We encounter each other in words, words
spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed,
words to consider, reconsider.
We cross dirt roads and highways that mark
the will of some one and then others, who said
'I need to see what’s on the other side.'
I know there’s something better down the road.
We need to find a place where we are safe.
We walk into that which we cannot yet see.
So goes Elizabeth Alexander's spectacular poem Praise Song for the Day, composed specially for the 2008 inauguration of Barack Obama (and found here, for anyone looking for their daily fix of extraordinary poetry). And so began last Sunday's concert in Foxboro's Gillette Stadium, the lines of the poem scrolling up an enormous stage screen to begin a concert event which has finally roused me from my writing slumber. And after all this time, I have to say, it is good to be back. Now, before we delve into the specific circumstances which have revived my efforts to clutter up your social media feeds with my ramblings for the foreseeable future, first--
I was a music fan from elementary school days, but at first it only meant listening to movie soundtracks -- with a walkman CD player, in the days when that was still the private-listening music device of choice. I'd pop in The Lord of the Rings or Star Wars or Superman and stare out the window on car rides while replaying that CD's respective movie in my head in near-perfect sync to the music.
But then, as per the usual rite of teen passage, my fanboy symphonies were shot through by the righteous unholy racket of rock'n'roll, and nothing was the same again. Such was its impact on my impressionable young self, as a matter of fact, that I can actually pinpoint the specific album that was the root cause of it all: a sleek black CD, near-sinister in its simple allure, with U2 18 printed in small orange block font across the bottom. I popped it into my trusty little walkman, pressed play, and "Uno, dos, tres, catorce" (that's typical Gaelic counting skills for you)... magic.
Yes, this Irish boy's first popular music exposure came courtesy of the Irish boys, the Dublin lads with a leprechaun pot of triple platinum albums and a Blarney stone-cold claim on the title of "the greatest rock band in the world." For the next however many months after finding that first CD of singles, it was just the walkman and the plastic of the headphones and U2 blasting their soundscapes through the ear canals of a scrawny Lowell middle schooler. Over the decade or more since then, and with the collected works of music as an entity never further away than the nearest smart device, my music tastes have grown and adapted accordingly (there's still only one Boss in charge of my playlists, I don't think anyone reading this will be shocked to know). But U2 will always claim that distinction in my mind of being the first ones to plant their flag, to light that spark.
For my own voyage of uncharted discovery, it made no difference that the quartet had already been around for 25+ years at that point, or even that my parents -- the ones who had given me the Eden apple CD in the first place -- were both avowed veteran fans in their own right. Lightning had already been striking millions of years before Ben Franklin sent his kite flying, but he still needed to go out and make that discovery for himself; this was me sending up my own fledgling beacon into the musicsphere, the headphone cables acting as the kite string to usher me along to the discovery of one of the modern world's more potent electrical charges: guitar amplifiers dialing up to eleven in service of a story.
Last Sunday night was a summoning, a re-conducting of that story all over again -- of remembering that feeling of discovery upon first listen. The Joshua Tree is U2's passion project about America, told through wonder-filled and earnest immigrant eyes which see their adopted country for all its joy, hypocrisy, potential, bleakness, and all-encompassing scope. That America and the people in it have changed in the 30 years now since The Joshua Tree's release: everyone in Foxboro sat down with older, wiser ears than the ones that first encountered this particular story way back when... I for one would wager there have been encounters with quite a few more sad stories in the interim.
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| Boston: where the green, white, and orange meets the red, white, and blue |
But, like the lifecycles in the desert areas from which the album draws its name and iconic imagery, rebirth's a certainty. Freshness, renewal, all that gets brought to the table when you consider, as Bono said during the night, "America's not just a country -- it's an idea." In that sense, The Joshua Tree, like so many other great stories, challenges its listeners (Foxboro attendees included) to pick up where it leaves off to begin telling an even better one; like the type of story displayed during the course of the show when an enormous banner of a Syrian refugee girl's passport photo was literally upheld across the stadium by thousands of American hands; like the type of story where a massive screen behind the band flashed images of modern and historical women's rights activists in their efforts for a more equal world while Bono chorused, "baby, baby, baby, light my way."
It's also the kind of story I've been slack on maintaining on this page here for about a year now. That time has certainly been with its share of ups and downs in equal measure, and many's the time when "ok, time to get back to it!" efforts fallen have by the wayside, leading to a shamefully full unpublished draft folder. But now, the times they are a'changing, it's a hard rain gonna fall (and any other Bob Dylan song title you wanna throw in there), and it's time for met to get back out there with my kite in hand, ready to catch some new electricity and find some new stories to upend my days with in the best possible sense. With grad school all wrapped up for good, and itchy fingers ready to start writing some new stories -- mine, and with hope, more importantly, yours, ours -- I'm happy to announce my return from the desert. And how better for the purposes of this post than with the choruses from two of my very favorite U2 songs:
"I'm wide awake -- wide awake. I'm not sleeping"
because
"I still haven't found what I'm looking for."
