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Tuesday, April 17, 2012

the light bulb and the cross necklace

How's THAT for the new U2 album title? rtog

 Actually, it sounds ore like a horror movie title.(:

Actually it's a reminder of how U2 has (at least) twice used a salvific object  (a light bulb in "Ulttraviolet" and a cross necklace in "Vertigo") as the sudden focal point of a narrator experiencing chaos, used to get the narrator/listener to the thematic focus and locus of a song.

I did that once in a college essay.  (:

"Ultraviolet":

"When I was all messed up, and had opera in my head
Your love was a light bulb hanging over my bed. "

"Vertigo":

In the case of 'Vertigo,' I was thinking about this awful nightclub we've all been to. .. It's that woozy, sick feeling of realizing that here we are, drinking, eating, polluting, robbing ourselves to death. And in the middle of the club, there's this girl. She has crimson nails. I don't even know if she's beautiful, it doesn't matter but she has a cross around her neck, and the character in this stares at the cross just to steady himself."
         -Bono, U2 by U2

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