If there can be a downside to only having a 15 minute commute to work in the morning, it's that there isn't enough time to get a good think on, which I discovered when I got stuck on the 101 the other morning. It was just a short (in LA terms) traffic jam and consequently only a few mini-epiphanies (miniphanies?), but I was left to wonder what things I might conjure if I had to drive my ass out to the Valley every morning, especially since I haven't had a workable bathtub for a while, thereby losing my previous greatest source of inspiration.
The miniphany was this: U2's "Bad" was playing on the radio, and I was singing my heart out a little, when I wondered, not for the first time, what the hell the song might be about (susbsequent research has indicated that it's about heroin, which I guess I should have assumed, - I knew "Running to Stand Still" was about heroin because it has the word needle right there for the lyrically challenged - but that's all really beside the point).
I had never before been able to put into words why U2 had been such a seminal part of my adolescence, how they were the yearning, anguished soundtrack of my years 12, 13, 14, and 15, but here it was - other than the obvious message songs like "Pride", "War", and "Sunday Bloody, Sunday", etc., I never knew exactly what Bono was singing about, but my god was it important! It had to be, as passionately as Bono was belting it out, like the entire fate of the western world hung in the balance betweeen Tracks 7 and 8.
I didn't know exactly what it was that he had found, just that he'd been looking for it for a long time. I couldn't imagine how you'd get around in a city where the streets had no name (and was this city the Red Hill Mining Town?) just that when Bono goes there with you, it's all he can do! I had no idea who Jara was (or even that his name was spelled Jara) but man his song was a weapon and HIS BLOOD STILL CRIES FROM THE GROUND! That has to mean something very important, right? And if I could just figure out what, maybe the rest of life would make sense too.
So the parallel for the first time became clear - U2 was a perfect analogy of adolescence - being really upset about something, just not exactly sure what, but you can feel it building, rising up from your stomach through your throat until you want to yell at the top of your lungs! Yell! Yell, well, I'm not sure what to yell, BUT IT'S REALLY FUCKING IMPORTANT! Clumsily stumbling toward meaning, not sure where to find inspiration - maybe it's religious, maybe it's political, maybe it's an Indian summer sky, maybe it's tripping through someone's wires, probably it's heroin.
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