U2: No Line on the Horizon

The new U2 album, No line on the Horizon, is excellent. U2 manage to reinvent themselves while holding on to some of their landmark traits to satisfy the older fan while potentially appealing to a newer group also. They are genius in the mastering of their medium. Mixing old with new, they carve a space for themselves to age graciously while exposing their experience as artists in this mediated world.

This album is a powerful collection of tracks with the net result of a finished product which is greater than its parts. The collection is a whole. The sum is greater than the parts. No line on the Horizon is a success. As a mediated experience this album has a lot to offer the listener; lyrics, music, variety, old U2, new U2, heavy rock and ballads. Bono has said, when questioned about his other mediated events, that U2 is fundamentally a rock band. The opportunities this platform has afforded him as an advocate for other causes does not take away from U2 as a band.

The title track, a love song, suggests no sense of time in linear fashion. "Time is irrelevant, it's not linear." Magnificent implies a preoccupation with time in this life but goes on to suggest timelessness after this life. "Justify till we die, you and I will magnify." My favorite part of this album is the track Moment of Surrender which starts with a cryptic or simple metaphor "I tied myself with wire." The narrative leads the singer looking for a way to get back to "the rhythm of my soul/to the rhythm of unconsciousness," and the way to find this is through a "moment of Surrender." Unknown Caller makes a very straight forward suggestion that we "cease to speak that I may speak." Who might this be directed to? There may be biblical intentions in I'll go Crazy if I don't go Crazy Tonight with "how can you stand next to the truth and not see it?" Many references are made to the struggle for truth (or Truth?). Perhaps Bono sees himself as a Jesus-like figure but I rather think he is referring to humanity when he says "every generation gets a chance to change the world." Perhaps a call to action by U2? Get on Your Boots, the first single released, starts with "the future needs a big kiss." Embrace the future now. "Hey sexy boots, you don't know how beautiful you are" are words to titillate the generation to positive action for the future. FEZ - Being Born refers to the energy associated with birth and also rebirth and life and also time. This high energy track seems to be the high point of the album speaking in terms of the musical energy of the album. The tracks begin to seep back to introspective calmness with White as Snow. "If only a heart could be as white as snow" harkens back to a previous lyric, "once I knew there was a love divine." The uncertainty of life itself is reason to look for purity of the heart. In Breathe, the artist has found grace through the sound of music.

As the collection comes to a close we are not allowed to leave in comfort. Cedars of Lebanon awakes us to realize the difficulty of life as it is. "Child drinking dirty water from the river bank" does not let us "breathe" or accept that we are as "white as snow" or that being born is easy or equal for all.

In true Bono/U2 form this story is not over. There is no easily defined "line on the horizon." Time is not linear. The truth is out there somewhere between then and when. U2 has more to say. There is more to come.

Time: The Aesthetic of Time

A friend brought me to a talk recently about the Piraha tribe of the Amazon Jungle. The talk was really about languages. It was delivered by Daniel Everett as a part of the Longnow series of talks. Everett has been studying the tribe and their language and customs for over thirty years. What struck me as really interesting about the tribe (according to Everett's report) was their lack of a linear concept of time. They have no past and future beyond yesterday and tomorrow or "closer to now" and "farther from now." Their language has no term for last year etc., just "far from now." Similarly they deal with directions relative to the river, not left or right, but up river or down river. They seem to be grounded in the real, the now. Their directions are relative to an absolute, the river, and their concept of time is guided by that which is real, the now.

In the media aesthetics concepts we discuss in class we deal with time. In the realm of time and in particular when dealing with Zettl's Sight Sound Motion textbook, three parts of time are identified. The three are objective, subjective and biological. Objective is the time we know in Western culture as clock time. Subjective time is what we can identify as "felt" time and biological time is time associated with the "body clock." The two most relevant are objective and subjective. Objective or clock time is the time we run our lives by and gives us some order.

Subjective time is the time we actually live in. The present is where we live. It is what we feel. Eckhart Tolle talks about the now. This is the same thing as subjective time. Subjective time is our living in the moment. It is the only time we have really. Yes, we talk about the past and future, we remember the past and we dream of the future but all of this is done in the present. Fundamentally, there is no other time than the present. It is all that exists. The past is in our heads and the future is too, but the present is all around us. It is.

This talk and these concepts of time made we wonder about a world without linear time. Would it be complete mayhem or would it be tranquility? Would we humans live together in harmony because there was nothing to argue or fight for? Or would we kill each other daily because there is no tomorrow, no real consequences? If we see no tomorrow after tomorrow then why worry about repercussions? On the other hand if there is no tomorrow why bother killing or fighting today?

If there was only today how would we live? How should we live?

There is only today/now.