The realm of certainty

All right, here's a comment. What's with all these completely contradictory reviews? White as Snow is the finest song U2 have ever written/White as Snow is boring and suffers from an ugly melody (the melody is of course "O Come O Come Emmanuel.") ...The album's highest point is very definitely Magnificent/ I'll Go Crazy/ Moment of Surrender/ The opening track/ Cedars of Lebanon/ Unknown Caller.... Unknown Caller is awful and best skipped because of its lame technology metaphors. (It's interesting how many people seem to have no idea what's going on in Unknown Caller.)This album rates a mere 2 out of 5 stars. /This album is as good as "Achtung Baby.".... At last they've stopped phoning in a safe version of themselves. /Here they are again, phoning in a safe version of themselves.... It's all Eno's fault./ Thank God for Eno.

Unknown (angelic) caller

I wasn't going to post on this at first, thinking it's the kind of thing the fansites tend to handle... but reading the caption to this shot of an angel designed by the Edge which will be auctioned off for charity as part of "Beacons of Hope" changed my mind. (Several people were given identical plexiglass angels to decorate. Not the first time U2 members have gravitated to "heart" imagery.) Anyway, here's the real reason for the link: The person who put up the picture comments that the sculpture brought "Unknown Caller" to mind and dedicates the shot to "friends who had this song as the processional at their wedding." "Unknown Caller" for a wedding introit; now that's a pretty gutsy statement! It's an odd choice, but way better than "One," right?

Moments and characters

I talked in the last post about how NLOTH seems to have both a settled confidence in God's availability (as distinct from "certainty" about religious ideas) and a sense of being at mature peace with life. It interests me that while we've heard Bono speak from that kind of place in interviews over the past 7-8 years, U2's music has not reflected it as much. (I suppose it's sort of there on HTDAAB: you might name "A Man and A Woman," which was handicapped by sounding like a 60s toothpaste commercial, and we hear moments of it in other songs.) But I wonder if, in part, the use of 3rd party characters on NLOTH helps the outlook we've heard in interviews come into view: when Bono stops singing so directly about himself, we paradoxically get a clearer view of how he thinks the world works. What I mean is that we witness deliberate choices to set up situations that turn out to be (sorry to keep beating up on this reviewer's phrase) the kind many people "wouldn't bother to consider."

So let's look at a couple of those. "Moment of Surrender" and "Unknown Caller" are both songs in which the narrator began life as a 3rd party character -- the same character, in fact. (Incidentally I think this may explain a frequently-remarked error in the official lyrics, but I'll put that in a separate little post.) The situation examined in "Moment of Surrender" is exactly what its title says -- that precise moment at which someone reaches the point of giving up to God, in this case from the dregs of a life gone bad. And "Unknown Caller," which for my money is perhaps the most sublime spiritual document U2 have ever produced, pictures the Divine response to the previous song's surrender, although brilliantly choosing to focus just before the character has made meaning out of the liminal experience of his phone starting to talk to him. (A few minutes later in the story, and the title would have had to be "God Calling.") But U2 don't want to show us the certainties we humans make of religious experience after the fact; they want to show us actual religious experience in all its imperious, weird, transformative power. (PASSWORD: YOU.) The mere decision to identify and enshrine that moment makes the hair on my arms stand on end, as does Edge's attempt to play the ineffable after the Caller goes to work following his Psalm 46-esque last word: DON'T MOVE OR SAY A THING

"White As Snow" is another 3rd party song which situates us in a moment -- in this case the deathbed, with the narrator's life having come down to wondering if he can still recapture his early experience of "forgiveness" from and knowledge of "a love divine" through "the lamb as white as snow."

So three choices, three narrative situations: the moment someone surrenders to God, the moment God responds, and the moment of accounting before God's face at death. It's probably no wonder all that stuff would bore people like our straw-man "bother to consider" friend whom I keep quoting. But for me these choices reveal a distillation of life's true questions; they highlight which are the moments that really matter in the end.

Next full post: a few comments on the songs which seem to be less 3rd-party.

Counting down to.....?

Pulled out of that last post to avoid getting too off topic: I mentioned that there's a frequently-remarked error in the official lyrics to "Moment of Surrender" and that I think it may be explained by the fact that "MoS" and "Unknown Caller" began as a story that flows from one song to another. The official lyric sheet ends "counting down to the Pentecost," but Bono very clearly sings "counting down till the pain would stop."

If we think in terms of a cross-song narrative, "counting down to the Pentecost" would fit as a description of the character who ends "MoS" having surrendered to God, but is still waiting for the direct revelation (i.e., his own Pentecost) that happens in "Unknown Caller." I wonder if that concept may be where the line came from. But U2 didn't really stick as strongly with the 3rd person character premise for the album as they had originally thought they might -- and if you're not using it deliberately to send a character into the next song's story, the line about Pentecost makes less sense. So my guess is they replaced it with "pain would stop," which is far more appropriate to the vibe of "MoS" by itself. But that news didn't get to the official lyric people -- just the kind of thing that often seems to happen with the many errors in U2's printed song texts.

[Update: commenter Rhiannsu below adds the helpful information that if you bought the deluxe box set, you actually have the correct lyric, as opposed to what's on U2.com]

As some lyrics from No Line on the Horizon begin to filter out in the press, I'm reminded of a conversation I had with friends a week or so ago. I was idly wondering whether close attention to the number of direct citations of classic English Biblical phraseology in U2 songs would find a decline, in favor of more efforts to express Biblical ideas in original words, since Bono's enthusiasm for The Message took root in, what, 1999? Just offhand, based purely on instinct, I tend to think of the last two albums as more interested in communicating Biblical thought patterns than in echoing Biblical language. Of course, I may be off base, but some of the texts that are showing up in the press have the same ring to me:

Reportedly from "Unknown Caller" -- "Hear me/Cease to speak/That I may speak/Shush now." Obviously a Psalm 46:10 sort of vibe, but no quotation.
Reportedly from "Magnificent" -- "I was born to sing for you/I didn't have a choice but to lift you up." Kind of Jeremiah 1-ish? (not to mention All Because of You-ish)

I suppose also that I should add that the "reboot yourself" and "only love can reset your mind" language from "Unknown Caller" to me instantly evokes this earlier self-description from Bono: "That to me is the spiritual life. The slow reworking and rebooting of a computer at regular intervals. It has slowly rebuilt me in a better image. It has taken years, though, and it is not over yet."

Comment on a recent review

You know, I try not to do many posts which are purely editorializing here (and I know I probably fail) but... am I the only one who was brought up short by this passage in the Independent.ie's official review of NLOTH?

There are several euphoric moments and lots of allusions to redemption. Songs like "Moment of Salvation" [sic] - which, at more than seven minutes long, definitely outstays its welcome - is loaded with lyrics referencing "soul", "God" and "fire". The atmospheric "Unknown Caller" is cut from the same cloth. Let's face it, it would hardly be a U2 album if Bono wasn't engaged by such themes - and if you're one of the many who finds this sort of stuff off-putting, much of the album simply won't work for you.
There are plenty of songs that won't have such a divisive effect, however.

So given that we agree that "it would hardly be a U2 album" if the band didn't write from the redemptive perspective they have drawn on for 33 years, in what sense is it helpful to dismiss a couple *particular* moments within that perspective with pejorative language like "divisive"? There are certainly people who can't stomach U2 at all because of the worldview underlying their work, and I respect that outlook. But here, doesn't pinning blame on particular examples of their art for having "such a divisive effect" mean something a bit more like "I don't like Christianity, and I'm uncomfortable because unlike the other nine tracks, I couldn't find a way to ignore the Christian worldview in these two"?

New article on U2 via Baudrillard

Deane Galbraith, author of the fascinating "Fallen Angels" paper in Exploring U2, writes to say that he has a publication on U2 included in a new book out on theology and rock music, The Counter-Narratives of Radical Theology and Popular Music: Songs of Fear and Trembling (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.) It's edited by Mike Grimshaw, and the U2 chapter is "Meeting God in the Sound: The Seductive Dimension of U2's Future Hymns." In the article, Deane employs Jean Baudrillard's distinction between the production of meaning and the seductive capacity of texts, in order to "examine the role played by U2’s emphasis on the formal, mystical, and experiential aspects of their music, and how that emphasis coincides with a religious trend which since at least the 1960s can be located throughout the arts, popular music, and—in a perhaps surprising association—charismatic evangelical Christianity." The chapter focuses on No Line On The Horizon and the U2 360 tour, and includes detailed discussions of "White as Snow" and "Unknown Caller." I haven't had a chance to look it over, but I've read enough of Deane's work that I expect it to be good!

Holy Saturday

I just noticed this today. Probably sheer coincidence:

The present is all past. The future is nothing. The hand has disappeared from the clock’s face. No more struggle between love and hate, between life and death. Both have been equalized, and love’s emptying out has become the emptiness of hell. One has penetrated the other perfectly. The nadir has reached the zenith.
--Hans Urs von Balthazar on Holy Saturday

3:33 when the numbers fell off the clock face
Speed dialing with no signal at all
Go, shout it out, rise up
--Unknown Caller on.......

Hit Reply

At the suggestion of a friend, I was recently looking through a book of poetry called The Sky's Window, which came out in 2006 and is available on Lulu.com. This book, which seeks "the mysterious in the mundane, the sacramental in the seemingly ordinary," is one of several publications by Martin Wroe, whose possible appellations could include longterm U2 associate, former Propaganda editor, journalist, U2.com editor, Anglican priest, poet, Greenbelt trustee, and probably several other things. Readers might think to associate the title with "Window in the Skies," but it's also interesting to note that one of the poems turns on the notion of being regularly addressed, interrupted, by brief technological commonplaces (put in italics in the text) such as ‘Hit reply,’ ‘Reminder, Today,’ ‘Lines are open, call us now.’ The text ends

Life interrupted,
Silence silenced.
Still small voice
Stiller and stiller
Smaller and smaller
‘Hit reply’

A little bit of an "Unknown Caller" vibe there, no?

Time won't leave me as I am

I've been watching for reviews of NLOTH that have some theological substance. So far, pretty slim pickings. Beliefnet's Idol Chatter post on the album doesn't, but Christianity Today's does. Most insightful bit, I think, is this:
[The album] explores themes that are expanded on and developed from song to song. There are the usual "is it Jesus or a girlfriend?" teases, but those looking for more depth will find much to savor. This is an album all about time: the ravages of the inexorable march of hours and days, chronos and kairos, calendar time and clock time vs. those moments that are out of time, that sustain us, those in which we encounter something of the Divine. It's a theme explored explicitly in "Moment of Surrender" and "Unknown Caller," and obliquely in later tracks such as the anthemic rocker "Breathe" and the atmospheric closer, "Cedars of Lebanon." ...These are songs that could have never been written by Bono Vox, the naïve, idealistic youth of early albums. And as such, these are songs that could only have been written by Bono, the aging, iconic rock star in love with Jesus and himself in equal measure, and bothered by the incongruity.

Shut Up and Let Me Love You

Thanks again for the help fixing the Fez link in the last post. It is fixed.

Stealing directly from Mark Meynell here, who has pulled out of the conclusion of Bono In Conversation this passage, which was already arresting enough, and suggests we hold it up against "Unknown Caller." I suppose when it comes down to it you can't actually sing "shut up," but you can sing "shush now":

Assayas: You said about your father: “He would disappear into silence and wit.” I think that in your case, you do disappear into volubility and wit. [Bono bursts out laughing] What do you make of that?
Bono: Guilty, your honour.
No further comment?
‘Be silent and know that I am God.’ That’s a favourite line from the Scriptures. ‘Shut up and Let Me Love You’ would be the pop song. [laughs] It’s really what it means. If ever I needed to hear a comment, it might be that.
Ultimate question, then you’re rid of me. What leaves you speechless?
[sighs… 20 second pause, continuous sound of cicadas] Does singing count?
I’m afraid not. Songs have words.
But not when I start. Usually, it’s just a melody and nonsense words. Hmm… Songs are about as succinct as I get. I’m just sparing you. [laughs then ponders for a moment] ‘Forgiveness’ is my answer.
You mean ‘being forgiven’?
Yeah.

Sacralizing the profane and profaning the sacred

I noted some time ago on this blog the publication of Deane Galbraith's essay "Meeting God in the Sound" in The Counter -Narratives of Radical Theology and Popular Music. I happened today to discover that portions of that interesting essay, which includes extended readings of "Unknown Caller" and "White as Snow" as well as some useful thought about hymn allusions, are readable on Google books. You might want to give the pages that are available a look.

Soul Surmise

Contributor to Get Up Off Your Knees and U2 expert in his own right Steve Stockman has posted an article on NLOTH (billed as a review, but more of a reflection piece.) Excerpt:
Every U2 phase gets a name check... the worship of the youthfully exuberant October is back on Magnificent which finally kicks in to a Unforgettable Fire soundscape... while Fez - Being Born has a Passengers mood... Stand Up Comedy is the girder crunch chords of Achtung Baby... the lyric of Unknown Caller would sit well on Zooropa... Cedars Of Lebanon is like one of those great Joshua Tree soft spoken word poem out-takes that finally got their recognition on that album’s Twentieth Anniversary Edition. I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight would have sat nicely on the last two albums but as highlighted in the unsettling sound of the lead-off single Get On Your Boots it is all wrapped up in fresh experimental recycling. Having suggested familiarity there are many tracks and sections of tracks that if played without vocal would not reveal the band’s identity at all.

33:3 ----> 3:33

As a follow up to yesterday's post, a friend forwards a new article which mentions that the song "Unknown Caller" happens at "3:33 am." I'm assuming anyone who was around when All That You Can't Leave Behind was released can identify that "calling" reference without much help.

Born of sound

Having thrown out some general context in the past couple posts, I want to move on now to making more specific comments on No Line On The Horizon.

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.

So I think I'd like to at least play with a distinction. I'm certainly not positing a major disconnect, but I'm wondering if we could say that the "sound" metaphor represents something of a shift? Previously, have U2's evocations of eschatological fullness not tended more towards the apophatic? Their work has often reached, yearning, to that ecstatic limit, and then there are no words for what is coming. "I try to sing this... but." "You know I believe it, but I still haven't found..." with "what I'm looking for" left unspoken. "Mysterious Ways" (at least live): You can hear it, and see the celebration, but the lyrics are over by then. In fact, at a lot of these foretaste moments in U2 there is only inarticulate vocalization. And for the quintessential example, as glorious a moment of fulfillment as it is, the song is called "Where the Streets Have No Name," and they traditionally blind us at all its high points. (Any fans of Pseudo-Dionysius and his dazzling darkness out there?)

As a side comment: If you buy the idea, it would be interesting to discuss whether this instinct for apophaticism at the spiritual apex is part of what has made U2 so accessible to secular listeners.

In my next post, I'll share some thoughts about why this more immersive and less apophatic "sound" metaphor might have come to the fore, and either then or later I'll get to how I see it tying in with the settled Sitz-im-leben I mentioned earlier.

Exploring U2: Is this rock 'n' roll?

Take a look at the cover, table of contents and general information for Exploring U2: Is This Rock 'n' Roll?, the book that grew out of the 2009 U2 academic conference. I can vouch for the excellence of several of the papers that made it in, and I am very excited about seeing a hard copy this fall!

[edit: We've been asked to submit an alphabtical list of songs cited in our chapters, and I was kind of amazed to discover that I cite 29 songs in mine, to wit: "40", Bad, Beautiful Day, Bullet the Blue Sky, Elevation, The Fly, Kite, Love Is Blindness, Mothers of the Disappeared, Mysterious Ways, New Year's Day, One, Out of Control, Please, Pride, Running to Standstill, Satellite of Love, A Sort of Homecoming, Stuck in a Moment, Sunday Bloody Sunday, Trying to Throw Your Arms Around the World, Unknown Caller, Vertigo, Walk On, What's Going On, When Will I See You Again, Where the Streets Have No Name, With or Without You, Yahweh. Geez, think you cited enough songs there?]

more NLOTH writing with a spiritual slant

A few more links for readers looking to see what's being said about NLOTH from people interested in U2's spirituality, this time around on a more popular level than the last post. (As always, a link here does not necessarily mean I agree, just that readers may find the writing thought-provoking.) Here's an anonymous post called I Found Grace Inside the Sound, which sees NLOTH as seeking to "paint a fuller picture of that 'other place,' the Kingdom (not yet) come, on the other side of the horizon line, [describing] heaven as full of sound." Bob at the Bobosphere is posting a series of pieces pointing out Biblical and other connections that he personally is touched by in some of the songs. And finally, fan forum The Goal is Soul at Interference is talking up "Unknown Caller" in particular, as well as a few other songs.

If you can

I drafted a post last summer in honor of what was widely anticipated as the world premiere of "Drowning Man," a never-before-performed song from U2's War album. Since it now looks as if we won't ever get that performance, and since the Advent piece I re-posted on Sunday quoted "Drowning Man," I thought I'd just go on and put the piece up anyway.

What I wanted to share was my theory about the title. As has been frequently remarked, drowning is not mentioned in the lyrics, although there is a quick nod to ocean imagery ("tides and storms.") (Incidentally, this piece looking at the history of water and drowning images in U2 is worth a read if you've never thought about how often such allusions turn up -- and I think they have different resonances in different places. Here I'm only considering the narrow question of this one song's name.)

Until "Unknown Caller," "Drowning Man" had the distinction of being the only U2 song which majored on lyrics obviously intended as the voice of God - who, however, quotes Isaiah along the way. It pictures an earnest Lover reaching out and appealing "take my hand," promising acceptance, steadiness, strength -- "if you can" bring yourself to accept the help and "hold on tightly." But again: why reference someone who is "drowning" for that appeal? Couldn't it apply to any addressee in any situation?

Well, here's what often seems plausible to me. I wager that the choice of a "drowning man" to characterize the addressee of the song may actually be a literary allusion. I would not be surprised to learn that this title draws on a striking and memorable image of the need to surrender completely to grace found in The Normal Christian Life, the best known work of early-U2-influence Watchman Nee:

When you are reduced to utter weakness and are persuaded that you can do nothing whatever, then God will do everything. We all need to come to the point where we say: 'Lord, I am unable to do anything for Thee, but I trust Thee to do everything in me.'

I was once staying in a place in China with some twenty other brothers. There was inadequate provision for bathing in the home where we stayed, so we went for a daily plunge in the river. On one occasion a brother had cramp in one leg, and I suddenly saw he was sinking fast, so I motioned to another brother, who was an expert swimmer, to hasten to his rescue. But to my astonishment he made no move. So I grew desperate and called out: 'Don't you see the man is drowning?' and the other brothers, about as agitated as I was, shouted vigorously too. But our good swimmer still did not move. Calm and collected, he remained just where he was, apparently postponing the unwelcome task. Meantime the voice of the poor drowning brother grew fainter and his efforts feebler. In my heart I said: 'I hate that man! Think of his letting a brother drown before his very eyes and not going to the rescue!'

But when the man was actually sinking, with a few swift strokes the swimmer was at his side, and both were safely ashore. When I got an opportunity I aired my views. 'I have never seen any Christian who loved his life quite as much as you do', I said. 'Think of the distress you would have saved that brother if you had considered yourself a little less and him a little more.' But the swimmer knew his business better than I did. 'Had I gone earlier', he said, 'he would have clutched me so fast that both of us would have gone under. A drowning man cannot be saved until he is utterly exhausted and ceases to make the slightest effort to save himself.'

Grace inside a sound

I take back my statement that nothing of real theological substance has yet been written on NLOTH. Go check out this piece by Steven Harmon. Excerpt:
The basic message of No Line is that earth is not yet heaven, and therefore the album summons us to "Get On Your Boots" and work toward the day when things will fully be on earth as they are in heaven -- when heaven and earth will be indistinguishable, and there will at last be no line on the horizon. Moving in that direction requires the triumph "of vision over visibility" ("Moment of Surrender"), an echo of an earlier formulation of the same insight: that the things that last and that come at the last constitute "a place that has to be believed to be seen" ("Walk On" from 2000's All That You Can't Leave Behind). It also requires an inner transformation wrought by a receptive hearing of the voice of God ("Unknown Caller") and a faithful reception of the love of God which requires that one both "stand up" for it and "sit down" to receive it ("Stand Up Comedy"). The central eschatological metaphor of No Line is the sound of the divine song, heard only by those who have the ears to hear it, yet unconsciously sought by everyone, for all people were created to hear and sing this song. Seven of the album's 11 songs invoke that metaphor in one way or another.

BTW, my answer to your "fifth point Calvinist" jab, Steve, is that the sense of the line can just as easily be "Justified, you and I will magnify the Magnificent until we die." ;-)

If you get the chance

Does this make anyone else wonder if U2 and their team have arrived at the point of realizing the show really needs "Unknown Caller," even if Americans won't sing it?