On "The Edge"

What is it about that wunderkind quartet from Dublin? I suppose they aren’t so young anymore, but as far as I’m concerned, their music is still every bit as quality as ever. There are, of course, those who perhaps think that isn't saying much. But U2 will, I think, always be my favorite. I would love to say this is due to some magic, some inexplicable quality such that when their collective sound is coursing through my veins, a higher power takes over me and unlocks a part of myself I would not have otherwise known. Well, there may be some truth in there, but mostly it has to do with The Edge. I say this with all due respect to the other three, because Adam and Larry are certainly quality musicians, especially Larry. And I have to admit that Bono’s majestic and occasionally almost
self-adulatory crooning, as fabulous as it is much of the time, is not really what does it for me. It’s about The Edge. Incidentally, I read somewhere once that the moniker reflects a penchant for heights and perhaps some quasi-maniacal zeal to frequent the borders of rooftops, and for all I know, there’s something to that. But it seems more sensible to me that it would reflect his penchant for higher tonalities. With whatever muse-like orb he entered back the in late 70s that led him to suddenly crank up the delay around a bitingly crisp fever of distortion, he happened to find a singular, and very nearly inimitable, style of guitar playing. More to the point, it’s a sound that reaches me. I’m not typically one to enjoy music simply because of the technical prowess required to perform it. The music I like is music that sounds good, however it was written, however it is performed. The lyricism of The Edge is, to me, infinitely preferable to the virtuosity of a hundred other guitarists with faster fingers. I reserve my admiration for the mind and soul that cause the sound to exist, or rather, the vessel into which God has chosen to invest His inspiration. To me, that’s what U2 is, a vessel into which has been poured an oft-introspective sound that alternates almost seamlessly between despair and hope. This is just what people do. And that's what makes the music feel so real to me—remarkably genuine, occasionally ironic, always meaningful.

Nearly everyone who knows me, or at least everyone who knows me well, is certainly not surprised to read this. Since I was in junior high school, I’ve been brooding over albums like October, The Unforgettable Fire, and The Joshua Tree, living in those aural spaces, letting them take me on repeated tours of the interior landscape where my imagination and my emotions commingle like awkward yet willful dance partners. In fact, I’ve been taking these tours most of my life, I think, with music of various kinds. As an adult, I would simply say that the demands of everyday life have simply forced me to compartmentalize those moments into smaller spans and to enjoy them more intermittently, while driving in the car on my way to work or sitting with a headset on while writing this blog, as opposed to stretching out on my bed, fourteen years old, waiting for Mom to call me to dinner while the glory of songs like “Scarlet,” “A Sort of Homecoming,” and “One Tree Hill” poured over me like a teen elixir, as if all of life’s lessons could be learned somehow by simply soaking up the air of that sonic space and gleaning whatever visions and wisdom might surge through my heart by simply listening.

If anything is truly magical to me, it is music itself, which speaks more directly to my soul than perhaps any of the other arts. If I had had the foresight, and also the time, while I was coming of age and making my way in the world, I would have kept a music journal, pouring into it the emotional nuances, places of the imagination, and the greater significance of all the sonic spaces in which I’ve lived and toured since I was young. Now, they lie asleep somewhere in the rich tapestry of my memory. Perhaps one day I’ll get around to writing some things down. Maybe that’s what I’m doing right now. Everyone carries different associations, responding differently to certain themes and sounds. For me, these associations are especially powerful; some of them can change the temperature of my mind almost instantly. And in this hypothetical music journal chronicling the interior landscape of my life, U2 deserves several chapters. Their songs have nourished me for many years, spawned legions of dreamscapes and ideas, lifted me up when I was sorrowful, sobered me when I was naïve, brought me clarity in partnership with idealism. And much, if not most, of this is due to the ambient tintinnabulation of The Edge's guitar, which took me into those reflective spaces, triggering an entire generation of dreams within me, some modest, some grandiose, but as I said before, always meaningful. I’ve entered on the musical journeys the band has taken over the years, from the punk-infused musings of Boy, to the "chopping down" of The Joshua Tree with Achtung Baby, to the transcendently personal ballads aboard How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. And yet, in another sense, they have gone with me on my journey. And that is a very different world than the world in which the band lives. All art is like this. And I believe, perhaps a bit naively, that it is this largely subjective, very nearly inexplicable respiration between artistic intent and personal response that makes the artistic endeavor itself so important. Ironically, of course, it is the one thing that cannot be qualified or substantiated in any canonical or academic way. Fine by me. Sometimes dreams serve us better than knowledge, better than understanding. Sometimes I wonder if wisdom is not born out of a lack of understanding and the serenity to withstand the angst it brings. Is that what Keats referred to as “negative capability”? Who knows? I learned an awful lot about myself by listening to The Edge’s guitar, maybe more than I ever learned sitting in a classroom or reading a book. Not that music trumps literature or learning, but its signature in the life of a zealous listener is undeniably unique and, I believe, as with knowledge, immeasurably transformative.