brothers in a mine

i feel like holding my breath over and over and over until some miners are rescued, (preferably four,) from deep in the earth in west virginia. it could be my little act of fraternity. i hope they're alive. i hope they're doing everything they can to conserve breathable air. i hope there is more than one and they are together and they are taking heart in the spirit of humanity, in knowing that a tremendously calculated rescue effort is underway and in feeling the energy of millions of their species hoping and pulling in their minds for an outcome of life.

there is something about people trapped, such as in a mine. their lives probably ended a couple of days ago, or maybe a couple of hours ago, or maybe they're alive, huddled in a safety chamber, hoping. the terror of being trapped in a small space without much air, (to say nothing of the other necessities for human life,) along with the inability to know anything whatsoever is compelling. so many humans who typically struggle to agree on anything, are like-minded on this one. they're hoping against odds for life to prevail.

as it is 25 are dead. 25 men who were surely the salt of the earth, surely hard-working, colorful brothers and fathers and husbands and exes and coaches and pupils and friends and enemies and bosses and subordinates and strangers and neighbors, have deceased. they will not dig dirty coal from the ground ever again for the massey energy company.

it seems massey ceo don blankenship has not been a big proponent of safety in the face of slimmer profits. he has thrown a lot of money at lawmakers and been closely tied to a corrupt administration, which suggests he may be one of those millionaires who loves money so much he exemplifies the root of all evil. i hope this disaster, (an utterly ineffectual word if ever there were one,) changes him on a deep and personal level.

massey is a national flagship of union breaking, unfortunately, which is likely a factor in declining safety. (please rent the movie; matewan, for an understanding of the roots of the struggle between miners and corporations.)

i am somber tonight. i feel brothers. i feel them far away mourning and working to find and raise our other brothers. good luck-be strong.



i am sure it is dark as a grave tonight in the upper big branch mine. this song, spring hill mining disaster, written by ewan maccoll and peggy seeger but sung here by bono, (about the springhill mining disaster in nova scotia in 1958,) is poignant in both its lyrics and mood.

pitchman

bono's brilliance, what makes him a timeless artist of our age on a par and quite possibly beyond john lennon and bob dylan, is in his manipulation of image, his mastery of not only finding what he is looking for but also in choosing the right path to reach those goals. u2 has always courted the masses, after all.

u2 has never shown any interest in narrowing their audience. rather, they have gone to great pains to be inclusive, to gain accessibility and to establish their myth, (if you will,) by sheer math. and not to belittle or discount the edge, adam or larry, but u2 is bono. u2 would have us believe u2 is bono and the edge, with a great rhythm section, but as an admirer and follower of u2 for the last 27 years it is clear bono wields the greatest influence on the acts of the band.

the fact that bono seemed to seek legacy through volume does not disqualify him from being a great artist. his poetry, his attention to detail, his imagination and forethought, his voice, his magnetism, his generosity and caring, his scholarship, his choices, they have all made u2.

if the beatles arrived and laid down the prototypes of all styles within rock and roll, (if helter skelter really was the first punk rock sound and if yellow submarine did define psychedelia and i want to hold your hand launched pop and rocky raccoon became quintessential folk ballad,) u2 proved nothing if not that they could not duplicate those prototypes whatsoever. their song craftsmanship on their first two albums is amateurish, even though it makes up for deficiencies in other ways and areas.

on war they showed growth in melody while continuing to struggle with form. sunday bloody sunday may not have been a rebel song but the confusion came from the war march feel of it. what was strange was that they seemed to be straining to master the billboard hit and when they missed that mark, their courage and sincerity came off as endearing. finally, with new year's day they were able to produce a driving hook but then came the unforgettable fire, an album called "ethereal," by the critics of the day in spite of its single, pride (in the name of love,) eschewing accessibility in favor of an earnest message to the masses.

how did u2's appeal expand so consistently in their early years? it wasn't craft. yes, edge's guitar work improved and the band was often strong. bono's voice was phenomenal even while his poetry and songwriting were still coming up to speed. but in an age of duran duran and culture club, at a time when the clash seemed to shun the mainstream along with talking heads and others, while the big bands of the day, the arena rockers, were killing themselves with formula, and john lennon was toying with media, u2 clicked on demographic segments with lyrics such as on october's tomorrow:

who's coming back? he's coming back. i believe. jesus is
coming!

this positive message along with bono's voice turned many on to the band. when he sang in latin on gloria it was like he was making church cool and for those who spent an ample amount of time in church in those days, u2 made a perfect standard bearer. reading the early biographies and considering the band's own fundamentalism and participation in the shalom group bible study, helped many to identify with them then just as the same concept works for a whole new generation of listeners in the new century.

if u2 was a professional athlete, credentials for the hall of fame would already be set. the volume of sales year over year over the last 30 years is phenomenal. when the joshua tree was the biggest record in the world back in 1987 it would have been unlikely to predict the band would be able to sustain a place of relevance and major league sales for every succeeding album. still, rattle and hum sold in 1989 even if it was panned by critics.

achtung baby is arguably the band's best effort. on that record u2 can be seen in their prime, still young and rock and roll, citizens of the world navigating the realm of rock stars in new and interesting ways, connecting their art to that of david wojnarowicz on the one video, (depicting the aids crisis as similar to the fate of buffalo driven off cliffs by hunters, doomed, hopeless and plunging to death,) writing songs from the perspective of judas after having read a similar book of poetry, recording in places like berlin at a time when the wall was crumbling in an effort to be inspired by the time and feel the energy of a great movement. achtung baby was simply a bad-ass album.

next they seemed put off or perhaps frightened by their success. it was as if they felt like they needed to find inventive ways to be inaccessible while maintaining a new found hipness. in interviews in the early '90s u2 can be heard referencing the industrial bands like nitzer ebb and skinny puppy, and their sound on 1994's zooropa was similarly influenced. bono's poetry was sharp and arresting in contrast to the sound that was at times pretty, such as on 'stay,' but mostly off putting. even 'lemon,' a song with some of the best lyrics bono ever put to paper, seems like a tug of war. beneath bono's campy falsetto, edge chants a chorus:

a man makes a picture, a moving picture, through the light projected he can
see himself up close.

the lyrics are interesting but in some ways at odds with the music.

midnight is where the day begins

and there it is. beneath the experimentation and the disco and un-cool, there is a u2 lyric as proverb. midnight is where the day begins, is a metaphor. when things are at their darkest or bleakest, things can only get brighter. (this is a theme bono revisited in his writing several times over the years, perhaps most poignantly on 'all that you can't leave behind's,' stuck in a moment.)

next came 'pop.' in spite of the name and the modern techniques used in the studio, (looping, pedal effects, etc.) the lyrics proved bono's continuing progression. please is in fact a plea by bono to both sides involved in "the troubles," in northern ireland, to please get up off their knees and resolve their differences. leaving aside the album's opener, discotheque, (and perhaps miami,) 'pop,' is a heavy record.

as the new century arrived u2 finally decided to return to the mainstream with 'all that you can't leave behind.' dedicated u2 fans liked 'pop,' so for them the idea of a mainstream record was not necessarily welcome. however, the substance was there as usual. u2 had not only mastered the pop hook, they figured out how to pair it with insightful, meaningful lyrics and a brand of positivity uncommon to rock and roll. beautiful day is as anthemic as any of their early songs, (sunday bloody sunday, new years day,) but instead of being a tragedy or a struggle peculiar to one country, beautiful day is so universally accessible it ends up sounding like the national anthem for the planet.

u2 did not seem all that rock and roll on 'all that you can't leave behind.' they were nice, older rock stars, but the music kicked ass. it was listenable, catchy, at times driving and at other times artsy, ultimately it defied any critic who might pigeonhole u2 as irrelevant by virtue of their age or craftsmanship. nearly 10 years after it stands as the height of their careers even if 'achtung baby,' is preferred.

'how to dismantle an atomic bomb,' came next and while sales dipped, the dip was made slight by u2's affiliation with the apple corporation. u2's brand was advertised alongside apple's in a million-dollar media blitz in yet another example of the band's trailblazing nature. in years gone by such an affiliation would have been seen as some sort of sellout but u2 appeared by the ads to be endorsing apple and yet, they appeared in the ads for free. in other words, their compensation was in advertising, which was slick.

the affiliation for its part was typical u2. they chose apple carefully, for their ethos perhaps more than for their product. this affiliation was not unlike u2's affiliation with amnesty international in the '80s. both partnerships padded their fan base. from the advertising perspective, vertigo's "uno, dos, tres, catorce!", became the most memorable line from an ad campaign in the new millennium.

and now that 'no line on the horizon,' has disappointing sales numbers, it is obvious u2's arc is in decline. it's nothing to be ashamed of. the rolling stones's arc too, declined. what is actually more interesting is how long the band was able to stave off decreased sales, how long they were able to be relevant.

the band's extracurricular activities may not be for the purpose of promoting album sales or even keeping the band relevant in what has to be considered mid-life for men and more like the ancient years for a rock band, but they have played a role. bono was time magazine's man of the year in 2005, (along with bill and melinda gates.) his involvement with the one organization, data, and other organizations engaged in charitable work over the years has steeled his reputation as the earnest rock star who puts his time and effort where his mouth is and gains unprecedented results.

to discount u2 or bono is foolish. his place, like theirs, in the pantheon of rock's elite is guaranteed. as an individual of great accomplishment, bono's personal legacy is similarly secure.

anger

my anger grew up with me. it was as if it was always there. it was a strand within my dna or perhaps a lone chromosome and as i grew and matured, so did my anger.

at five, i walked onto the grounds at the terminal island woman’s state penitentiary a tabula rasa and three hours later i walked away from my mother with my anger draped over my shoulders like a poncho. no, she could not go home with me. no, i would not be able to see her in any environment other than this institutionalized setting with the set visiting hours and the rules dictating my accompaniment by a legal guardian. no, i did not have a dad, at least not one who would be involved in my life in any way whatsoever.

my anger giggled when my grandfather, (my guardian,) mentioned my biological father in absentia whose ass, he said, i should shove my foot up if ever the day came when i met him face to angry face. oh that would shock the big jerk when i clobbered him with my size four.

my anger flared up when i was removed from kindergarten for being early. it subsided when i spent days in the kitchen on the floor playing with hot wheels as lupe prepared albondigas.

it blossomed anew when my mom married a 5-foot, 5-inch hate machine when i was seven or eight. the two were like sleeping tigers when they were high on heroin. they were semi-normal when they took their methadone. it was when the drugs were unavailable or had been used up that things got crazy and the times when i was the one who got smacked planted embers of anger and rage deep inside me.

my anger, like my sadness, is unique to me and i own it. it colors my world view like a touch of black mixed evenly in with my white and all of my other colors. my anger facilitates my hate and i do hate.

i hate injustice. i hate bullies. i hate corporations. i hate lies. i hate deception from government officials. i hate when parents act as if their kids owe them something and not the other way around, or as if their children are accoutrement to their shabby little lives. i hate racism and bigotry and all manner of caveman-like action and thought that would stop our progress and take mankind backwards. i hate fundamentalism. i hate war. i hate fear and all manner of marketing based on it. i hate ignorance. i do not hate the ignorant-how could i? but i do hate ignorance more than anything.

anger is an energy and yes, anger is a gift. it hurts to be angry but there is no point in dwelling on history that cannot be changed. i choose instead to make it a positive. i choose to nurture my anger and let it hone me and shape me and sharpen me.

my anger chooses the books i read. my anger loves movies by lars von trier and music by rage against the machine and propaghandi. my anger is iconoclast.

it was my anger that pushed me in my early 20s from a cradle of comfort i had constructed from evangelical christianity, a firm belief in reaganomics, (formed on the basis of absolutely nothing,) and a trust in the establishment and family values and all things american, to a state of agitation and anger fueled by disillusionment, poverty, dissatisfaction and a sense of having absorbed wholesale lies.

• the usa is a better country than all of the other countries on the planet.


• the slim number of people in the world who believed as i did on the subject of god and religion and the after life would be joining god and jesus and the saints in heaven for eternity where we would enjoy streets paved of gold and mansions while all others, the nameless and faceless masses, would burn forever in hell, gnashing their teeth and pulling their hair out in a lake of fire and brimstone because they refused to believe this sliver of a doctrine about an imaginary being and a load of revisionist history.


• man is essentially bad, hence why he needs forgiveness and why he should be consumed by guilt.


• race and ethnicity divide people while class differences need not be a concern.


• capitalism in and of itself is good.


• if our elected leaders claim to be christian, they should not be questioned for their actions.


• the war in vietnam was righteous.

lies... as the fallacious nature of my education became increasingly evident my anger grew and became my chaperon escorting me from fallacy to misconception to out-and-out lie. in response to my sub par education i read the communist manifesto. i chose non-american authors, devouring the works of camus, kundera, celine, and garcia-marquez, delighting in salih, achebe and gibran, snacking on the tomes of hamsun, lorca and xingjian. when i read americans i chose henry miller, richard rodriguez and h.l. mencken. i found myself attracted to ghandi and che guevara and oscar wilde and g.b. shaw and james joyce and w.b. yeats.

it was my anger at the status quo that moved me. had i not been mad i may have chosen the works of robert frost. i may have come to enjoy blockbuster hollywood movies, short on insight into the nature of man but long on special effects. i may have been a celine dion fan. i may never have questioned anything. i may have been wealthier and happier, more financially savvy but less informed about the nature of things and how to truly be a dignified human being, and of a lighter spirit from day to day but less equipped to contribute positively to the struggle of man, which is to evolve and constantly improve on the conditions of man.

thanks to kieslowski, godard, bunuel, almodovar, and kar wai, with appreciation to bono, lennon, yorke, vedder, cohen and morrissey, yes it was the artists who reached me and helped me to turn anger into so much more than merely a positive.

some of my friends see me as angry and they cannot conceive of this facet of me as a good thing. it is distinctly me they think. maybe they applaud me for going with it instead of denying it or something like that. mostly however, they swing from being annoyed at my anger manifested as a need to verbally chastise the acts and words of george w. bush or criticize grass roots advertising as a means of enlisting the lowest hanging fruit into the corporate, status quo mentality, to feeling pity for me because of how off-putting i really can be, (even if it is to one who does not want to be confronted or challenged in their long-held beliefs.) i can't be bothered but i am human and i am bothered. this too, makes me angry and contributes to my world view and the constant rounding and polishing that is my experience.

i would no sooner return my anger or choose to have lived another, different life than i would renounce my self education and its many virtues, including the personal enlightenment that has allowed me to step forward confidently into the world of fatherhood.

i have planned for success as a father by understanding all that bothered me as a child. i have imagined my father as a 16-year-old boy having sex then being confronted with the pregnancy. i have imagined his parents response when he suggested that perhaps the girl got around a bit and maybe the child was not his, how they latched on to that idea and supported their boy again and encouraged him to challenge the notion that he was in fact my father and how he was buoyed by that support and ignored my mother at school and around town and said they were not together until she retreated into the heart of her rough home to have the child me. i have imagined my alcoholic grandfather berating my mother for being a floozy at 14. i have imagined how he took no responsibility whatsoever. meanwhile my grandmother loved her daughter and instructed her to pray to mother mary who also had a child despite little sexual experience.

being pushed and pulled and moving from family to family and town to town, from irish catholicism to a pentacostal fundamentalism, from being urged to read the bible and all things related but never being steered towards the classics or any form of dissent, from a mother who spent most of my childhood in prison and introduced physically abusive men into my life when she was on the outside, to an extreme response to such circumstances, my anger thrived on a variety of impetuses.

i savor my anger. it is my lover and i love it. i am profoundly thankful for my perspective. i have much to live for, much to learn still, but i am deeply contented by my journey thus far and confident that my life has meaning annd my children will be better for my anger, my unique but also common perspective.

u2 - still relevant

i watched u2's first night on david letterman with lower expectations than what i might have had in the past. their most recent record; how to dismantle an atomic bomb, was among my least favored u2 albums and up to this point i had only heard the new single, 'get your boots on,' from the new record; no line on the horizon. however, instead of looking and sounding like a bunch of 40-somethings rocking the local pub with a cache of songs from 30 years ago, they continued their tradition of seeking the cutting edge, if not necessarily finding it every time out.



i think they got it though, this time. spot on. i watched and listened to them perform 'breathe' on the monday night david letterman show, and i was amazed though not completely sold. i remembered 'vertigo,' a bad ass, hard rocking, blitzkrieg of a tune on every level amidst a collection of otherwise nice but forgettable songs, (excepting 'sometimes you can't make it on your own.')

'breathe' is fresh air. it is artistic and shows some progression in bono's writing as it is a departure, nothing like any song lyrics he has written previously. it is an impressionist sort of song. bono is telling a story in a way, about something that happened on 16 june, a man threatens someone from a front porch but the one who answered the door cannot be frightened because he or she has already been redeemed by the almighty power of music, or...something like that. it will be interesting to discover what this song is really all about some day. but for now it is enough to have vague impressions about the powers of love and music, and the freedom to breathe.

'breathe' sounds like 'come together' collided with 'head like a hole,' then had lunch with 'rainy day woman #12 & 35.' it's not as sonically resounding as 'vertigo,' but it does have another random number inserted at the end of the first stanza. (instead of catorce it's three.) otherwise bono blurts out some of the lyrics like a stream of consciousness warning from on high, then sings and even rhymes others. the affect is of a band taking chances and doing things different long after having secured their place in the pantheon of rock immortals.

the lyrics in 'breathe,' are typically bono, which is to say refreshingly more colorful and vibrant and interesting and poignant than virtually anything else out there.

But I’m running down the road like loose electricity
While the band in my head plays a striptease

directly following that line is this one:

The roar that lies on the other side of silence
The forest fire that is fear so deny it

it is a new way of describing a frenetic run down the street, like loose electricity? perfect. it is not the first time bono has conjured the music in his head. (he conjured the opera within him on 'ultraviolet,' and on 'sometimes you can't make it on your own.') is there a roar on the other side of silence? and fear is a forest fire and denying it is probably as good a strategy as any in combating it. whether it is a metaphor or a phrase or sometimes just a word, bono is a poet of the first order. for instance, near the end of 'breathe,' when he describes a street as "sunburst." simple and yet, beyond what i have been hearing from his peers.

after watching the performance on letterman i was relieved and my curiosity was piqued. so i tuned in the next night, (way past my bedtime.) they played another track from no line on the horizon, called 'magnificent.' letterman said he felt it right in his chest and i was reminded of just how concise that guy can be, (as well as why he has that job.)

magnificent' is a rock and roll hymn. it floats and soars throughout the higher register and bono plays around with some of the notes bending them up and down and around like a snake emerging from a basket. bono plays lucifer in a way, (prior to the fall,) exclaiming his mission from the beginning, which was "to sing for you." 'magnificent' is rife with biblical imagery and references. ultimately it may be that bono is suggesting lucifer's redemption when he says "only love can heal such a scar." in any case, magnificent is well...no, i won't say that. it is a bombastic song with a great pop hook and so many parts that sum up to rock music as listenable high art. larry and adam as u2's backbone of a rhythm section pump this song along and drive it to being the rocking and bumping song that it is. edge has an understated guitar solo that fits its placement like a glove.

i am anxious to see their performances tonight, tomorrow night and friday on letterman. if they can even be in the same range as these first two nights, i will run to the store on saturday and buy the record if i have to collect aluminum cans to pay for it. (it just hasn't been worked into the budget yet otherwise.) i always planned on buying it but i was in no rush. after seeing 'breathe,' and 'magnificent," these last two nights, my sense of urgency has been substantially engorged.

lots of old bands are still playing. few remain relevant. few offer the new, the interesting, the thoughtful. springsteen recently had a super sunday but it was with old material he whipped out and just rocked the heck out of. the stones, by contrast, look like a group of undertakers trying so hard to be lively when they play, it makes my teeth hurt. sting unceremoniously entered irrelevance when he got in bed with the industry that is high fashion. how un-rock and roll can one get? meanwhile, u2 just keeps working that envelope, pushing at the boundaries of what is expected and what is possible, raging from deep within the machine all while maintaining their death grip on the lost sensibility in rock music, positivity.

kite

bono says this song is about letting go of someone. he said he wrote it when he was thinking about his dad nearing the end of his life but after it was made, he realized he really intended the message for his kids.

it is truly an amazing message for one's children, too. i just thought about it this morning as my kids were scampering around in my parent's house. i see terra getting older and at four, there are already behaviors she has left behind that i will never see or know again. and, that is okay.

the night before i was up late with my dad discussing everything from prop 8 to nietzche. i enjoyed the conversation immensely.

all of this simply underscores the fact that i do not own the people i love. it is not to me to keep them. they are not for my pleasure, enjoyment or security. my dad is for me to cherish for as long as i possibly can. my wife is for me to love and venture forth with. my children are for me to influence as positively as possible, to impart the very best of me and my values, and to encourage to follow their own dreams and visions for this life.

here are the lyrics for kite. i can imagine saying this to terra and mark. in essence the message is, i have given you all i can and i trust you to go out into the world and live your life.

Something is about to give, I can feel it coming, I think I know what it mean, I'm not afraid to die, I'm not afraid to live, And when I'm flat on my back, I hope to feel like I did, 'cause hardness, it sets in, You need some protection, The thinner the skin, I want you to know, That you don't need me anymore, I want you to know, You don't need anyone, or anything at all, Who's to say where the wind will take you? Who's to say what it is will break you? I don't know, which way the wind will blow, Who's to know when the time has come around? Don't want to see you cry, I know that this is not goodbye, In summer I can taste the salt in the sea, There's a kite blowing out of control on a breeze, I wonder what's gonna happen to you, You wonder what has happened to me, I'm a man, I'm not a child, A man who sees the shadow behind your eyes, Who's to say where the wind will take you, Who's to say what it is will break you, I don't know, where the wind will blow, Who's to know when the time has come around, I don't want to see you cry, I know that this is not goodbye. Did I waste it? Not so much I couldn't taste it, Life should be fragrant, Roof-top to the basement, The last of the rock stars, When hip-hop drove the big cars, In the time when new media, was the big idea, What was the big idea?