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"When people ask us what our influences are, we always say, 'Each other.'" -- Bono |
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"When people ask us what our influences are, we always say, 'Each other.'" -- Bono |
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My Fan Year - #2
@U2,
January 15, 2005
Last week I said I'd talk about a song at the end of each of these columns. This week, forget the rest of the column; I won't have room to talk about anything else. This is gonna be all about "Mysterious Ways." This song is what made me say "Hola" to the wonder of live U2 long before I ever saw the band in concert. Dublin '93, the Zoo Radio broadcast, a tape sent me by a generous fellow fan (you know who you are!) hooked me on the extended ending. I hope you've heard it: Bono pleading "Move now, Spirit, hold me"; the answer from that unearthly guitar; then Bono channeling the music's response into words: "I'll pull you places you've never seen." Such a response is, in equal parts, promise and threat. Later, again through the generosity of the Internet fandom gathered on the mailing list Wire, I secured a copy of Zoo TV Live in Sydney. The visuals only added new layers to the song -- an unusual experience; visuals tend to limit the imagination. Much of what was going on onstage I may never find literal meanings for (who's the lady with the spinning head supposed to be?), but they were all provocative images nonetheless. I used the Sydney performance of "Mysterious Ways" to sucker my friend Stephanie into the fandom. I knew she'd love U2 if only she'd let herself pay close enough attention to them, so I appealed to her literary side. I popped the video in the player one day and told her, "Here's a writing challenge. Watch the interplay between Bono and this bellydancer and then write a story based on what you see." It worked. Not only did she come up with an interesting piece on, if I remember right, Henry VIII and one of his wives, but she got hooked into U2 -- and bellydancing. So now we can skip ahead to 2001, when Stephanie and I were both enrolled in a bellydancing class. The Elevation tour would begin in a matter of months. Their show in Chicago would be the first time Stephanie would ever see them live. So, we thought, why not learn to bellydance? Why not, in fact, choreograph a dance to "Mysterious Ways" just in case Bono felt moved to pull Stephanie up on stage? Just in case, you know. Not saying we wouldn't like the concert any less if it didn't happen, but one should be prepared, right? I don't have to talk about the result at the concert itself, since Stephanie already has. I just wanted to mention it as an example of a general principle: this song has already pulled me any number of places I'd never seen. And yet when I hear it, I hear more than a tangle of happy memories. There is never anything nostalgic about listening to my favorite live versions of "Mysterious Ways" -- I haven't mentioned Irving Plaza yet, have I? -- because there's nothing nostalgic in the song itself. It's not a song about the pull to places you've never seen; it's a song that pulls. © @U2/Pancella, 2005.
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