Angry Young Men

I was watching an interview with David Bowie (he's surprisingly articulate) he mentioned that when he was first starting out, he would have done most anything to get his message heard. He talks about how, when one is young, there is no future and that the message is everything, that you have something to say and you must say it.

It got me thinking about passion and a young man's right to be outraged at what he sees in the world. (Young woman's right, too!) As a teen, I was very outraged, political, idealistic and determined to talk about it. Most of the intelligent people that I have known go through a period of intense anger about the state of the world and strive to voice this outrage. Most of them try politics, which quickly deflates their passion into helpless, silent, frustration.

I grew up in the "cynical" seventies and my first political memory was of Nixon's resignation. It is hard for some people to understand what it was to be angry and outraged in those times. The movement to change anything was over and most of the kids I knew only wanted to party. Disco was replacing interesting rock, folk was for old fogies and anger was for people who couldn't get their coke connection. It was a desert time, a time when speaking up made you a freak. Well, most of my friends were freaks, but the new rage then was gay rights. Most of the political kids were fighting desperately for gay rights; one of my best friends had been dismissed as head boy when they found out he was gay. Some people assumed that I was gay because I was interested in people who were fighting for something--anything. To stand up and speak out was, to me, the reason to be there. To find solutions was a reason to read. To fight to the death was a reason to group together. But it was fighting a great gray cloud where our teachers told us that if we were not cynical we were fools.

How sad to ask a young person to be cynical. That is like asking a healthy person to act like they are sick. When I found myself growing cynical a few years later, I realized that I hated myself for it and accepted the consequences of refusing to "grow up" in that way. But David Bowie also said that it's too easy to be nihilistic. It's much more difficult to promote the good than it is to dismiss all the bad. I have always believed in finding solutions, not in wailing about the failure of mankind to overcome its self-destructive nature.

In the midst of the bleak party-party atmosphere, I found U2. At that point, they were a Christian band, and their fans were religious. I tried to be Christian, seriously Christian: carrying a bible, trying to believe, going to lay witness meetings, going to different churches. That died when I was fourteen. Although I knew that I could not believe as much as I might like to, I could not dismiss the religious, for I had known them to catch fire.

When I was down and out in LA and working two jobs, I used to take a week off every six months and make all my clothes. I find sewing boring as all get out, so I used to watch TV while running the sewing machine. At that time MTV had just come out and I found that watching music videos was about the right speed. In the midst of all the slick videos this band appeared on this video. I can still remember being absolutely awestruck. I remember the one thought I had, that someone had captured, on film, religious rapture. I realized that the boys in this band were so different from anyone else out there singing, that this was a band that could speak to me. I want to set the stage for this video because this is one of the only images I have seen in rock where a young man loses himself completely and remembers that he is a servant of god. I use religious terms here because it is appropriate. There are so few images of people who are overcome by joy, this is one of the best.



U2's Gloria

To my dismay, when I tried to show this to other people, they completely missed it. All they saw was a dorky group of rock musicians. I talked with a few who loved U2 and they were usually Christians.

It is hard to find words of what this band MEANT. They were down and out in Dublin, one of the worst cities in Europe, two of the boys had lost their mothers when teens, Ireland was still depressed and no one with any talent stayed there, and they had a long history of oppression and war. But this band was totally against war of any kind. They resented it when they came to the US and IRA sympathizers wanted to talk to them. They knew what it was to be in the middle of a war and they were fighting for peace as well as revealing their souls.

In this next video, the very first part of it, shows what I would enshrine as the "angry young men" or the heart of a youth who is trying to understand and protest what they see around them. This rallying cry I think is one of the best of any generation. There are many videos of this opening for Electric Co and most of the time Bono changes the lyrics slightly. But I think this video shows what I mean when Bono cries: "well I can't see why or what for! What for! What for!"

Cry/Electric Co

I am not a good fan. I don't fall in love with rock idols or movie stars. That's just stupid. Well, I think it is. So, you must excuse my going on about U2. I hate what they became later. I think their politics took a wrong turn, but I'm glad that they continued to try to fight. I like what they say later about being a band and how it was about the band and about the music. They are also articulate men. But I feel that I owe them a dept for being a voice in the desert of my own youth.

This last video I believe expresses the very best there is in a young man. It was made when U2 got popular and was on the verge of super-stardom. They still retain the edge that they had (pardon the pun) but the juxtaposition of the young boy's awe over the circus performers and Bono's desperate outrage is just wonderful. What I love most about this video is that they did not make it into a love song, but continued to show a greater love, a love of life.



Two Hearts Beat as One

U2's first three albums are amazing. The October album continues to make me shudder with the feeling of standing up and fighting. The War album was already patchy and later albums would grow in different directions, different feelings.

In the 60's most of the rock stars and folk singers were protesting generations of abuse and cruelty. But what I continue to find amazing about U2 is that film was able to capture, in Bono, no matter how dorky they all were, his shining fire. Sometimes he was just crazy, but in some films, he is sublime. Contrasted with the Edge concentrating so fiercely on his music, the band comes across as HUMAN, or with soul, with mind, with spirit as well as the body. They show us in some of these videos, what it looks like to be human, to be on fire, to be outraged. While the earlier singers sang about it, this band often looks as well as sounds that force.

What this band also showed, which is seen so very rarely, is that there is a force in the three great mono-theist religions that is so often abused. What U2 demonstrates here is "jihad" a word often very abused, but simply means "enthusiastic love of god" that goes out in this force for good, to try to DO something about the world. The force of the young, the voice, the light, the spirit of outrage, but also of exuberant wonder. Later, we learn compassion and tolerance. But let us celebrate, let us stand up with the spirit of Bono and U2, let us get up and find that the door to god stands open!

blessed be