Promenade

The Unforgettable Fire is a disarming U2 album. Perhaps one of the most experimental and 'incomplete', but such beautiful sketches! Indeed, 'watercolour' is the best way to describe the album.


One of my favourite songs is 'Promenade', not at all a well-known U2 song, but they really sound like Coldplay here. I think it would've made a great quiet concert piece, and it sounds very much in the vein of great songs like 'Running to Stand Still'.

Proof that U2 are masters both of loud stadium rockers and quiet, contemplative epic pieces.


Oh, tell me, Cherry you dance with me
Turn me around tonight
Up through the spiral staircase to the higher ground.
Slide show, seaside town.
Coca-cola, football radio, radio, radio, radio, radio, radio.



(It is now 2.20 a.m. in Washington, D.C.)

(There is no) Private Space

Beg your pardon, I stumbled in
Past the "No trespassin' "
Sign out front.
What were you trying to protect? This run-down
Shack you defend
With an idea on rusted steel;
What you lack you pretend
Some distance will heal.
Get real.

As the crow flies it
Throws its glance
On grumpy hills and strolling fields,
On dotlike warriors raising shields
To protect their private space.
Oh you foolish human race!
You do not see the skies
And seas are everywhere blue;
There are no lines across
The surface of your lands.

With three nimble hops
It peered below, calling
From the rooftop, cipher in tow
And flew into the captain's hands.


* * *


(8.38 a.m., 10 June; on the mini bus to Hawaiian Earth Products.)