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"Girls are wily. My girls give me lingering kisses on the lips, and I thought it was because they loved me, and I found out they were checking if I was smoking." -- Bono |
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"Girls are wily. My girls give me lingering kisses on the lips, and I thought it was because they loved me, and I found out they were checking if I was smoking." -- Bono |
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Like a Song: Walk On
@U2,
August 05, 2007
[Ed. note: This is the sixth in a series of personal essays by the @U2 staff about songs and/or albums that have had great meaning or impact in our lives.]
 Seven years from when I first heard "Walk On," it amazes me now to think of how little an impact the song had on me back then. My first recollection of it, as an 11-year-old, was in October 2000 when the music channel Q had the international version of the video playing on heavy rotation. I'm ashamed to admit it now, but in fact the video was played so many times that I would regularly change channels whenever I saw the familiar image of the plane coming down to land in Rio de Janeiro. I have no memory of really being moved by the song at that time. Perhaps it was because life was not so hard back then.Things were very different when I next heard the song, nearly two years later, in August 2002. I had now somehow managed to survive two years of high school, two years which had been characterised by bullying, loneliness and isolation, things which, for childish reasons, I had never told my parents about. It's a well-worn cliché that people who are being bullied have a tendency to keep their experiences to themselves. Although I refused to tell my parents the details, they had an inkling of how unhappy I was. They were therefore keen for me to move schools, a thought that terrified me. Although life at the school I was attending felt like a living hell, the thought of changing to another school seemed even worse. For some reason, I was frightened of change. My mum and dad became more and more frustrated as my behaviour seemed to go further and further beyond their understanding. I became increasingly plagued with feelings of guilt and despair, as I realised how little sense I was able to make of my own emotions, with it becoming more apparent to me that I'd let everyone down who wanted the best for me. And worse, I was stuck in a situation that there seemed to be no way out of, one that was all my own doing. Bitter and depressed, I thought of suicide several times. And yet even months after "Walk On" had stopped being played regularly on the air waves, and despite how little notice I took of it when I first heard it, during my lowest moments I would often find that the refrain to the song would be going round and round in my head. Even though all I could remember were the words "Walk On, Walk On," I found it very uplifting. From there, a strange hunger started to grow inside me for the song. I yearned to hear it again, so I went out and brought All That You Can't Leave Behind. The feeling I got when I heard "Walk On" again after nearly two years is one I don't think I will ever forget. In Bono's words, the shape of the room seemed to change; so did the temperature; it was as though up to that point I had been viewing the world completely in black and white, and in an instant it all changed to vivid colour. Even the first notes of Edge's guitar, ringing out like the bells of heaven, made my heart feel as though it was about to burst, with Bono's voice soaring out of the CD player feeling like an embrace: "And if the darkness is to keep us apart And if the daylight feels like it's a long way off And if your glass heart should crack And for a second you turn back Oh no Be strong." It felt like all the oxygen was slowly being drained out of the room, but that didn't matter. This song breathed for me, lived for me, spoke for me, understood me. Every single word of the lyrics felt like an articulation of all the miseries, worries and frustrations that I had felt unable to understand or explain, not only to others but to myself. It felt as if Bono was sitting right beside me, explaining to me why things were the way they were. "You're packing a suitcase for a place none of us has been A place that has to be believed to be seen. You could have flown away, a singing bird in an open cage Who will only fly, only fly for freedom. Oh, oh, walk on." Suddenly, I knew why it was that I didn't want to move schools; school in general felt like a cage, and I didn't want to fly straight from one cage into another. I wanted to get out and be free. I wanted to go somewhere where I could be free to be myself, not what other people wanted me to be. The song was like a balm, soothing the hurt that I felt inside. It felt as though Bono was whispering in my ear "It's not your fault. Forget about the past. There's a better place waiting for you, but you've just got to be determined and believe that you will get there someday. Every little thing's going to be just fine." From that moment on, my obsession with U2 was cemented; there was no going back. These four men were the only people who understood me. This band had title to my soul. Things changed when I read Niall Stokes' book U2 Into The Heart: the stories behind every song. Until then, I'd had no idea that the song had been written about Aung San Suu Kyi. But as I read Stokes' account of the appalling life of the Burmese dissident, the old feelings of guilt began to return. As ridiculous as it may sound, I began to feel guilty that I had ever derived any comfort from the song. OK, I'd had a slightly tough time in high school, but that was nothing compared to what Suu Kyi had been through. She had lost everything in her struggle to free Burma from the brutal grip of Gen. Than Shwe's government: her family, her home, her liberty. "Walk On" was her song, not mine. This revelation had meant that although "Walk On" still gave me some comfort, every time I listened to it I felt a sense of distance; I felt that, unlike Aung San Suu Kyi, I hadn't really earned the right to feel that the song related to my own situation. But things changed again when I saw the U.S. video of the song. Unlike the international version, this video seemed to depict a series of individuals each trying to cope with their own personal torment. The two videos seemed to reflect two different dimensions, or interpretations, of the song: one the heroic life of a human rights defender, the other the individual acts of strength and defiance made each day by ordinary people. And when I spoke to other U2 fans on the Internet, I found more and more people who had felt the same way as me; in particular, one girl for whom "Walk On" had been her angel song, compelling her to have the song's name tattooed on her skin. I stopped feeling so guilty after that. There even came a point not long ago when I felt that I didn't need the song anymore. I would sit down to listen to it, and find that none of the lyrics seemed to relate to anything that was happening in my life. But that became a thing to celebrate, as I realised that I was happy; I had finally reached that place that Bono had promised I would, the place that had to be believed to be seen. And when I looked at everything I was doing in my life, I realised that all of it was either directly or indirectly linked to U2 in some way. The "Hallelujahs" at the end of the single version of "Walk On" then became a joyful prayer of thanks to the band for having given me the strength to get this far. And even when things started to go wrong again -- exam stress, broken relationships, my parents' divorce -- the song took on yet another dimension for me; that of the need to find home. "Home Hard to know what it is if you've never had one Home I can't say where it is but I know I'm going home, That's where the hurt is." The place that I had lived in for so long, having now become characterised by my parents' rows, no longer truly felt like home; the song seemed to be saying that the time had now come to leave all the baggage I'd accumulated from living in one place behind and go and search for the place that really felt like home -- wherever that may be. So to me "Walk On" has been a song that has changed to suit the moment I happen to be in, managing to be intimate whilst also capturing the universal nature of human suffering. Its message seems to be that love can triumph over the things that we do to each other, and to ourselves. I don't think that there are many bands that can claim that with just one song they've managed to not only change lives but save lives; I know I'm not the only one for whom U2 have done both. © Fry/@U2, 2007.
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