The images are almost as indelible as the sounds.
Wisps of an anthem when I was 11, with simply worded yet complex images of a world I longed to see.
A badass rocking video on MTV in my brother’s room in the basement with four stars who seemed shockingly new yet archetypal as if always lodged in memory. Plus! Lara Croft and special effects making the stars into superheroes.
A mix CD where the words, “see the Bedouin fires at night,” took me far beyond a winter’s night in the South Shore Plaza parking lot.
A soaring patriotism and tribute that gave a newly complex world a sense of peace amid chaos and war peeking in. Meaning.
Framing
The names hanging in tribute as the hero team from down the street, the underdogs that somehow also represented my triumph, all of our triumph, won.
That strumming guitar as the names soared to the sound of endless, hard-earned optimism, and then defiantly
in the face of those who tear at us
that wing of a flag.
All That You Can’t Leave Behind showed me that music could be so much more than MTV, Bar Mitzvah and Wedding playlists, FM radio, or even that catchy single or band you really enjoyed and thought was your favorite. Music as emotional transference and then, transcendence.
How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb with that pulsating earworm of a lead single – Vertigo beaming at us in silhouettes on iPod commercials as technology and music warped forever. Scouring the Times Square Virgin Megastore to buy my first album.
SItting in a car on an overcast day, between the water and the grassy campsite of a state park at the far tip of Newport RI, at a Boy Scout camp out. While younger Scouts were busy learning knots, I was learning what seemed like the interminably ancient beauty of The Joshua Tree.
U2 3D in IMax at the New England Aquarium and its immersive concert is a plunge into the back catalog. Buying concert DVDs! An array of music in front of me of emotion and sonic adventure.
When you discover and fall in love with a band 32 years after it was founded, listening is exploration down welcoming hallways with adventure drawing you forward.
Music becomes more of a soundtrack at this point.
Those concert DVDs constantly accompanying writing marathons in college, taking me through the emotional ride of a live show but with the comfort that makes it work in background noise that summons high spirits. Everything in college seemed possible with my passion and intelligence encouraged to excel.
The lush and emotional highs and lows of the live recording of The Fly, recorded in Boston in 2001. The song is normally a lush piece of electronica on the album and live, slightly distorted, yet still recognizably U2. But this recording, a thruming rock note that swings into a reoccurring chorus that smashes into an interplay between Bono and the drummer, Larry Mullen Jr., in a way where the band’s visual livewire energy running through the stage is heard. Pain and soaring joy amid the whole breadth of life in just one song. A song that was there for me in triumph, there to lift me up out of heartbreak.
Driving through sunny New Hampshire hills to the tune of One Tree Hill, summer spread ahead as I returned to my childhood summer camp, now as a counselor. Returning to right a long past mistake and finish my time properly in that little slide of heaven.
The soundtrack of a life where there really are no limits, no line.
No Line on the Horizon was not just an anthem, or an album, but the sound of the world opening up in all the ways I had dreamed it would. The album, and its title track, came out in 2009, right before I went to study in Argentina for five months. Travelling internationally and experiencing something new, with adventure along the way, was the dream as long as I could remember. Click on the link at the top of this paragraph, listen to the song. Its the sound of limitless potential, dreams achieved, with more dreams to reach ahead.
At this point music isn’t just an accompaniment but a philosophy, a spirituality, and when it surfaces without my playing – an old friend.
And here – a karaoke legend is born.
Picture it
A trendy bar, at the corner of two cobblestone streets, in an old and charming neighborhood of Buenos Aires, Hookah, Stella Artois by the liter (water to them, manna to 20 year old Americans), my naively egotistical assumed familiarity with the owner which was born out of a sense of UMass rules applying everywhere, a beautiful house singer with her hip band most nights. But, not tonight. Karaoke tonight.
A desire by 20 year old me to give anything a shot and impress the women I was with.
One song I felt would rock the crowd and I was comfortable with the lyrics.
Uno
Dos
Tres
Catorce?
The folly of counting out of order in Spanish in a Spanish speaking country is as obvious as how perfect the choice of song was. A legend was born in a place called Vertigo.
The best karaoke is when you know all the lyrics and feel free to unleash your inner rock-star with zero shame. It was the night I learned that really, life is so much better when you don’t take yourself seriously.
I didn’t even need the lyrics, I worked the stage, then the whole bar, when Bono sings, “How to kneeeeeel”, I, of course, knelt.
The soft parts of the song where the singing takes command, I approached friends of mine and sang directly to them. I completely lost myself in the joy of the music and the crowd and feeling no inhibitions yet a total sense of control.
The crowd, and more importantly to me – those I was with, loved it. But more importantly, I learned how beautiful it can be to simply, in a perfect moment, to not give a fuck.
We were there to work with local children and launch a long-term partnership between the Hillel of Buenos Aires and the village’s school. It was my first exposure to international development and the good that I could do in the world through commitment and an understanding of my capacity to serve others.
The surroundings and circumstances were tough. The impact we would make for these children may ultimately be minor in the face of the massive challenges they faced. But, if we could do even a tiny bit of good, change at least one life by a little bit, it would be worth it.
The camaraderie we built that weekend, between Argentinians and Americans was more lasting than I could realize. We were united not really by our faith, but by our humble sense of service to others we barely even knew and a desire to confront inequality.
At one moment, that beautiful kind of synchronicity broke out when one person started singing a song that just felt right and all joined in, somehow all feeling comfortable with the lyrics. Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out of – now a song that I realize, writing now ten years later, feels right for the persistence we all hoped we may be able to seed in the moment with our modest work. A song of hope that hit across borders, both personal and global.
The music we love, if we’re lucky, evolves with us and we grow through it. We dig in and rediscover the nuances of a live performance that changes from year to year, we cycle in an out of favorites depending on where we are in our lives.
The music continued to peek at me from music videos during an idyllic afternoon cooking with new friends and also underscored bonding with my mother and brother over the pure emotion of long awaited live shows.
If a band keeps doing its job, you can discover the entirety of emotion and experience in the band’s discography. U2 gives that gift if you let them in.
And now?
I work to make the world a better place, through international development work and advocacy, in a role only a degree or two removed from where Bono crusades for global justice and against inequality.
More importantly – I dance with no inhibitions with my fiance in my apartment to U2’s newest poppy tribute, a song that celebrates US and NYC in its video, but more importantly its about that warmest and longest of feelings
Love.
Not that fox news 