Life is art, and art is life, and both are full of pain sometimes. While my computer was dysfunctional I did a lot of reading, and was really haunted by this poem. It is not pleasant, and there is a word generally considered obscene in it, so if you are easily offended or horrified, please don't read any further.
While the Feelings thread can by light and fun, I think one of its important underlying purposes is to occasionally expose people to the horrible things that are going on in the world, so that perhaps we can affect change. We live in great freedom and privilege, while parts of the planet are torn by horrendous conflict.
This poem is by Bono Hewson of the Irish band U2. On their last tour they spent a lot of time using giant video screens and all the technology of the great, instant communication age we are entering to remind their followers of the uglier side of life we don't often see, but which is all around us. Their goal is that more of us will live in peace, and have the luxury of feeling our feelings and living good, long, productive lives.
Bono's idea was to read it onstage between songs, with maybe just a drum in the background. It is very difficult for the momentum of a rock concert to recover from such a performance, and this was a problem U2 often had to deal with, as their goal of exposing their audience to reality overwhelmed their desire to entertain them.
I have followed this band avidly since the early 80's, before they were even famous, because I love their energy and their songs, and want to support the power that music can have on society. They are environmentalists as well, active in the anti-nuclear movement, and members of Greenpeace. As a woman who loves words, I have to say I think Bono is one of the greatest lyricists writing in English today.
U2 does things this way because they identify themselves as a Christian rock and roll band, and believe that it is their responsibility to do good in the world. This is a poem about the situation in Bosnia, right in Europe, a war so confusing and close to the veneer of civilization that we have mostly just turned our heads away. It is found in the book "U2 at the End of the World", by Bill Flanagan.
I read a book once, called "In Cold Blood"
About a murder in the neighborhood
Pages of facts did me no good
I read it like a blind man, in cold blood
So the story of a three-year-old child
Raped by soldiers though she'd already died
Made the mother watch as they fucked her in the mud
I'm reading the story now in cold blood
More now coming off the wire
City surrounded, funeral pyre
Life is cheaper than talking about it
People choke on their politician's vomit
On cable television I saw a woman weep
Live by satellite from a flood-ridden street
boy mistaken for a wastepaper bin
Body that a child used to live in
I saw plastic explosives and an alarm clock
And the wrong men sitting in the dock
Karma is a word I never understood
How God could take a four-year-old in cold blood
I live by a beach but if feels like New York
I hear about ten murders before I get to work
What's it going to be, Lord, fire or flood
An act of mercy or in cold blood?
Bono Hewson, U2 |
