U2's "No Line": 5 meta motifs, part 2

As we begin part of our discussion on five meta-motifs on U2's "No Line on the Horizon,"
(part one is here, where we covered:


-the sound of God
-divine initiative
-spiritual stillness


Now we continue on to:

-the nonlinear nature of life and spirituality
-now and not yetness

---
4)The nonlinear nature of life and spirituality:I dare to believe the following meditation on the new U2 is one of the most insightful yet.
What have U2 done for us in the making of this project?:

"(They) put creedal afirmations to communal songs; they brought theology to the masses through religious forms of folk poetry and ballads: they are at the same time street simple and university sophisticated....

They wrote hymns for every possible incident in life; hymns to help the pigrim get through every conceivable life experience..

But what is most unique is they constructed a sound theology and a sonic spirituality. The Greek word 'catheceis' is based on our word 'echo.' The very soundness of [the project] was based on the writers having come to terms with sound. The strength of [the band's] cathecesis is its echoing back to God 'the music of the spheres.'..

They listened; hearing into song first Christ then each other.
Any chance this postmodern culture may have of achieving a new state of harmony depends on our ability to sing it to new life..

In the quantum world, anything can happen...linear time gives way; objects can be created out of nothing...What [the band] has understood like few others in history is that one does not 'see' a vision, one 'hears' a vision."

Isn't that an astoundingly accurate description of "No Line on the Horizon?"
Especially since it was written...uh, eleven years before its release?

Huh? I guess "time is irrelevant," Whats up?

I just quoted Leonard Sweet, pages 157-58, of "Eleven Genetic Gateways to Spiritual Awakening"
And even though Sweet does appreciate U2, this was not (directly) a discussion of U2, but..

The Wesleys and their hymns of the 1700s.

!!

From the beginning, Bono claimed he wanted the album to be a collection of "hymns for the future." I believe the album is a tract for our times, but like our times, it is not linear.

I was a bit slow to "get" one of the puns of the album over.
I was also a bit late frasping the reference to the album title in the motto that the
the philospher/Holy Spirit/seductress whispers on Bono's ear (before licking it) in the title song:

"Time is irrelevant, it's not linear."

What is "not linear?"
Literally, "no line."

When I first heard the album title, I took it as a negative image, as a pilot whose plane is careening or upside down, and the desperate pilot cannot secure his bearings by the line on the horizon...or a horizon or line at all. A tract for our times, indeed.

It turned out to be a completely different image and imagination. Bono is qick to point out the wildly optimistic tone of the image, especially when liking it to the "Infinity is a great place to start" lyric:

"Just looking over Lake Michigan, there was a moment when the sea and the sky became the same color and disappeared into infinity. It seems like a realty positive thought right now, whether it's a relationship or a band." (link)

That's a great starting point for a tract.

But they can only start there, because they are (as Bono often quips about Edge) "from the future."
"I have seen it, and it's better," Edge has quipped back.
(see "Emotional music from a creative future")

Of course, just ask George Ladd, or Jesus (!) about the whole point of the Kingdom is its invading the

present from the future. There is a line,
but it is not linear ("not perceivable here or there"),
and it is moving "backwards".

In our Western culture, with its printing press worldview, and the inherited mindset of modernity, such movement is counterintuitive and countercultural.
But it nips ethnocentrism in the bud.

I often begin courses on cross-cultural awareness with:

"Just call out your first response: "In England, they drive on the _____side of the road."

Often, someone shouts out the "wrong" right answer: "wrong."

A better answer, of course, is "opposite." Best is "left."

It's not backwards to the Brits.

So thank God time itself travels backwards.

And it's common to think of music as time travel in that it inevitably "takes us back."
But perhaps more fundamentally, it comes back from the future..to offer a timely and timeless tract for the (nonlinear) times we find ourselves in.
"You have already tasted the age to come," as Hebrews 6 promises.

In the early stages, "No Line" was pretty close to a concept album. In early drafts, not only did every song contain a time reference (several survived: the "3:33" of "Breathe, "Six o clock" in "Being Born," "Breathe's" "Nine o' five" and "nine-o-nine" timestamps);
but characters and continuities were clearer than in the finished project. Could it be that the band intentionally hijacked the storyboard, confused and defused the plot, and subverted linearity to make their primary point ("Time..is not linear") pointed?
In the accompanying film, not accidentally entitled "Linear," producer Anton Corbijn unpacks how even the making of the film was a lesson in security through discontinuty:

Bono talked me through the songs and the record as a whole. For the first time he had created characters for this record, and wrote lyrics about their lives or from their perspectives. The record had an essence of time to it, most songs had a number or time references connected to them, as if going through a 24 hour period. Although I didn't want to translate the lyrics visually, I felt that making use of one the characters Bono wrote about would be interesting. It became the Parisian motorcycle cop of northern African descent, who threw it all in to go back to see his girlfriend in Tripoli. I was going to make a silent movie, with a touch of a story to it. We prepped late June-early July, shot late July, edited in August and were ready for the record's November release. Fantastic! However, it was at this point that the band decided to go back into the studio and work on the record a bit more. As U2 never do anything in half measures, the record that emerged from the studio in late December 2008 was a very different one than the one I'd made images for. Not only had the running order changed, now there were completely new songs on the record while another song had gone, new lyrics without the characters had emerged, and different sounds dominated the songs I had worked on. Disaster! Thankfully, we worked on a solution that saw LINEAR keeping its own running order and songs, whilst only changing edits for the 10 songs, those that are also on the new U2 record, to their newly created identities. Thus LINEAR is a very interesting hybrid version of No Line On The Horizon, partly how it was in May 2008 and partly how it is now. Tomorrow is always partly yesterday. Apparently."
-Anton Corbijn

The running order of the film is quite intriguing, and sheds light and source criticism on the original narrative:

01. UNKNOWN CALLER
02. BREATHE
03. WINTER
04. WHITE AS SNOW
05. NO LINE ON THE HORIZON
06. FEZ-Being Born
07. MAGNIFICENT
08. STAND UP COMEDY
09. GET ON YOUR BOOTS
10. MOMENT OF SURRENDER
11. CEDARS OF LEBANON

The band has also suggested that "Fez-Being Born" was (is?)the opening song until the last minute. Hmmm

in the opening song is the same fellow he rides down to Africa (to reconnect with an old flame/Flame) in "Being Born."
But which comes first? She may be the one and same girl who (later?earlier?) prophesies ("Time is not linear" and speaks in tongues (Then she stuck her tongue in my ear") a to the cop in the title cut.
Now recheck the running order of the film...aha! Chicken or egg?

Bono has recenly revealed that the narrator of "Moment of Surrender"; testimony is an addict; in fact the same guy who winds up in the next (?) song ("Unknown Caller") in a motel getting a call from God.
Check the film running order...hmmmm.

As throughout the U2 canon, there is freedom and fluidity in characters and symbolism. And though there are some helpful interpretive keys (The Holy Spirit is often a woman, for example. Is she the girl by the sea?), a direct correlation and allegorization doesn't always work.
.
This is classically postmodern (is that an oxymoron?). "The Matix" films are a clear example:

Is Neo Jesus, a human disciple or "everyman? Yes.
Is Trinity the Holy Trinity, God, or the Church/Bride? Yes.
Is Morpheus John the Baptist or Peter? Yes.
Is Cypher Lucifer or Judas or everyman/woman? Yes.

The parables of Jesus,
even though the one main point is that they have one main point,
are not pure allegories,
but due their identity as rabbinic and rhema
(which Bono once defined as "the meaning changes in the moment"),
shapeshift and timewarp as you hold them up to the light.

All prophetic literature can do that.
Rock albums from the future sometime fit that, too.

One interesting post on the atu2 forum offers that the timeline of "Unknown Caller" is intentionally tweaked: the glorious instrumental intro and it's "sunshines" actually belong to the end of the story (the guy decides not to take his life, but surrender to God, for example).
The writer suggested this is the only way the song makes sense.
As an Irishman once sang (on the previous album) , "Love makes no sense of..time."


All this to say that the timeline and trajectory of the somewaht elusive story of the record
itself incarnates the nonlinearity referred to on the first (?) track and the album title itself.
Which is partly why it is so timely.
And a gift from/of the future...where "all the big revelations" originate, anyway.

5)Now and not yetness:

In typical Venn fashion, a lot of what I wanted to say about this motif was covered/overlapped in the discussion about point four, above. If time is not linear, and can even run "backward" from the future into our present, of course we experinece not only hilarious and exhilrating freedom and optimism about the (present) future ("No Line," "Magnificent," "Being Born,"
but frustration and despair that "earth is not yet heaven."

Thus in the trenches of a dying soldier's Afghanistan (in "White as Snow,") we hear "Where can we find the Lamb as white as snow?"

Thus in the cedars of a war-correspondent's Lebanon (in "Cedars of Lebanon," tellingly, the closing song) "You're so high above me/Higher than everyone?Where are You in the cedars of Lebanon?"

It almost seems the answer to the first question is "Right here,"
and the (non)answer to the second is "Nowhere."
And that my friend nails the terrible and creative tension we live in.

Is "GODISNOWHERE":
"God is nowhere"
and/or
"God is now here"?

Maybe those two songs are the same.


In light of section four of this essay, I have wondered if the narrator is in some <

NLOTH's evocations of God's vibrant presence seem to me not to be framed so much as the awe of one who is suddenly undone by a gift of inbreaking grace even "under the trash" or "when there's all kinds of chaos." They're still every bit as celebratory and broadly inviting, but now they rest on an unsurprised, grateful security, in a spaciousness that allows us to "breathe": This is how it is.
-Beth Maynard

That indeed is a tract for our times.
It's not Joel Osteenism or eartickling.
It's still brutally honest.
The world is still "shitty."
But it is also the locale for the incoming
The whole earth is already full of his glory.
If only we have ears to hear,
and ears to see the "vision over visibility."

Long ago, in an obsure instrumental B-side, the Boys offered us a proleptic preview of "Sixty Seconds in the Kingdom Come."

This time; this album, we get to stay longer.
"Until the day the kingdoms of this world become the Kingdom of our Lord and Christ,"
and all lines and all Lebanons host the fullness of the glory.

"This is how it is," Beth said.

"Here is what is," (co-producer)Lanois said.

So be it.

• U2's "No Line": 5 meta motifs (and a sign from God)-part 1:
  http://davewainscott.blogspot.com/2009/03/u2s-no-line-4-motifs-part-1_10.html

• U2's "No Line": 5 meta motifs, part 2: non linear and no yet:
  http://davewainscott.blogspot.com/2009/03/u2s-no-line-5-meta-motifs-part-2.html






• U2's "No Line": 5 motifs-part 3: she spoke in tongues in my ear:
  http://davewainscott.blogspot.com/2009/03/u2s-no-line-4-motifs-part-3-she-spoke.html





• U2's "No Line": 5 motifs-part 4: walk by sound, not by faith:
  http://davewainscott.blogspot.com/2009/03/u2s-no-line-4-motifs-part-4-walk-by.html

There IS a line on the horizon

I can't believe I never caught the second pun (I am no Keltic Ken) on the cover of U2's upcoming"No Line on the Horizon"
(the first being that there is a line on the horizon on the photo; the second
is a "visual pun," being that neither of the two lines of the superimposed equals sign are on the horizon, they teasingly straddle it)
until reading Beth's comments on her blog post quoted below.

That same post is hugely helpful:

Theologian Steve Harmon, author of U2: Unexpected Prophets, makes some points about the cover of No Line that I think deserve to be pulled out for everyone to see. I was completely delighted, for exactly the reasoning Harmon articulates so well here, that the Sugimoto image with no line (the photo rumored to be the album cover) turned out to be passed over for an image with a line:

The equals sign, with one bar in the "heaven" portion and one bar in the "earth" portion, suggests something like "your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." But in this particular Sugimoto image, there IS still a line on the horizon. Earth is not yet heaven, yet we pray and work for the day when things will fully be on earth as they are in heaven -- when heaven and earth will be indistinguishable, and there will be no line on the horizon. Once again, an "already"/"not yet" eschatology, with the emphasis on the "not yet."

I understood the attraction of the image of the sea blurring into the sky, because I know so much of U2's work is about the longing for and celebration of foretastes of that experience of transcendence. (One of the earliest articles I read about U2 in the 80s, which I have never been able to trace, characterized them with the phrase "blood lust for the infinite," which has always stuck with me.) But it struck me as lacking complete honesty for a U2 image to represent the blending of already/not yet as accomplished. Upon seeing the real cover, I immediately found the image we've ended up with far preferable, and more faithful to the band's consistently eschatologically-shaped vision of reality, and I'm grateful for Steve's putting the reasons why into words here.
-Beth, U2 Sermons

Also, here are the artist's comments on one of the original photos:

Water and air. So very commonplace are these substances, they hardly attract attention―and yet they vouchsafe our very existence. The beginnings of life are shrouded in myth: Let there water and air. Living phenomena spontaneously generated from water and air in the presence of light, though that could just as easily suggest random coincidence as a Deity. Let's just say that there happened to be a planet with water and air in our solar system, and moreover at precisely the right distance from the sun for the temperatures required to coax forth life. While hardly inconceivable that at least one such planet should exist in the vast reaches of universe, we search in vain for another similar example. Mystery of mysteries, water and air are right there before us in the sea. Every time I view the sea, I feel a calming sense of security, as if visiting my ancestral home; I embark on a voyage of seeing. - Hiroshi Sugimoto http://www.sugimotohiroshi.com/seascape.html

U2's "No Line": 4 motifs-part 3: she spoke in tongues in my ear

(buy the shirt)

It is often an intriguing path to follow:
Who is the "she" in U2's lyrics?
Wife Ali? His mother? Womankind? Wisdom? Holy Spirit?
The answer is often YES..one leads to the other, no matter where Bono starts.


See "Mysterious Ways," "Luminous Times,"
(and "Dancing Barefoot," even though they didn't write the song")..

"All our songs are about girls or God,Bono has quipped,
"and sometimes we get the two mixed up."

By the way, one could track and trek a related question surrounding the who the "you" addresses:

Who do these songs address? Cathleen Falsani is surprised that critics read "I was born to sing for you" in "Magnificent" as a boast to Bono's audience. But the "you" in U2 songs has long been ambiguous. The list of suspects grows longer each album: Is "you" God, a woman, the individual listener, the audience en masse, Bono's bandmates, or Edge's guitar?

The very structure of No Line's best songs reinforces the sense that the true answer is "all of the above.
-Angela Pancella

Back to the "she"..

Now we seem to have a new "she," she of the "girl by the sea" reference in the title track of "No Line on the Horizon." I have a hunch "she," as leitmotif, may be all of the above usual suspects,
but also and primarily something other:

the album itself:as a work of art personified..
as it emerged; revealed itself;
took on identity/life/personality/gender,

I know a girl who’s like the sea
I watch her changing every day for me:

It seems that, more than usual on this project, the shape/theme of the music/lyrics/storyline
morphed almost daily (or at least by recording location) as it emerged, but it continued to serve the band, not master or overtake it.

It seems that, more than usual on this project, the shape/theme of the music/lyrics/storyline
morphed/shapeshifted almost daily (or at least by recording location) as she emerged, but she continued to serve the band, not master or overtake it.

When the first album ("Boy") was done, maybe they passed out cigars and cried, "It's a 'Boy!'"

When this latest album was complete, maybe they gasped and said, "Oh, my goodness; it's a girl!....and there is no line on her horizon."


One day she’s still, the next she swells
You can hear the universe in her sea shells:

If that is not an accurate description of the "ebb and flow" of the music and movement on this record, I don't know what is. Adam has spoken of inserting "White as Snow" at a critical juncture "to give the listener a break." Break from what and to what. From swell to still.
I won't even the strangely symbiotic, maybe fractal, interrelationship between "Moment of Surrender" and "Get on Your Boots"..



I know a girl with a hole in her heart
She said infinity’s a great place to start:

The "hole in heart" is pretty obviously a nod to Pascal's classic maxim
("There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every person which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus Christ.”)
which Bono has paraphrased before ("looking for the fill my God-shaped hole," in "Mofo").
But this project was birthed in awareness of both the hole and its infinite depths,
and the horizon and its infinite potential. That's a great way to start an album.


(She said,)“Time is irrelevant, it’s not linear”
Then she put her tongue in my ear

Of course, as we have discussed in part 2, the first line of this cozy couplet is classic physics,
and darn good Kingdom theology.
It is even more:

It is the interpretive key to interpretation of the album.
And life itself.

As we discussed extensively
last time, the trajectory and arc of the storyline is not linear.
We should not be surprised, she (the album) tipped us off to that in the first song,
which had to be the first song,
so that in a linear way,
she could tell us that the timeline was non linear.
The second line, uh.....I'd better leave to better U2theologians than me:

"It hits me that of course you could immediately invoke the title cut of "No line" as partaking of the standard U2 apophatic spirit: "Time is irrelevant/it's not linear"; the farthest we can imagine, "infinity," is nothing but a "place to start." However, I find it interesting (and very U2ey; let's not over-spiritualize this one! But still...) that we're told the bearer of this message immediately becomes physically intimate with the narrator."
-Beth Maynard


Time is irrelevant, it's not linear / Then she put her tongue in my ear." The "she" in these lyrics could be referring to a woman, a female personified thought, God, etc. Who knows with U2! In any case, Bono gets his kicks from the sense that time is not linear. In non-linear time, there is no such thing as past and future. There is only continuous flow of "now." The "past" is simply a former "now." The "future" is simply a coming "now." The only time that exists is "now." There is no great origin that we're moving from. There is no final conclusion we're moving toward. There is no coming eschatological time on the horizon. Or said in a different way, "there is no line on the horizon." There is only "now." Living fully in the "now" is ultimately important. Now is the only time we have. Now is life. Now is our home. Now is the time to enjoy life. Now is the time to fall in love. Now is the time to live life to the fullest. Now is when God is. Now is sacred. Now is the moment of eschatological hope. Marty Haugen emphasized the theological importance of "now" in his hymn, "Here In This Place." The lyrics read: "Not in the dark of buildings confining / Not in some heaven, light years away / But here in this place the new light is shining / Now is the Kindom now is the day." When Haugen and U2 agree on something, it must be right! Time is truly irrelevant when the only time that matters is right now. And that is a sexy thought. I can see why it feels sensuous like someone licking your ear.
-Sara and Brian, emphasis mine

It just had to be a "she" speaking in tongues into's Bono's ear.

And as the record/recording process did that, Bono was elevated into new levels of profound and inevitably sexy/sexual
insight about life.



---
Part 4 (how linear is that?) coming up

• U2's "No Line": 5 meta motifs (and a sign from God)-part 1:
  http://davewainscott.blogspot.com/2009/03/u2s-no-line-4-motifs-part-1_10.html

• U2's "No Line": 5 meta motifs, part 2: non linear and no yet:
  http://davewainscott.blogspot.com/2009/03/u2s-no-line-5-meta-motifs-part-2.html






• U2's "No Line": 5 motifs-part 3: she spoke in tongues in my ear:
  http://davewainscott.blogspot.com/2009/03/u2s-no-line-4-motifs-part-3-she-spoke.html





• U2's "No Line": 5 motifs-part 4: walk by sound, not by faith:
  http://davewainscott.blogspot.com/2009/03/u2s-no-line-4-motifs-part-4-walk-by.html

a little leitmotif lite: "No Line" as a (non-linear) sequel/prequel to "Achtung Baby"

buy the T-shirts (:

Along with the brilliant Rev. St. Keltic Ken, I have an affinity for those pop/rock songs from the 60s and 70s that were able to pack celtic-ish creativity, ethereal vibe, and a bit of progrock into a  radio-friendly three minutes.
Tunes like:


"A Whiter Shade of Pale," by Procul Harum:



"Society's Child" by Janis Ian:



God must love "spooky music," huh, Ken?
(How about some McArthur Park?)
Especially in short doses...as singles.


More than  Ken, I also love many of the longer opuses and epics of progrock; songs with "movements," a la classical music.
Even though grand can become grandiose pretty quickly, and operatic can translate cheese...
I still love
"In the Court of the Crimson King" by King Crimson...





"Supper's Ready" by Genesis  (Don't get me started)..
whether with frontman Peter Gabriel:

(continued here, it's in 3 parts...of course)

Or with Phil Collins:







--


But one can see how bands would grow weary of reproducing the long opuses, and concept albums/rock operas, in concert, especially thirty five yeas later.  It has been said that when fans call out for "Supper's Ready," Collins sings a condensed version:  "There's an angel standing in the sun...666...Jerusaleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeem!!"


Which reminds us that any good, long story can be condensed.  And just hearing Collins  belt out those three snippets sends chills up the spine, as it is a microsm (albeit Cliff's notes) of the real  (23 minute) and grander thing (see the biblical backstory here)


Of couse, long songs, and concept albums (which are sometimes basically an hour-long song) have of course taken a hit in our soundbite  and megabyte times and technologies.
We are not living in Tommy anymore, and The Wall has come down.


But some recent albums:

• "A Thousand Suns' by Linkin Park
• "Church Music" by David Crowder Band
• "No Line on the Horizon"  by U2
• "Le Noise"   by Pastor Neil Young

...though technically not concept albums, or rock operas, maintain something of the concept and feel.
Sometimes lyrically, sometimes thematically, sometimes musically.
Songs segue, themes interweave, leitmotif happens.


Little leitmotifs, if you will.
Which is not the same as leitmotif lite.


This works well for Linkin Park, with lyrical refrains being revisited, as well as musical ones.
And many will remember the classic moment from a Neil Young concert: a fan yelled out, "All the songs sound the same!"  Neil dryly retorted: "They're all the same song!"


But it's the subtle, but obvious
(to an intent listener with their intelligence on....
one reason concept and complex albums...and albums themselves are in hard times...intent listeners are hard to find),
musical motifs that ocassionally reappear in a U2 work that  haunt, highlight and hyperlink it.
"Story shapes story," as Ray Vander Laan says of the biblical narrative's  intriguing intertextuality.


U2 plots their homiletical plot.
Lietmotif can be liturgy and leitiourgia.
(see  this by Beth Maynard, and  "Leitourgia, Leitmotif, Porn Stars and the Drowning Man")

It was Beth who got me thinking on the hyperlinked "oh oh"s of "Unknown Caller" and "White as Snow" as profound, and not just words. See also Beth's awesome comments on "God's signature melody"
throughout the U2 "No Line" album. (I blogged a bit on that here, and here ate two more posts by Beth on the narrative of "No Line": Moments and characters and "Time won't leave me where i am,")

"No Line" began as a concept album, but was released as something less than...though the narrative line is still tracable,  and the shadow of the arc remains.... for those with ears to see (synesthesia is a helpful hermeneutical grid for U2).

Of course, one could make the case that U2 have been making "virtual concept albums" (even versions of the same album)  since their first album.

 But maybe "No Line" is sequel to,  or part 2, of "Achtung Baby" (I hope it's not a prequel).  Obviously one is darker and ocassioned by divorce; and one is overall more optimistic and opti-mystic (But there is more "up"/kataphtatic on "Achtung"... and more "down"/apophatic on "No Line".... that at first glance). And the newer album contains an obvious repeated lyrical leitmotif  in "let me in the sound."

It was Beth Maynard who got me thinking on the hyperlinked "oh oh"s of "Unknown Caller" and "White as Snow" as profound, and not just words. See also Beth's comments on "God's signature melody"
throughout the U2 "No Line" album,  as a classic example of a musical leitmotif which segued not only two consecutive songs together, but hemistich the whole story. (I blogged a bit on that here).

 And hear Beth out:

 

I defintely think there’s a relational thin place in this album. Consider ...also how the holy encounter at the end of "Unknown Caller" transitions, quickly, in the same key and with a very similar musical gesture, into the “old married folks” world of “Crazy Tonight.” The mundane is not mundane!
-Beth Maynard, see bottom of page here

 

The 'No Line" album's 

"Crazy Tonight/Unknown Caller" hemistich

is mirrored in 

the "Achtung Baby" album's

"Acrobat/Love is Blindness.'  Both sets of songs reveal, by a little leitmotif, an interpretive key to their respective albums.

These should've/could've been the singles !  (: 

How about a single 45, with A (Achtung) and B  (No Line) sides?

 

So, check this from Stephen Catanzarite's hugely helpful 33 1/3 book, "Achtung Baby: Meditations on Love in Light of the Fall":

There is a stirring musical motif  in "Acrobat,"  a guitar line reminscent of the darkly sublime themes found in  Ennio Morricone's classic scores for the films of Sergio Leone.  As with those  scores, the guitars in Acrobat play out over a human landscape that is at once comic and tragic, desolate and abundant, Godforsaken and blessed.  It is no accident that this theme will be repeated again in the following song, "Love is Blindness,"a sign of the Spirit that wills to abound in the darkest recesses of the human heart
-Catanzarite, p. 82, emphasis mine

        To the soft purr of the organ repeating the  mournful motif from "Acrobat," "Love is Blindness" finds our man and woman walking unsteadily down the aisle of an empty cathedral where, just above the altar, a light burns in the darkness...The struggle is heard in the martial bass line, which though dimly beligerent, seems on the edge of exaltation.....It is a continutaion of his confession in "Acrobat," but it goes further...followed by one of the most powerful and harrowing  guitar solos ever recorded. _-Catanzaarite, p. 87

Would it be too much  to suggest that  "Achtung " is a rock opera?  Probably.  Other tahn a melodic figure from "Acrobat" that is repeated on "Love is Blindness," there are no leitmotifs or recurring musical themes on the album, such as there are on Tommy, nor are any of the sonbgs reprised, as on The Wall.  To borrow a phrase from Bill Flanagan, the album does have a "novelistic cohesiveness"....It might be moire precise to decribe it as a "song cucle"  (such as Lou Reed's New York), or even a concept album (a concept pioneeered by Frank Sinatra)..Catanzarite,96-97

Buy the book already, and read chapter 1  yesterday!

 

Could it be that all of U2's U2ness  can be shorthanded and summarized in that one theme, even that one note in "No Line," or that one "harrowing solo" on Achtung?

 If so, how ironic and appropriate that is The Edge who offers the centerpoint.

Even Bono's words are often wordless.

But Edge's  "swirling epiphanies" (Time Magazine's phrase!) and  "signature melodies of God,"

are interpreted glossolalia/Bongolese 
 (see 

Praying thru guitar again..in tongues this time

)
that interpret the text, the times.....and us.

A little leitmotif goes a long way.

Maybe  those short 60s songs were prophetic and proleptic signs of the times, and of the Kingdom.

The concept album may be dead.
(See "Gregory of Nyssa and Green Day: death/birth of the concept of the concept album")
But long live the kingly and Kingdomed concept of a conceptual double single..

 

No Line's Infinity: the “cogency of all possibilities, potential and actual”

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No Line: the “cogency of all possibilities, potential and actual”

It’s no wonder the French motorcycle cop in the U2 song "No Line on the Horizon" ditches his Rue de Marrais beat for an unplanned, Spiritaneous trip down to Morocco to see that amazing “girl…with a hole in her heart.” There is just such an attraction to someone who knows the secret of the universe: “Infinity’s a great place to start.”

She’s not only an optimist, but a
good physicist: “Time is irrelevant; it’s not linear.”

We usually think of time as linear. Time travel is equivalent to this line closing up into a circle.” (John D. Barrow, “The Infinite Book: A Short Guide to the Boundless, Timeless and Infinite,” 271)

Ahh, No wonder there is no line on the horizon! It’s a circle, as this record’s trajectory is inevitably a plunge into nonlinear time travel..

The girl is no slouch. She follows God. She may even be (as often in the U2 lexicon) God. She sure feels like a version of the girl in “Mysterious Ways” (“She moves in mysterious ways…Spirit moves in mysterious ways”) Of course , for Bono, the ‘she’ can respresent (wife)Ali, for Christ’s sake…and/or Christ, for Ali’s sake.

Follow her, for she follows Christ.

She is such a draw for the unnamed cop that he seems to self-hijack his work motorbike

(“Siren’s wailing, but it’s me that wants to get away”).

for his determined drive to meet her/God…which he does a few songs later in “Fez/Being Born.”

You know, that tongue in the ear thing might have also partly motivated his pilgrimage…but it’s all good, it’s all elevation.

Why is infinity such a great place to start?

Infinity has haunted human minds for thousands of years. It challenges theologians…Is it part of the problem, or part of the solution?...It is also a live issue. Physicists’ accelerating quest for a Theory of Everything has been primarily guided by an attitude about infinities. Their appearance can be a warning that you have entered a blind alley on the road to the truth. The enthusiasm with which superstring theories were embraced was a consequence of their ingenious evasion of the problem of infinities that had plagued all their predecessors (preface)…

Aristotle thinks the infinite is incomplete… it is the unending character of the flow of time that makes it… infinite (30)...Augustine’s idea of the humanly infinite appearing finite to the mind of God is intriguing…the ‘threat to God from the infinite world’….Not all philosophers saw the infinite as a theological problem. Nicholas of Cusa embraced the infinite as a place where opposites could be reconciled [a quest Bono has been on, and on about, for years] ..

Pascal [whom Bono quotes fairly often , even paraphrases in the song at hand: “hole in her heart” ] confronted the problem of time and ‘double infinity: infinite largeness and infinite smallness in all things.(35) ..

Infinity is a player of great significance who appears on the stage only when the crucial questions of existence are raised...Infinity challenges us to contemplate the duplication of ourselves….and ponder the the cogency of all possibilities, potential and actual. (273)

-Barrow, “The Infinite Book"

The cover story of June 2009 Wired magazine dovetails here: “The NEW New Economy: More Startups. Fewer Giants. Infinite Opportunity.” I see that title as a word for the church..and the world..in this current economy and “weird moment in history.”

If we are bold and innocent enough to see correctly in this day and age, there is no line at all on the horizon….Bono has made clear this is not the disorientation of the pilot who has lost site of the line…. but the boundless, infinite optimism of a surprisingly “realized eschatology” where heaven invades earth, the future Kingdom travels “backwards” in time to meet us. The new and creative creation has creatively arrived. It used to be “High Street never looked so low”..but now, from our new vantage point, even streets like Rue de Marais already have no name .

Read NT Wright, and get to work while the horizon is lineless.

Borrow your motorcycle, and get to Fez; speed to Infinity.

Not a bad place to start... “cogency of all possibilites,” indeed.

May it shape our ethos, ethics, eschatology….and epistemology:

Once infinity seemed like an evil spirit that was determined to confuse our way, but we have come to see that it is a surer guide than we ever thought to the true path….the quest to understand the nature of matte and the universe of space and time may come to rely uniquely and completely upon the beckoning or the avoidance of the infinite. We will need to know it better than we know ourselves. (Barrow,274)

Inclusio and Holy Helix on the Horizon

To illustrate "inclusio," a literary framing device where an item or phrase is mentioned (or alluded to)
at the beginning and end of a literary unit....actually to establish the literary unit....I love the "with you" inclusio of Matthew, and the "kingdom" inclusio of Acts.

Matthew begins and ends with the "with us" God, suggesting that all the material in between is commentary in that one sweeping theme.

It is fruitful to follow the narrative of Matthew, asking how plot, character, and theme development dovetail with the overarching arc of the "withness" of Jesus.

There are not only book-wide inclusios, but as Len Sweet suggests, a provocative Genesis-Revelation inclusio, Of course, within any given book, there are much shorter ones (note the first and last beatitudes (only) of chapter 5 end
with a promise of the kingdom of heaven, implying that the other promises in between "being filled," "inherit the earth," "be comforted" all have to do with Kingdomness.

A reminder that sometimes even the lines of an inclusio, like time itself (according to one gal) are not literally linear. The line can even be hellishly helical.

Some of you got that reference, and will get where we're headed next.

I have previously written on the inclusios of Scripture in general, but as often in this hood, it's time to apply the study to another form of literature:

U2 albums/setlists.

I have caught one in "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb" album, contrasting U2's "holy helix" and "Full circle" with the vicious circle of Pink Floyd's "The Wall."
Beth has caught elements of inclusio effectively woven even into the book accompanying the deluxe version of "How to Dismantle":

Overall, the trajectory of the artwork is exactly the same as the description Bono recently gave on the BBC of the trajectory of the album itself: an arc from fear, in "Vertigo," to the "joyful noise" of trust in "Yahweh"....Overall, we're bookended by two versions of reality, one about death and one about hope, and with these images U2 dismantle the first and get us to the second.

-U2 Sermons

Often there is a trajectory, narrative, a holy helix, a liturgical plot and leitourgia-sensitive flow. Some albums are almost concept albums. Sometimes there is a telltale inclusio to frame the movement, and mark the theme.

But how did I miss this one? I was of course aware that the "How long" refrain appeared in "Sunday Bloody Sunday," and "40," but it didn't fully hit me until reading Steve Harmon that these are (on purpose) the opening and closing songs of the album:

This already/not yet tension echoes in the psalms of lament scattered
throughout U2’s music. The cry “How long?” rises from the first and final
tracks of War (1983), an album filled with prophetic awareness of the notyet-
transformed nature of the world on the one hand and hope for its
transformation on the other.
link

The now and not yetness of the Kingdom is all over U2, and U2 have been all over eschatological theme from day one (or at least album three). "No Line" might be seen as a sequel/fulfillment of sorts to album three: "War " focusing the "not yet" tension, and "No Line" framing the "now" aspects of Kingdom presence.

What that might mean for an inclusio in "No Line"? The opening/title track is overtly (maybe even overly) optimistic/opti-mystic, and the closing track (out of character on the album) is a largely downer ("Where are You in the Cedars of Lebanon"). Of course both are embedded in each other,

Bono has been clear that the "no line" image is to evoke optimism's
“cogency of all possibilities, potential and actual ” But when the title was announced, I at first assumed it was a negative, disorienting image (the pilot whose plane had flipped down, frantically trying to find and focus the line of the horizon... a tract for our times).

Even though optimism wins by a landslide on the disc, both spins on the "No line" theme are valid and versions of the same. Maybe the last two albums (at least the deluxe version of "HTDAATB" which closed with "Fast Cars." ) the boys have felt the need to intentionally subvert..every so slightly, and thus significantly, the almost CCM upbeatness of the "Kingdom now" end of things.

Beth has offered (listen to last few minutes of the podcast here) that U2's message might be summarized as "hope with realism."
Maybe some of their volumes underline the hope, and some the realism.

Lest we assume the boys have finally and fully found what they're looking for.

U2's "No Line": 4 motifs-part 4: walk by sound, not by faith

"The heavenly motions are nothing but a continous song for several voices (perceived by the intellect, not the ear), a music which, through discordant tensions, sincopes an cadenzas as it were (as men employ them in imitation of those natural discords) progresses towards certain pre-designed quasi six-voiced clasuras, and then sets landmarks in the immeasurable flow of time."
-Johannes Kepler, "Harmnice Mundi," 1619

"particles defy time and space..so does music"
-Joseph Ege
"Time is irrelevant, its not linear."
"Let me in the sound, God.."
-U2, "No Line on the Horizon" 2009

The many references to sound on this album have been noticed, here is a great summary from St. Beth:

As has been pointed out already, it seems clear to me that "the sound" is one central metaphor. We have three "let me in the sound" requests, as well as "I found grace inside a/the sound" and "people born of sound," all of which have an essentialist, palpable ring (especially if you want to argue for a vague John 3 echo in the last one.) Along with these, there are more evocations of sound per se as granting some kind of mysterious access to the ultimate: "hear the universe," "roar on the other side of silence," and "the rhythm of my soul... that yearns to be released from control." And don't forget this album's ineffable soundscapes themselves, such as the one that begins "Unknown Caller." Because of all that, I am more inclined to understand "sound" in NLOTH as pointing to mystical communion with God now, rather than as looking forward to songs sung by others in heaven.

While we also get several specific mentions of people themselves vocalizing ("Sing your heart out," "I was born to sing for you," "listen for me, I'll be shouting") it's the sense of sound as sacred essence that intrigues me here, as if Pop's "looking for a sound that's gonna drown out the world" quest has been fulfilled in a sound-baptism by immersion on NLOTH...
-U2Sermons

Many, including my badself, have connected the dots to Sound Theory/String Theory/God.

"The universe at base," Sweet suggests, "is sound."

"particles defy time and space..so does music"
-Joseph Eger, "Einstein's Violin: A Conductor's Notes on Music, Physics and Social Change,"
p. 39, 214.

This is not just cute Bono-isms, and clever ideas...it is the stuff Nobel Prizes are made of:

"The music of the spheres," is an amazing line from a classic hymn, but also sound physics.
Dazzle yourself with Nobel-Prize winner Frank Wilczek's "Longing for the Harmonies: Themes and Vibrations From Modern Physics. Soundtrack it to U2.

Please.

But I want to pick up a line in "Moment of Surrender" that may not be obviously connected to the sound motif.

It's about sight and seeing.
So it must connect synesthesiastically.

How obvious is that.



"We walk by faith, not by sight."

Does that mean we walk by blind faith?
Well, yes.

But robbed of sight, we can call upon an even more fundemantal and "sound" sense:

sound; hearing.

Pure synesthesia to walk by sound.

And watch...I mean, listen, to what Jason Stellman picks up here:

Following Scripture, Reformed theology has always placed great emphasis on the ear over the eye. The gospel is called by Paul "the word of faith," a message that produces belief "by hearing the Word of Christ." The opposite of faith, of course, is not doubt but sight. A person is most faithless, therefore, not when disbelief is mingled with his belief, but when he demands to see, to experience, to feel the truth before he'll believe it. "We walk by faith," says Paul, "and not by sight."


Go ahead and roll your eyes, but I maintain that Bono understands this.

...his theme is prevalent on their new release, No Line on the Horizon, as well. In the song "Moment of Surrender" Bono sings:

At the moment of surrender,
I folded to my knees;
I did not notice the passers-by,
And they did not notice me.

At the moment of surrender,
Of vision over visibility,
I did not notice the passers-by,
And they did not notice me.

True surrender, in other words, can only happen with "visibility" is relinquished.
-Jason Stellman

Bono has discussed the "vision over visibility" line:

"Moment" includes a phrase that's close to sacred for Bono: "vision over visibility". ...Bono: "It's like Martin Luther King's speech - the moment when you see the place, but you can't see yet how to get there."
-Rolling Stone

This is another angle on

"By faith, Abraham left home, completely clueless about where he was going'
. Heb 11.8"

We have "no compass; no map," but "uncertainty can be a guiding light" (As Bono sang in Zooropa). The catch is this holy uncertainty of the faithwalk is caught by pleading with God, the Source of all Sound, to be let into the sound. The Sound of the Spheres, the Sound of Music, the sound we were borne of.

The one who has ears to hear, let them hear.

Or at least read another Pulitzer Prize-winner, Douglas Hofstadter's classic,
"Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid."

At bare minimum, hear a soundbyte from it
and souncheck and soundtrack it to U2.

Tha author finds nothing less than an "eternal braid" or "strange loop" in Bach's music,
which is both linear and nonlinear, as well as suggests that "time is irrelevant":

"Bach wrote in the margin of his 'Canon por Tonos,'
'As the modulation (sound) rises, so may the King's glory.'
To emphasize this canon's potentially infinite aspect, I like to call this 'The Ever-Rising Canon.'
..And perhaps to experience that sense of wonder and awe is more satisfying than having an answer...at least for awhile."
-p.10, 548

• U2's "No Line": 5 meta motifs (and a sign from God)-part 1:
  http://davewainscott.blogspot.com/2009/03/u2s-no-line-4-motifs-part-1_10.html

• U2's "No Line": 5 meta motifs, part 2: non linear and no yet:
  http://davewainscott.blogspot.com/2009/03/u2s-no-line-5-meta-motifs-part-2.html






• U2's "No Line": 5 motifs-part 3: she spoke in tongues in my ear:
  http://davewainscott.blogspot.com/2009/03/u2s-no-line-4-motifs-part-3-she-spoke.html





• U2's "No Line": 5 motifs-part 4: walk by sound, not by faith:
  http://davewainscott.blogspot.com/2009/03/u2s-no-line-4-motifs-part-4-walk-by.html