Read Bono for Free Online Page B

That’s the thing that intellectuals don’t like. Think of the music of the seventies. It’s become a kind of folk music now. The music in the seventies that lasted was a lot of the pop and the dance and disco music. And the supposed serious music of the seventies, fusion, progressive rock, et cetera, played by so-called great musicians, has dated so badly. You are right, Michka. The soul will be described, but God might not use the people that you expect.
    Where does it come from? Do you start hearing a melody?
    Yeah, I would hear some melodies in my head. I have no idea where they come from.
    With the words?
    Sometimes melodies, and sometimes words . . . [gets up and comes back with a tiny sheet of yellow paper from a Post-it pad on his desk]
    What’s this? Is it something that you’ve just written down?
    I’m trying to find a recent example. This is the middle of last night. Apropos of nothing. [reads] If your heart was hard, that would be better/ You could only break it once or twice/After that it would be rid ofblood and you could let it turn to ice . . . I don’t know. [makes a dubious face]
    Not bad . . .
    Yes . . . Whether they’re dreams or overheard conversations, I don’t know.
    [laughs]
    I know what you’re saying.
    You’ve had that.
    Yes, I’ve had that experience, in a way. Sometimes I see pictures that are greater than any pictures I have ever seen.
    But you can’t get them out.
    No, because I’m not a painter, and that makes me very frustrated.
    That’s how I feel with melodies.
    But, melodies, you do hear them, and you do have the ability to reproduce them.
    Yes, it’s just that I can’t get them out, you see? Words, you can write down, but melodies are difficult because you compromise them with chords.
    Yes, but you have Edge, you have the band.
    Yes, but by the time I get to the band, they might have gone. [stirs his spoon inside his cup of tea] Strange . . . I haven’t done that for years.
    What?
    I’ve put sugar in my tea. I don’t take sugar. We keep on talking about the past, next thing I’m back there. Where were we? Oh yeah . . . melodies, I do have an ear for them. It’s like spotting a good idea, because a great idea has a lot in common with a great melody: certain inevitability, certain clarity, a kind of instant memorability. It can be philosophical or commercial, or a political idea, like Drop the Debt. As I told you before, I do think of myself as a salesman of melodies and ideas. I come from a long line of salespeople on my mother’s side.
    That’s what my relatives did, going back a long way on my father’s side. They sold clothes.
    Funny. That’s the rag trade, right? That’s the Jewish side. Great salespeople, the Jews . . . Someone suggested to me that my mother’s side of the family may have been Jewish. Rankin is a Jewish name. A member of the family came up with some interesting stuff researching the name.
    I have to tell you this. I saw this one picture of you from when you were younger, and I was completely flabbergasted because you looked like my father.
    All my mother’s side of the family have that taxi-driver-from-Tel-Aviv look.
    Yes, the dark hair, or something. The first time I saw you, there was something familiar about you, like: “I’ve met this person before . . .”
    You must have taken one of our cabs.
    Yeah, and someone in my family sold you a pair of boots. Do you believe there’s such a thing as folk memory?
    Maybe there is sort of a DNA pool. You inherit a cough or a bad back from your father or grandfather, maybe other cultural preferences, interests. Though I haven’t found myself studying the Kabbalah just yet. That said, I can lose myself in the Scriptures . . . and have well-known messianic tendencies. [laughs] It’s true I have an interest in most