"I didn't know how powerful that innocence was"

I'm told by email correspondents that you can't read the thing about Anton Corbijn's exhibition I linked to below, in connection with some comments about rebirth as a theme in the How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb lyrics, unless you've paid your $40 to U2.com. Well. It goes a little something like this:

Bono: I think one of the most important moments for me on this album happened when I went to see Anton Corbijn's exhibition. Anton has done all our album covers and has been a very close friend of the band, and one of the most important photographers in the world and truly a great, great artist. He had a museum show in Holland where he's from, and I went to see it and he hadn't told me but there was a room full of giant photographs of the band and a lot of me from when I was very young, and he put me in to the room and I was like 'Just get me out of here!'

And then I saw this photograph - I guess I would have been 20, 21 - getting into a helicopter, the first time I'd ever been in a helicopter, first or second video we made, and it was New Year's Day, and we're just about to take off. And I saw this face, and the face was so open and so empty of complications and so the naivety was there and it was so powerful, and this Dutch journalist came up and said, 'Bono, what would you say now to this Bono back then, have you anything you would say?' And I was trying to think what I would say, and it kind of just came out of my mouth, I said, 'I'd tell him he's absolutely right, stop second guessing yourself.' Back then I didn't know how powerful that naivety was, I didn't know how powerful that innocence was so I was trying to rid myself from it, I was trying to set fire to myself, and get rid of this, become a more worldly person, become a man of the world, and of course the less you know, the more you know, sometimes the less you feel, and really understand.