identifications are somewhat superficial, at least they've generated a new generation of poseurs. (And as Bono's shown, all it takes is poseurs to change the world). Anyway, the song opens with that evocative detail that I've been going on about.

It was a cold and wet December day
When we touched the ground at JFK
Snow was melting on the ground
On BLS I heard the sound of an angel
New York, like a Christmas tree
Tonight this city belongs to me, angel
from "Angel of Harlem"

What's interesting is the way the acronyms work powerfully to create that sense of U2's cool "insider" status with this very foreign world. (Come on, people fly into New York's most congested and inefficient airport just so they can say "I came through JFK") "JFK" obviously works especially well because it resonates with an idealized image of the man as well. Now here's the somewhat embarrassing thing. All these years (and it's been many many years that I've listened to this song and regarded it as one of my faves), I've always assumed that the fourth line went "On the BLS ..." and pictured Bono being driven down some highway to Midtown Manhattan. Only when I picked out the lyric to write this piece did I realize that 1) there is no BLS that runs around New York and that 2) it makes more sense that "BLS" refers to a radio station. So, I was going to conclude that Bono just made the "BLS" thing up until I ran a quick google search. It turns out that there is a WBLS 107.5 (or 'BLS) playing out of New York. The fact that it plays R&B (it was a quick and short search ...) makes it possible that it was playing in the car and Billie Holiday was on at the time. (I'm sure all this can be confirmed by looking up an interview with the group about how the song originated but ...) Anyway, we have, nicely captured in a song, U2's own sense of how a precise moment of reception, not necessarily characterized by listening to the music alone, but also hearing in it the history and geography of an age, can lead to that wonderful feeling of being indomitably caught up in the present: "Tonight this city belongs to me".

That precision of affect also explains why U2 continues to get to me and probably will continue to do so for a long time more to come.

*The line also reminds of lines from T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land":

What is that sound high in the air
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Who are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem** Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal (366-376)

** Which reminds me that U2 actually has a song called "Jerusalem". It's ok but it's before they became subtle and clever in their use of Biblical references. But for a nice video of U2 25 years ago, here's a YouTube link to a high energy performance of that song.