I’m working on something personally that is at odds with last week’s U2 slag. Allow me to address and correct it. I meant what I said last time about Bono and the Clintons and the long, ongoing destructive story of cynical triangulation. But I forgot to mention what was good about U2. I’m sitting with headphones on, listening to Bono sing, and I can hear his heart. He sings with it.
And I’m thinking about the righteous rage I feel at times, and the gleeful joy I feel when I can put words on it, and how satisfying it is to hurl cruel truth bombs against disappointing people. And my own heart objects.
Fuckin Boddhisatva!
I have a friend – a huge-hearted young Boddhisatva – who pushes me at regular intervals to listen to that heart, which is by nature pretty kind, pretty generous and compassionate. He shares ideas that knock me out of my history and the perspective that has been built atop my heart – a disappointed, outraged, and raging shield. He shares ideas like this with me:
Reconciliation means leaving behind our dualistic view and our tendency to want to punish the other person. Reconciliation opposes all forms of ambition. But reconciliation doesn't take sides. Most of us want to take sides in a conflict. We distinguish right from wrong based on partial evidence or hearsay. We think we need indignation in order to act. But even legitimate righteous indignation isn't enough.
Our world doesn't lack people who are willing to throw themselves into action. What we need are people capable of loving and not taking sides so that they can embrace the whole of reality.
We have to continue to practice mindfulness and reconciliation until we can see the bodies of hungry children as our own. Until the pain in the bodies of all species is our own. Then, we will have realized non-discrimination, real love. Then, we can look at all beings with the eyes of compassion and we can do the real work of helping to alleviate suffering.
- Thich Nhat Hanh, Reconciliation: Healing the Inner Child
Sometimes I wanna punch him for this shit. It took a lot of real work for me to find my certainties and my voice, and to trust in my impulses and perspective, and that work saved me from the swamp of self-doubt and self-hatred that my childhood and my father left me. It was hard, and I WON, I survived. And then this punk-ass smiler taps me on the shoulder like some clever cricket and whispers in my ear, “It is okay, though, right? Love is it, right?”
Oh, fuck you!
But yeah. Yes. Sorry. Sorry. Thanks, man.
Don’t Be a Dick
When I started writing about music, in my 20s, still a swampy mess, I thought I would try and undermine what I saw as assholey snideness in other music writers I was reading. Why even bother shining a light on something you don’t like? Who cares what you hate? Just ignore it, I thought. That was my mission statement for BadMonkeyX when I created that (in 2000), and my tendency afterwards, most of the time.
But the first piece I wrote there that was filled with the precise, clear outrage was in fact about the same shallow, shitty Superbowl performance I railed at last week. It felt great – for the reasons I wrote here last week. It was part of my finding my perspective, employing my viewpoint, and harnessing/addressing my ongoing disappointment and anger.
Knowing Is Better than Fearing
But I’m older now. I’ve done a lot of work. And I’m finding counterintuitively that being finally, truly disappointed – knowing that the shoddy thinking of Bono and the Clintons has played itself out, and that we are clearly doomed to a hot and difficult future – is clarifying.
I was afraid it would happen for so long; now that it is a for-sure thing, a too-late thing, I feel kind of relaxed about it. This process, by the way, is all detailed in my comic How About a Big Cup of Climate Grief?, which ended with a sworn intention to strive to mourn this world AND love it, appreciate it, at the same time. Because what else is there to do?
Some Stuff I Forgot to Mention Cuz I Was Enjoying Being Mean
All this to say, I would like to add to what I wrote last week. Like: Bono sings with his whole heart. His voice and the way he uses it musically is lovely and powerful. That’s not nothing – it’s a superpower that helps people bear their pain.
Like: my wife saw a different show on that enormous 1989 Joshua Tree tour where he slipped and fell and broke his arm, and finished the song, got a splint put on, and finished the whole show. That’s dedication and generosity, both gifts.
Like: he’s a human being – I learned last week and did not share that his coloured sunglasses are apparently to help him with the pain of glaucoma. I took out one ridiculing word, but I ignored the fact so that I could keep shitting on him.
And like: I read his bio, years back, and I know that his father hated him, just like my father hated me, and his mother died when he was a child, and my mother died just a couple of years ago, and he is doing his best, just like I am. Just like most people are.
I should have found a way to include all that if I’m going to be true to my promise. I don’t hate him, and I don’t hate me, and I don’t know if Joe Strummer would have admired him, but I can imagine that Joe Strummer would have smoked a joint with him and shared some basic human moment, which is clearly what Bono was wishing for as he (still true) sucked the air out the Joe Strummer documentary.
Honestly, that’s what I want to do going forward. I don’t regret saying how much U2 and the Clintons bother me – but I don’t want to indulge the hot-take, amusingly bitter “sides” thing for fun. Music is not a contest or a war, and I mean to spend my time, like I said above, trying to appreciate things and not make things worse.
Here are a couple of U2 songs I love.
Cheers, dears. If you dig it, share it.
xo
jep