I have been looking forward to the new U2 album No Line on the Horizon that is coming out February 27th. As part of this release, I get updates sent about U2 and just got a link to a January 11th NY Times article by Bono in their Op-Ed section.
Hmmm. I wonder what Bono is talking about now? I am not up for another talking head right now.
Yet the title intrigued me: “Notes from the Chairman.” Has Bono suddenly gone power hungry? Is he weighing in on corporate practices? Is he talking about current events like the economy. Is he reflecting on Obama even though I am exhausted and sick with politics.
So it was with some reluctance that I started to read the NY Times article, but as I read it, I remembered why I liked Bono.
I’m in a crush in a Dublin pub around New Year’s. Glasses clinking clicking, clashing crashing in Gaelic revelry: swinging doors, sweethearts falling in and out of the season’s blessings, family feuds subsumed or resumed. Malt joy and ginger despair are all in the queue to be served on this, the quarter-of-a-millennium mark since Arthur Guinness first put velvety blackness in a pint glass.
Interesting mood. The new Irish money has been gambled and lost; the Celtic Tiger’s tail is between its legs as builders and bankers laugh uneasy and hard at the last year, and swallow uneasy and hard at the new. There’s a voice on the speakers that wakes everyone out of the moment: it’s Frank Sinatra singing “My Way.” His ode to defiance is four decades old this year and everyone sings along for a lifetime of reasons. I am struck by the one quality his voice lacks: Sentimentality.
Read the entire article here – Notes from the Chairman
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