Crazy Jane:

The Heart is a Bloom

I know this will be random, but there's nothing I've got the freaking energy to report, people. Things are fine, here; the usual ups and downs. Here's a picture of some pretty, pink heart-shaped leaves in my friend Leona's window.

I'll only add that sometimes U2 songs make me feel like everything is just right, and right where it should be, and that All That You Can't Leave Behind is a beautiful record that keep growing on me, even years later.

There's been a lot of U2 in my life lately. I think it's a good thing. Here's a haiku about it:

Bono is lovely
and anyone who wants to
fight me, can talk trash.

I mean it, bitches:
don't even. Meanwhile, I will just
contemplate this truth:

"What you don't have you
don't need it now," because, friends?
That's hard to swallow.

But, know what? I can totally swallow it if it's Bono who's serving up the medicine.

U2, Anyone?

So, I've discovered that one of my esteemed colleagues at the Language School loves Bono and U2 with the same eternal and white hot passion of 10,000 burning suns that I do.

We bonded over an episode of "Pride in the Name of Love" at Lucerna Music Bar (a totally brilliant place that could only exist in all of it's cheesy, unironic splendor here in Prague), and though we started by trying to one-up each other in increasingly ludicrous expressions of undying, bone-deep true-blue love, we ended by agreeing to get together for the purpose of indulging in hours and hours of U2 concert videos. Videos so good that when they are over, it's tempting to start 'em up again, from the beginning, even if it is 3AM.

In the past week, we've watched Rattle & Hum, the documentaries about recording The Unforgettable Fire and How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, as well as the newly released DVD of the best arena rock show in the history of the world, which was recorded for posterity on the final night of the Zooropa tour in Sydney, Australia, and in which Bono wears that magnificent Mr. Macphisto costume, and sings "Fools Rush In" with a combination of resigned sadness, pure generosity of spirit, and heady joy that only he could  stir together with a gold lamé devil costume and make everything feel like it's just where it should be. God bless him.

Last night, I saw a video that I'd only seen once, under distracting circumstances: U2 at Slane Castle. Recorded a week after Bono's father had died following a long struggle with cancer, and 9 days before the World Trade Centers were destroyed, it featured 80,000 people singing songs about love in unison with dear, dear Bono, whose heart, like always, was right there on his sleeve. Needless to say, it totally slew me.

Here are a few of the highlights:

• Bono's dedication of "All I Want Is You" to his "beautiful wife." We agreed that in order to get so freaking lucky as to have that man be the man who loves her, Bono's wife had to have been freaking Joan of Arc in a past life, or some shit. I think it's important to make clear that when I say that, I'm not saying I want to break off a piece of Bono; what I'm saying is, the woman who holds that heart has got to be someone who is more than merely lucky.


• I'm not sure I'm ever going to get over that one part in that one song ("Kite") when Bono belts out: "I'm a man, I'm not a child." He brought it with especial force in this performance; force that made me feel the love for him so much that I nearly barfed because I simply couldn't keep the love down a moment longer. Goddamn, he's fantastic.


• This video featured so many incredibly awesome moments when Bono and The Edge were singing together, head to head, little smiles lighting their sweet faces, their eyes closed softly amidst all that shouting and cheering, the better to feel their music and each other. I wanted to throw down and make out with the both of them, and not in a sexual way, but just because I wanted to partake of their incredible loveliness. It's amazing how the intentions and qualities of those specific people make every U2 concert more like church than church could ever be, and it's amazing that after all these years, I still feel like I did when I was 13 when I see it. Love is the holiest thing. Oh, Bono! Oh, The Edge! Thank you, thank you, thank you.


• While I'm mentioning The Edge, I just want to say how incredible a presence he is in U2. He is so humble and gentle, and at the same time, his guitar is so soaring, lyrical and flawless. As a musician, he is remarkable, creative, and unique, and plays absolutely beautifully without even a HINT of showboating. Plus, and I know I'm harping on this, but... he plays with his eyes closed ALL THE TIME. I think it's pretty obvious that if it weren't for The Edge, there would be no U2, because I think we can all tell that Bono would have run that good ship into the ground decades ago if his crazy ass were in charge.

• While we're on the topic of how there would be no U2 without this or that, I also loved, like always, the way those three guys have always stood behind Bono while he carries on in that way that he does. Those guys rule every bit as hard as Bono does, even if it is hard to see past that beautiful 800 lb gorilla at center stage. Goddamn, I love that band.

People, of course there were more highlights, and I could write a dissertation right now, marking everyone of them, but nevermind. I love U2. I just wanted to say it one more time.

Back To Bono

Ok: all that business I was bemoaning yesterday? I'm over it. I've decided that it isn't worth the headache, and also that what will be will be, and no amount of belly-aching will change that, so nevermind. The planet that's really not worth visiting is planet "Miserable Romance," and I'm not going there. I hope, one day, to have a romance that makes me happy, and that is worth the headache, and when that time comes, I will gladly suffer it. In the meantime, I shall fare forward.

I want to tell you some more things about this excellent book, which I have now finished reading, and which, seriously, I could not have loved more. The first thing I want to tell you is that Bono is an amazing man, and I could not feel luckier than I do to have had him to look up to since I was 13 years old. It may not seem like it today, in light of all the shenanigans I get up to, and how I love that devil music, but I had a very Christian upbringing. When I was a girl, it was so nice to hear Bono say things that were familiar to me, as a Christian, and more than that, it was validating to see him live so effectively, with so much good will and integrity, in a secular world, with his faith in tact, and guiding him.

Bono once said one of the most beautiful things I have ever read about being a Christian. It was during a tour of the American midwest that he did on behalf of his DATA organization, to help raise awareness about the wholesale AIDS holocaust that's underway there, and he was asked by some local paper if he was, in fact, "a Christian." His response, beautifully, was that he aspires to being a Christian, but that he knows he is unworthy of the title. What a different attitude that is to the kind of judgemental, moralizing, politically motivated evil that passes for the voice of Christianity in America, and currently guides so much of our political life.

I love that Bono talks so openly about his faith in this book, and that he says that when he speaks to God, he knows that God hears and answers him, and that  he guides him. I love the sense you get that Bono knows how very, very wrong he can be, and the sense of rigor there is in his approach to his religious life, and his life in the world. That is beautiful shit, and I have nothing but respect for that guy.

The other most brilliant thing in this book is when Bono talks about being a performer. "Never trust a performer" he says, reporting that, for instance, when he got off the stage at Live Aid, and hugged that girl from the crowd, he was looking, as a performer, for "a moment" that would stay with everyone who watched it. That, yeah, he was feeling the need to break the barrier between himself and the audience, but that another part of him was calculating how to tell the story of breaking that barrier, and was very conscious of what it was doing. I love the tension there is in his work, and the way he talks about it, between artifice and authenticity, and I love how comfortable he is with the inherent contradictions in what he does. Can we believe him? Do we know him? YES. Is he always 100% geniune? NO. I love the way both of those things are true, and unhesitatingly avowed by him.

Sometime in the 90's, during the big explosion of winking irony that was the Achtung Baby and Zooropa art project, I remember the sense that even though there was a big freaking circus of a stadium roadshow and gold and red devil costume between us and those clear, blue eyes, that the same soulful heart was beating under it all, and then I read some interview where Bono said that the best place to be was standing right at the center of all the contradictions -- that's where the truth is.

How awesome is that? Seriously, I love that guy.

Can We Talk? It's About Bono.

I love him.

Goddamn, people. this is a good book. It's nothing but a really long conversation with Bono, over a period of several months, with a French journalist, Michka Assayas, who knew a good thing when he first saw it in 1981, and is the dead opposite of Charlie Rose, in that he mostly shuts up and lets Bono have the floor. In it, Bono talks about his youth, his family, and his work, as a rock star and as an advocate for the poor, and it is fantastic.

People give Bono crap about the ego, but all I can say is THANK GOD for his ego. Thank God for his sense of what is possible, and what people are capable of. Thank God for his faith, and the fact that he never lets go of what he believes is right. When I first saw Bono, sometime in the early 80's, I was 13 years old. He was talking big, and dreaming big. He made a lot of promises about what kind of a man he was, and here's what's good about Bono: he has kept them all. He is that man so much more than I ever imagined back then. Lately, when I hear he's been short-listed for the Nobel Peace Prize, or some business, I swear I am proud of him as if he were my brother, or something.

I grew up watching Bono grow up for well over half my life, and seriously: we're going to have to step oustide if you want to talk shit. I mean, no doubt, he falters, but at the end of the day, he is a force for good, and his example is magnificent.

There will be more on this topic when I've finished reading, but for now, since I know you are all well-aware of my current fixations, I want to show you the most heartwarming picture in the entire world of rock:

It's the little smiles that really kill me. In some ways, Trent Reznor is the anti-Bono. Bono is always looking for the light, and trying to make pictures of heaven, while Trent is really, really unflinching about the darkness and complications. Aesthetically speaking, however, neither one of them fears the broad stroke, and they both have exactly the same topics at heart; which is to say THE IMPORTANT ONES -- truth, faith, love -- and they both do their work with that wholly unironic, savage seriousness that I love so damned much. That is a picture of my two favorite artists, right there.

Finally, here are two of the millions of good things Bono says in this excellent book that everyone should read:

"Fuck, I don't mind. I'll be the clown. Throw the pie."

and

"People talk to me... They walk straight up to me because they know from the records that even if my face isn't as open as it was 10 years ago, I am... People who know the music, know who you are. They've been in the dark room, and they know you better than your best friend, because you don't sing like that to your best friend. You don't sing in their ear."

Nice, no?

More later, no doubt.