Mozo unmasked: the mercurial Revelator is back from the dead, only to be reassembled and redeemed

Peter Gabriel has spoken well about how masks can reveal and not just conceal.

One mask/muse; persona/personage he dreamed up  years ago ...partly as a followup to  his Genesis character Rael (note: an anagram for "Real", No accident) in

"The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway,"  was a character named Mozo (note: sounds like "Moses'".  No accident)

Even a lot of serious fans are not aware of the Mozo  story/song cycle, which can be traced and trainspotted throughout his discography.

And maybe discography is biography, and  maybe masks unmask us.

Is Mozo a voice/mask/beard  (see Indecent Exposure: Show MeYour Beard; I'll Show You Mine.") f

for Gabriel to process his pilgrimage?

I think Bono admits that all the characters he created for the "No Line on the Horizon" album
 were partly him

Bono. of course, has had plenty to say about masks/characters concealing and/or revealing. McPhoisto, anybody (see  "Self-Disclosure with Sunglasses On"

“All my characters are me. I’m not a good enough actor to become a character” Ryan Gosling

If anything, fans that go back a ways (before "So" went viral) remember hearing the Mozo name in an early number "On The Air": Mozo is here"

Very obscure. except for deep cut, vintage Gabriel fans

Until now.

As he did with a the' I/O"  album, Gabriel  is releasing  a track on each full  moon until  the "O/I"  album, is complete. Last moon's  offering was such a

surprise.

I didn't see it coming.

I never expected Mozo to be back, let alone be  resurrected..

Let alone to find redemption.

"I'd always wanted to do a little more with Mozo, who I had introduced many years back, and I thought, well, let's give him another blast here. He's been brought back from the dead.

What was interesting for me about Mozo was that he was not fully of the world and not fully outside it. For the original second album narrative, he was found on this waste tip, and there was a reference to alchemy, and how you only really get the opportunity to create gold out of the lowest material; shit. In Japanese culture, they also have kintsugi (kin: gold, tsugi: repair) where a broken cup is repaired with gold or precious metals and the repaired cup with its faults showing ends up more valuable than the original. It's a beautiful symbol for humanity, because we're remarkably easy to break and trying to reassemble self, psyche and sanity, is really the journey of the song." link

And I never expected my 2011 post from the vaults on Mozo to pick up hits again!

But it sure has.  And here \ is its sequel

From the new song, "One by One:"

Mozo was a broken man
He was lying on his land
Every home that he designed
Was sinking in the sand
And unity was goading him
About his shattered heart
Reminding him of how it was
So rock-like at the start

And later on he fell apart
Left slivers on the road
When strangers asked him, "Where do you come from?"
He said, "No fixed abode"
And at first there was no sign of it
It looked like all was fine
The clouds came in and swept around him
They were bringing back the rain...

..And yet I could be standing at the pole if I learned to be still
To be quiet for a moment, to silence the will
Swept away from the center by the one centrifuge
I was hot, I was cold; I was small, I was huge
What is and what isn’t, life wants to exist
Was there on the island that I formed in the mist
And the contract was signed in the darkest red ink
And the bridges all appeared that opened up the link
To the other world that had grown in my mind
And I caught sight of the ocean that lies right behind
I was looking for admission and fighting for a place
But wherever my gaze fell, I could make out Your face

Like a jigsaw, it's coming back
Piece by piece, one by one
One by one
Like a jigsaw
There's nothing left to do, nothing left to feel this love
Feel this love

I  hate to flirt  with cheesy Christianizing,  but I don't think it is too much of a stretch that  in an earlier song in the cycle,  "Red Rain,"  Gabriel  was nodding to the red rain of the blood of Jesus (See
What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the Red Rain of Jesus"

And now to see in this sequel/final installment (?)   " the contract was signed in the darkest red ink". 

Of course that is.......... among other things>.......... the salvific blood of Jesus, securing salvation

And reminds me of another current song "I'm the name on the form that demands your release" (U2's "Scars")

Mozo is under contract, as am I.

The mercurial one is unmasked...Resurrected, released...reassembled.

I'm putting it all togethеr
Though it doesn’t make sensе
Putting it back together
This is my only self-defense
I'm putting it back together
Filling in these blank spaces
Putting it back together
This is my only release

U2's Theological Imagination: A Guide For Pilgrims on the Way"

In this case, the title alone-- "U2's Theological Imagination: A Guide For Pilgrims  on the Way"-- would have sold me on buying the book.

But that the author is Steven Harmon?  That clinched the deal.  Harmon, Professor of Historical Theology at Gardner-Webb School  of Divinity is (see p. 9 for "U2 as Theologians)an articulate theologian and deep fan  of U2.

He definitely has some ground beneath his feet, and the authority to write this book.

As you can see, it  sits on the honored top of my stack and stash of books this month...

"My own academic discipline of systematic or constructive  theology helps me discern in U2's music the theological framework of Christian doctrinal convictions about God, creation, the human condition, redemption  and the goals of God's community-making work in a world that longs for reconciliation." (pp. 3-4)

Suffice to say this is not a pop-culture , superficial .. let alone "tacky and vouyeristic" ...mass-market title on U2 and their faith.

Having said that..

I didn't  expect  to see my name on the first page (:

There, in the acknowledgements (p.ix), he expresses indebtedness to "rewarding conversations  about  the theological implications of U2's music ...[with]  Scot Calhoun, Cathleen Falsani, Derek  Hogan, John Inscore Essick, Beth Maynard, Will McDonald, Mark Medley. Tim Neufeld, Angela Pancella, Kenneth Tanner, Dave Wainscott and Andrew William Smith."

Well, as you can see by the mentions of several of those names on my blog, and on my Facebook, that is would be  dynamic cohort to hang  with for a few days! Next U2 Conference, hopefully! ...

.. As long as Megan Click is also there! Her wonderful review of U2's "Easter Lilly' blew me away, and I will brag on her and that in my next post.

Harmon's  book is of course an indispensable addition to the library of theologically-minded U2 fans, and I will commend the Amazon preview and reviews to you at this link, and simply  highlight here  two vital talking points...both related to The Edge...  from the first two  chapters  alone.

1) Edge's eschatological guitar

My brother and I, who first saw U2 in concert on the convert on War tour, (see my review "I am still living off this concert" , and see this  to check how electric it was ), and we  have often talked about  "The Holy Spirit on guitar!"  when listening  to The Edge's "swirling epiphanies," There are others who seemingly pray through their guitar, but no one emotes it like Edge,

 Harmon's discussion of a  more specific branch of theology, eschatology,  illuminates how Edge is a theologically-informed guitarrist/pray-er:

".. ['Gloria'] exemplifies what I've come to regard as theologically significant about The Edge's very tone: the amp pushed just to the edge of breakup without going fully over into distortion, expressing an urgent stretching forth toward something not quite reached, contrasting with those ethereal chiming harmonics that break in from somewhere transcendent. Both come together in this next song, The first verse voices frustration at efforts to sing, and stand up, and speak up that don't quite succeed, accompanied by a riff that's the rock guitar equivalent of a Baroque keyboard fugue, played with that yearning overdriven tone. Then comes the inbreaking of those transcendent chiming harmonics...(p.5)

-------------------

"The word that comes to mind when I try to come up with language for the sound of a U2 song is  yearning ..the music itself evokes yearning."(p. 6)

----------------------------

"The reign of God is at hand and people have the opportunity to participate in it in the here and now, but it is not yet fully realized ar cannot become so without the participation of people in the rein of God. This tension is the key theological concept for understanding the spiritual significance of the whole of U2's music.

"...n the formative years of the band, U2 even found a way l express this tension through the distinctive instrumental sound they created. U2 remythologized the open-fifth power chord that eschews both major and minor thirds as a way of musically maintaining the eschatological tension between the now and the not yet...

..I. say that U2 "remythologized" the open-fifth power chord because, as one of my guitar-playing theology students noted when I mentioned this to him, the power chord commonplace in guitar-based rock music is by definition a root note, its fifth, and the octave of the root. But The Edge's rationale for utilizing this chord structure is theologically, in particular eschatologically, significant. When the neither-major-nor-minor fifths were combined with The Edge's frequent playing of ethereal-sounding chiming harmonics , his distinctive use of the delay effect not as an atmospheric effect= with trailing echoes but as a compositional technique to create notes that are not directly played but are integral to the music, and clean guitar tone overdriven to the edge of breakup without turning fully into distortion evoking urgency, the result was the yearning sound of the already/not-yet tension of Christian eschatology translated into the idiom of post-punk rock music."  (pp 22-23)

-----------------------------------------------------------

-2)Edge's   Pádraig Ó Tuama and Methodist connections

"I've been reading a lot about the early period of Methodism...and George Whitfield who was..the first evangelist to take his sermons out doors," said the Edge to Pádraig Ó Tuama

Wait..what?

Double take..

How had I ever missed that Edge had been interviewed by  Pádraig Ó Tuama?
And that in the process, he expressed great interest in early Methodist DNA? (see"Wesleyan Vile-tality: Reclaiming the Heart of Methodist Identity")

Two of my favorite topics.

Methodism is my heritage and tribe, and that Edge ( "the "Zen Presbyterian") had been reading about it--- let alone " a lot"--- made my day...a lot.

And of course no surprise that fellow Irishmen  and fellow theologians O'Tuama and Edge (see p. 9 for "U2 as Theologians) got together and got  along.

I have been using a song (below)  of O. Tuama's  in teaching and seminars for years, a shocking (to evangelical sensitivities, anyway) song of lament (complete with F word ) for years.

I often wondered if O'Tuama knew U2.

I learned all this from Harmon's magnificent book (p.10). 

-----------------------------------

All that to say, as a pilgrim on my way, I highly  commend and recommend..

nay, require..this book,

Suffice to say I am thankful for the theological imagination of pilgrim Steven Harmon himself.

  

here

\

Sermon on the Mount(ain) and Building a Fence (and Chastity Belt) Around the See's Candy: "Ever Committed Adultery, John?"

 

Here, the Waffly Wedded Wife, The Renaissance Radio Rabbi and I talk about all this good stuff:

Paul McCartney's best album... and you have never even heard of it, let alone heard it

Paul McCartney's best album... and you have never even heard of it, let alone heard it..,

partly because it was recorded under the name of his alias/alter ego The Fireman.

The album? "Electric Arguments".

It even includes a worship song...hear it, and the rest of the album here

P:S I bet you have never even heard of The Monkees' best song either. Late to the party? It's  here.

Their second best that you have also never heard of includes Neil Young on guitar It's here, and I hear it as a prayer.

Both  cowritten by Carole King, and both from the same album.

--

On to reviews of  Electric Arguments by Paul McCartney AKA The Fireman:

--

"a staggering collection of timeless adventures that touch on the best aspects of today's more left-field sounds". Clash, link

--------------------------------

Electric Arguments is the best Paul Album he's released in the last twenty years, and no one has listened to it:

Electric Arguments by The Fireman (Paul McCartney and Youth working together) is a top tier album for me. I think The Fireman have a bad wrap because of their first two albums which were not Paul's standard kind of thing.

The songs near the end are a little more abstract (it is still "the fireman") but the first ten songs are as good as his seventies material for me!

Paul played all the instruments and vocals, similarly to how he did on Chaos and Creation. It's basically what I thought of as "McCartney III" before MIII actually came out. link

-----------

Electric Arguments will go down as one of the most eclectic and exhilarating albums in Macca’s whole extraordinary canon. link

-----------------

 The proof is in the listening: this is Paul McCartney finally “getting back,” serving notice that he’s back, with all of the adventurousness he had with those other Liverpool lads – and reminding us that “Lonely Hearts Club Band” stuff was his idea, after all. link

Though he may never acquire the same ‘cool’ credentials of John, the existence of The Fireman indicates that he may have conceded there is nothing left for him to prove. link

--

I'll be brief in this, my first Debaserian time, by saying right away that McCartney has rarely recorded and released such a "modern", immediate work, rich with the most diverse sounds and musical cues.

If it has always been said, and partly rightly so, that McCartney's music needs careful production to give its best (which often, unfortunately, had to make up for a lack of ideas), this time we can enjoy the former Beatle without frills and in the midst of a very happy, instinctive, creative moment, finally far from market demands, which Paul too, too often, has let himself be influenced by.

The album consists of 13 tracks which almost perfectly, in my very personal opinion, fulfill the main task of music, which is to live better, forgetting reality as much as possible during those minutes.

The sounds, instruments, and atmospheres you hear are numerous (violins, flutes, mandolins, synthesizers, and percussion of all kinds, etc.) but well-blended in this work, truly "multiethnic" without ever becoming an incoherent jumble. Rather, it is the coherence of the whole that leaves an impression of "slow-release" compactness at the end, truly rare for McCartney. link

----

MCCARTNEY'S ON FIRE!

John would have been proud, for it sounds more like a john-esque project then one you would expect to hear from McCartney. Not to say that I was not an immense fan of Paul's melodic, hard driving pop songs. For I was. Just that he hasn't seemed to be able to pull those out in several years (decades?). Just as early critics of the Beatles marked Paul as a great R & B singer, this recording shows that "the Blues" is his forte..Sometimes it's just the right person and just the right combination. And this is it. No, this is not a happy super pop album, it is eery night music, sometimes dark. But it is music at it's best. The way McCartney needs to be, more relaxed and natural. Superb.

Listening to these songs I hear influences from other bands; U2, Peter Gabriel, CCR, Beck, Ozark Mtn. Daredevils, the Mars Volta, , Enigma, Jon Anderson. And yet, all of these artists were influenced by the Beatles. So, in essensce he is only influencing himself!

,,"Sing the Changes" is immediately my favorite and could easily be a top 40 song (if the verses were cut a bit). Compelling sermon like delivery with a nice guitar riff bringing everything together.

In "Traveling Light" McCartney puts on his Peter Gabriel impression, playing flute and singing with a low Peteresque vocal.

"Sun Is Shining" just has that orb like feeling you get with some U2 songs. Very U2-ish.

"Dance 'Til We're High" is another one of my favorites. For some reason, this one reminds me of early / mid 80's college/Indi radio. It also has tinges of Genesis...

And, finally, the coda "Don't Stop Running". I have been a Beatles fan for over 40 years. I have listened to McCartney for....ages... and yet, I have never heard him sing like this. He sounds like Jon Anderson (of Yes). And... it works! And with an interesting harpsichord like sound... just everything on this album is a hodge podge of sounds and instruments... and it is never boring.

All in all, I love this album. This is the best thing McCartney has done since the mid 70's. But don't expect it to sound like the mid 70's. It sounds like 2008. It's great!

To quote McCartney "The Fireman takes your hand and leads you through the blaze to places you didn't know you wanted to go."

link

---

Electric Arguments will go down as one of the most eclectic and exhilarating albums in Macca’s whole extraordinary canon. link

--

. The results are still experimental in nature and despite the hooks it is still very much an avant-garde experience. It has a Radiohead feel to it but only in mood and atmosphere.More proof that some of Paul’s best recorded work was in the last 20 years of his career. link

.  Creative gem! certainly  a true gem and perhaps will be remembered as one of Paul’s best works, at his most creative and instinctive. link

==

Bono's renewal of baptismal vows , officiated by an unlikely pastor; Part 1 (thanks to Angela Pancella)

image credit

Having been a  fervent follower of U2 since 1980, upon hearing "I Will Follow" on the amazing WPLR New Haven  (Thanks to St Stoneman) I did (follow)...

And  having been a fervent follower of Jesus since Spring 1983..

..when I  had the chance, just days after signing on to that second followership, to see/hear/experience  U2 at the New Haven Coliseum--a concert that was so historic and Holy Spirited that the leitourgia had no name, and inevitably they later had to literally blow up the arena (watch it here!), as no act  could possibly top U2 (or even their alarming opening act)...

           I decided to follow both Jesus and the band (the worship band formerly known as the Hype) even more heartily..

As one with wholly/holy obsession with said band , and an unrepentant bibliophile, these three books are among my favorites...and I own a few...

                                                                            thousand.

Scot Calhoun, who directs the U2 Conference, has edited and curated these three voluminous (and luminous) volumes.  Academic books about U2, including one on religious impulse?  Order them yesterday.

• Exploring U2: Is This Rock and Roll? (Rowman & Littlefield, 2011)
• U2 Above, Across, and Beyond: Interdisciplinary Assessments (Lexington Press, 2014)
• U2 and the Religious Impulse: Take Me Higher (Bloomsbury, 2018)

Today the spotlight is on Angelia Pancella's chapter in the third volume, "U2 and the Religious Impulse.".  

Part of an AI-created collage about me

Here's what hit me on a recent re-read of this loaded chapter (which  helpfully interacts with my friend Tim Neufeld's seminal  "Crystal Ballroom" Periscope community/communitas  of U2 followers, see pp. 166-168). The chapter is titled  “Like Faith Needs a Doubt”: U2 and the Theist/Nontheist Dialogue.

Oh,  before you go any further, soundtrack this coming conversation  about Angela's observations with  an opening act/prelude: the classic interview  excerpt of Bono on Gay Byrne's  "The Meaning of Life"; you can watch it below. See you after the break. You might even sense the religious impulse to be baptized/renew your baptismal vows after viewing this short clip...which may be precisely the the point.

Part of an AI-created collage about me

The  short section I have in mind  starts at 1:55 (though do watch the first section as well, as Bono masterfully adopts/adapts the classic C.S. Lewis trilemma apologetic  ( popularly called the "Liar, Lunatic, or Lord" apologetic).

Wow.. I hear that hushed silence from you after the video ended.

When I show this clip in class, it inevitably happens, even from non U2 fans!

 

That short section has moved me for years, not  just because it is a  humble, diplomatic but direct confession of Christian faith from the singer, but this particular exchange  has often given me the chills and holy hush; it  always felt deeply mystical...even liturgical..in a way I could never quite put my finger on..

Until now, thanks to Angela, who says on p. 162:

A video of an interview of Bono with veteran Irish broadcaster Gay Byrne, from his program "The Meaning of Life," includes an exchange oddly echoing the renewal of baptismal vows that take place in some Christian churches at the Easter:

Bono: I find it hard to accept that all the millions and millions of lives, half the earth, for two thousand years, have been touched, have felt their lives touched and inspired by some nutter. I just —I don't believe it.

Byrne: So therefore it follows that you believe (Jesus] was divine.

Bono: Yes.

Byrne: And therefore it follows that you believe that he rose physically from

Bono: Yes. I've no problem with miracles. (Laughs] I'm livingaround them. I am one.

Byrne: So when you pray, then, you pray to Jesus.

Bono: The risen Jesus.

Byrne: And you believe that he made promises which will come true.

Bono: Yes . I do.

-U2 and the Religious Impulse: Take Me Higher (Bloomsbury Studies in Religion and Popular Music), Scott Calhoun (Editor)

Ah, of course, As the aforementioned Tim once said about me, " Dave, you know what I like about you? You always push toward the unobvious! You are gifted at seeing what others miss."; I now pay that compliment foward to Angela, for helping/empowering me to put language to what I felt. It was so obvious/unobvious . What a gift.

The simple call and response. The rhythmic cadence. The simple but heartfelt "Yes" of Bono's answers the the questions of the host/inquisitive inquisitor/pastor Byrne. And even though the interviewer has been characterized as an agnostic/atheist, Byrne didn't see himself that way. He was more of a struggling Catholic. Someone 

called him "a loyal if questioning Catholic  later in life."

 His genuine interest in Bono's responses are based on decades of friendship . I felt he was even rooting/praying for Bono to confess in a very Christ-honoring and orthodox way.

At the funeral Mass for the late Gay Byrne on Friday, the principal celebrant, Fr Leonard Maloney SJ said those who knew the broadcaster well knew him as “a man of faith”.

In his homily at St Mary’s Pro Cathedral in Dublin, the Jesuit provincial said Byrne’s faith was not the kind of faith that has all the answers. “It was the kind that asks all the questions. link

Bono's "yes" answers called to mind the many riffs and improvisations on the word I have heard over the years as a pastor officiating baptisms/ renewals. Sometimes it is said tearfully and barely audibly ; sometimes shouted as if from a rooftop. A student of mine's recent response was (video here)

But something about Bono's quiet, confident "yes' resonates with me...and I know it spoke to Gay Byrne like no armtwisting evangelistic sermon could.

"All the promises are yes," as St Paul asserted . . A confession of faith in summative one-word microcosm.

"Let your yes be yes," as Jesus preached.

'Oddly echoing the renewal of baptismal vows," Angela so articulately commented.

Yes, that's what I had felt but had no language for.

Echoes are important.

Here is one version of the renewal of baptism vows:

V. Do you reject Satan?

R. I do.

V. And all his works?

R. I do.

V. And all his empty promises?

R. I do.

V. Do you believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth?

R. I do.

V. Do you believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was born of the Virgin Mary was crucified, died, and was buried, rose from the dead, and is now seated at the right hand of the Father?

R. I do.

V. Do you believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting?

R. I do.

V. God, the all-powerful Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has given us a new birth by water and the Holy Spirit, and forgiven all our sins. May he also keep us faithful to our Lord Jesus Christ for ever and ever.

R. Amen.

link

YES? One can say more; but cannot say less.

Also, don't get me started on the two words in the sample ceremony above; and Bono's last and final answer, where it felt right to "say more" and add only two words: "Yes..I do"

Wedding language. Covenant echoes.

When I heard my parents say to each other "Yes..I do" upon my asking them if they renews their wedding vows on their 50th? Sacramental. Priceless. Spiritual.

They are still going strong as they near their seventieth.

May it be with all who we baptize, marry and speak to.

And interview about the meaning of life.

Amen,

"For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ. And so through him the 'Amen' is spoken by us to the glory of God. (2 Corinthians 1:20)

"In  his interview in ‘The Meaning of Life’  Gay said this to Martin Sheen: ‘Suppose it’s all true, and suppose you get to meet God at the pearly gates. What will you say to Him?’After hardly a pause, the seasoned actor said: ‘Deo gratias. Thanks be to God.’”

“Say no more,” Gay responded. 

“That’s a perfect ending.” link

Bonus :Here is the entire episode with complete Bono interview: