Author: Kelley

Putting on my interviewing hat

As many of you know, I’m a staff writer for @U2, the #1 U2 fan website in the world. I’m there because I’m a stone U2 fan, and because of how much I enjoy working with @U2 founder and editor Matt McGee. He’s built a great site and runs a great team of people who keep it going.

And now Matt’s published his first book — U2 – A Diary. It’s a comprehensive history of the band in diary format, interspersed with stories, rare photos, and interesting factoids. And it’s not just a collection of details — Matt’s a journalist by training, and he’s always looking for the connections, for the way that events have shaped the overall story of U2. He’s done a fantastic job, and I believe the book will become a must-have for every serious fan, and a cool-to-have for anyone who’s interested in how four creative people manage their relationships and make their music for more than 30 years.

And it’s a very 21st-century book in a particular way — Matt established a website for the book while he was researching and writing, and encouraged fans to participate by helping ferret out details. He’s already generated tons of excitement in the U2 fan community just by giving people a window into the process.

We’re all totally jazzed about it over at @U2, and I’ve just done an interview with Matt in which he shares many stories of how the book came together. In interviews and in person, Matt is real and funny and very self-effacing (the staff had to pretty much bully him into letting us support the book on the site, but hey, we’re just that ornery so it all worked out). Enjoy the interview, and do feel free to buy the book (grin).

And while you’re over at @U2, let me also point you to an interview I did with Michka Assayas (whose book I excerpted in yesterday’s post). He’s a great interview subject, smart and curious and very accessible. (Michka, if you happen to be googling yourself and end up here, do you remember this interview? I enjoyed our conversation very much, and it’s fun to revisit it today.)

I like doing these kinds of interviews. I spend a lot of time crafting the questions, looking for a tone and approach that I hope will connect with the subject, based on what I know (or perceive) about them. You’ll see a tone difference in the questions in these two interviews, but also, I hope, a consistency of focus. I’m interested in people’s process and their experiences of being creative, and I try to make my questions potentially expansive, the kind that give people the chance to talk about the truth of their feelings if they wish to. It’s a real joy for me when people take the questions seriously, and respond as thoughtfully as Michka and Matt. I hope you’ll enjoy reading them.

And now I am off to the rest of my day, ending with salad and spaghetti and alcohol and, I very much hope, Barack Obama’s acceptance speech. I think I may burst into tears at that point, but it’s okay, Nicola is used to it.

A lovely day to you all.

Please vote!

I voted last week, thanks to the mail-in ballot system here.

Filling out the ballot felt… well, historic. Pretty amazing. And for the first time in a long time, I feel hope for the outcome instead of dread.

Here in Washington, we are also voting whether to allow doctors to prescribe lethal drug doses for terminally ill people who want to die; we are choosing a governor and a couple other state executives, as well as judges and representatives; and we’re talking about transportation, traffic congestion and parks.

Have you voted? How do you feel? And what other things is your community deciding today?

The Great Conversation

I’m a communicator. I’m a writer and a professional facilitator, and I like to talk — to share stories, ideas, feelings, beliefs. I like to listen, and learn, and I like to understand. Much of the joy or healing or growth in my life comes through conversation.

And so this election season has been deeply frightening to me because so many of us have stopped talking to each other. We’ve divided into our issue groups and our party affiliations, raised our voices at each other in outrage, called each other names, demonized each other. And here we all are, hundreds of millions of us, looking at each other across enormous gaps of values and beliefs about what is good for us and for the United States of America.

The United States of America.

Nicola and I talk about how people can surprise each other sometimes. I think one of the things that has often surprised her is my absolute passion — my brand of patriotism — for the founding principles of the United States of America. The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights are brilliant as documents and as foundations of government.

I love these documents. I love what they mean and what they promise. They are living ideas for me, and they literally move me to tears. Through these tears, I ask that if you’ve never read them, please please do. Because they are the work of people who overcame deep differences, competing needs, and radically different beliefs to unite. To come together as a nation. To frame a better government than any they had known before. And because of who I am, I look at these documents and I see the United States of America as a great ongoing conversation.

It is in this conversation that we as a nation expose and then explore our differences, and ultimately take action. I believe that the worst parts of our history as a nation come straight from the refusal to listen; and the best parts come from the willingness of people to keep talking, even when it’s hard.

The bedrock of that conversation is our vote.

Please — even if you feel shouted down, marginalized beyond repair, oppressed, ignored, angry, aghast at the drift and discord and divisions that have arisen between us all, please do not leave the conversation. Because if enough of us do stop talking to each other, we will never, never understand. We cannot build bridges through silence. And refusing to vote is the first step to the ringing silence that breaks even the best of ideas and the best of nations.

Please vote. And regardless of the outcome, please, let’s all keep talking to each other.

The story below is long, but I offer it in the spirit of conversation. It’s from the book Bono: In Conversation with Mischka Assayas.

Bono: Harry Belafonte is one of my great heroes… He told me this story about Bobby Kennedy.
 
Harry remembered a meeting with Martin Luther King when the civil rights movement had hit a wall in the early sixties: [impersonating croaky voice of Belafonte] “I tell you, it was a depressing moment when Bobby Kennedy was made attorney general. It was a very bad day for the civil rights movement.”
 
And I said, “Why was that?”
 
Harry said: “Oh, you see, you forget. Bobby Kennedy was Irish. Those Irish were real racists, they didn’t like the black man. They were just one step above the black man on the social ladder, and they made us feel it. They were all the police, they were the people who broke our balls on a daily basis. Bobby at that time was famously not interested in the Civil Rights Movement…. We knew we were in deep trouble. We were crestfallen, in despair, talking to Martin, moaning and groaning about the turn of events when Dr. King slammed his hand down and ordered us to stop the bitchin’: ‘Enough of this!’ he said. ‘Is there nobody here who’s got something good to say about Bobby Kennedy?’
 
“We said, ‘Martin, that’s what we’re telling ya! There is no one… There is nothing good to say about him. The guy’s an Irish Catholic conservative bad ass, he’s bad news….’
 
“To which Martin replied: ‘Well, then, let’s call this meeting to a close. We will re-adjourn when somebody has found one redeeming thing to say about Bobby Kennedy, because that, my friends, is the door through which our movement will pass.'”
 
… that was a great lesson for me, because what Dr. King was saying was: Don’t respond to caricature — the Left, the Right, the Progressives, the Reactionary. Don’t take people on rumor. Find the light in them, because that will further your cause.
 
— from Bono: In Conversation with Mischka Assayas

 
I have been angry and I have been afraid. But today I am looking for the light, and I hope you will too.

This post is in support of Blog the Vote. Please visit the link to read other folks’ powerful stories and passionate thoughts about voting.

Shake it or break it

Very recently, MTV finally — wait for it — launched a music video website. I swear. It’s such a delight to find out they still actually care about music videos and not just Young People’s Reality (as if) or whatever it is they’re doing over there these days.

The site content is still spotty — some artists go deep, and some aren’t represented at all, which I assume is a matter of rights negotiations. But there is certainly enough to be starting with, and it’s good quality. And it means you’ll probably be getting more music videos for a while (grin) — I already have my eye on a few things (Frankie! Christopher Walken dancing! U2 meets the Village People…)

I saw my first music video in 1983 on a network show called “Friday Night Videos.” No one I knew had cable TV then, so I’d never seen MTV. The first video on the show was “Billie Jean” and I thought it was amazing.

For those of you who have never lacked your MTV, videos were different back in the day. The production values were often minimal, the story lines random, and the musicians uncomfortable. No one really did “live” videos where they just played the music — it was all atmosphere and meaning and moody glances and suchlike. But things improved. By the time the song below came along, videos were more expensive, expansive, and coherent — and much much more about the music.

Yay! Just in time for the B-52’s.

Edited to add: I’ve just been informed that the MTV videos won’t play outside of the US. Controlling bastards. Here’s a YouTube version that will work.

Globalism, people!

I cannot listen to that song without feeling good. And it reminds me so much of things I loved about the South. I have no desire to ever live there again, but the South is in my DNA. There are things I do and believe that are the direct result of growing up there, and there are moments, images, bits of my childhood culture, that I still miss piercingly sometimes. And so I love heading down the Atlanta highway with the B-52’s under a Southern sky and feeling like I get it. Like I belong.

And here’s another treat for you, since there’s hardly ever such a thing as too much good music in the world. Thanks to Duncan for turning me onto Big Mama. And why is a South Korean group called Big Mama? Go find out here… and then send them a psychic blast of You go, girls if you are so inclined. I certainly am.

Like it? Go on over to Duncan’s place for more.

A liberal rant for a Saturday

Good morning, people of the world.

Today I was going to post a cheerful music video (details withheld to prolong the suspense for the next post)… but I just got off the phone with my friend Mark, who pointed me to this little story about his special experience with political campaigns this week.

Warning: it’s totally not non-partisan, and if you are sensitive to criticisms of John McCain you may wish to avoid it. Although if you are a McCain/Palin supporter and can persuade yourself to read beyond the tone of Mark’s post for the factual content, it would interest me to know your response.

Go read. Have fun. Music later. Tea now. Happy Saturday.

Friday pint

Every Friday I transfer posts here from the Virtual Pint Archives.

I am feeling close to human again. This is a nasty virus, my advice boils down to “don’t get it,” especially if you are at a low emotional ebb, although that’s always my most physically vulnerable time as well. And honestly, I exhausted myself over the summer and have been getting by on sheer stubbornness for a while. I’m good at gutting things out, but there’s always a hard crash at the end. I just didn’t think it would last this long.

Blah blah. Enough about that. I’m back to drinking in the real world and the virtual one as well. Here’s three pints for you.

Enjoy your Friday.

The blue people made me see red today

I am still feeling sick, although better than I was — which makes this the delicate time when I should be making myself rest so that I don’t relapse. Instead, I am writing angry emails to the Washington State Obama/Biden campaign, because they have seriously pissed me off.

Here’s the email they sent me today. Maybe everyone on the national Obama mailing list got one, who knows? And maybe everyone else thought it was just fine. I did not.

Kelley —
 
[…]
 
This is the last week before Election Day, November 4th, and we’re executing the largest get out the vote (GOTV) effort in Washington’s history. We’ve filled 82 percent of our GOTV shifts, but we have to fill every last slot this week.
 
The conversations you have with friends, family, and voters across Washington right now will make a real difference in whether they stay home or make their voices heard on November 4th.
 
[…]
 
We have to make sure every voter hears about the kind of change Barack and other Democrats will deliver for Washington families. What we do or don’t do in the next six days will decide the outcome of this race.
 
Imagine how you’ll feel if you wake up on November 5th — facing four more years of the same Bush-McCain economic policies — and realize that you didn’t do all you could to make sure Barack Obama is the next president.
 
I know that’s not a feeling I could live with.
 
Volunteer to get out the vote between now and Election Day and win this election for Barack and Democrats up and down the ticket.
 
— from an email I received from the Washington Campaign for Change. Message paid for by Obama For America.

Here is the email I sent back.

I’m on your mailing list because I’m a Washington Democrat. And as a supporter of Barack Obama, I have to tell you how angry this email made me. You have absolutely no right to lecture me about the moral imperative of “doing everything I can do to help Barack” so that I don’t have to “live with the feeling” of being responsible for his losing the election.
 
How dare you?
 
My only obligation as a citizen is to vote my conscience. If I don’t vote, fine, call me names. But the pomposity and paternalism of this email enrages me. You are not the keeper of my conscience. And if this message truly reflects Barack Obama’s feelings — if he feels that he has the right to decide when I’ve “done enough” for him — then he’s not who I thought he was, and his presidency doesn’t offer the promise of change that I thought it did.
 
I’m deeply offended by this message. Whether it comes from the state level of the campaign, or from the national level, shame on all of you for treating Washington Democrats with so little respect.
 
— My email to the Washington Campaign for Change

I’ll be doing a thoughtful, rational, nonpartisan and encouraging post on November 3, in support of Blog the Vote. I love my country and I think it’s in desperate need of reconnection and healing, and I think we are capable of making it happen. I believe it. But for right now, let me just say that I loathe and detest presidential politics, and I cannot wait for this fucking election to be over.

It grows back

I’ve had some disappointment this week, and have been wrestling with some choices about which I am highly ambivalent. The details aren’t important: we all have disappointments and unhappy choices. What I think is important is how we respond.

I told Nicola last night that I was a little worried that if I posted this cartoon — which I’ve had on my wall for years now — people would think I was depressed, suicidal, or bitter-and-twistedly out somewhere kicking down little kids’ sand castles. Me, I’m just here smiling — I think the cartoon is wicked funny and absolutely true.

Sometimes things don’t work out the way I want them too. And for whatever reason, apart from finding it disappointing or scary or frustrating or threatening or meh, no big deal, I also often find it humbling in a way that I’m not sure I can articulate well. Well, okay, yes I can. It’s wounded pride, and it comes from the cultural notion that if we are good enough, strong enough, just work hard enough, we get what we aim for. So if we dream beyond our reach we somehow deserve to fail — we’ve “got above ourselves” and shouldn’t be surprised when the axe falls. For whatever reason, we’ve taken the truth of the matter — sometimes we don’t get what we strive for — and turned it into a personal cause-and-effect failure of character. Hey, you, yeah, the Eskridge kid over in the corner, what the fuck were you thinking? Go sit down.

And the tricky thing is, of course it’s often about personal failure. And there’s also the randomness of the world, the needs and fears and dreams of other people that bang into ours, the Great Whatever that is part of the story of why things don’t always work.

Sometimes it’s hard to parse. And so I’ve decided not to. It only turns into the blame game or the I-am-not-deserving game or, gods help us, the it’s-not-fair game. I’ve been to all those places, and I don’t even like the t-shirts. And I don’t want to sit down.

My dreams and my skills either match, or they don’t. I can walk away, or I can get more skills. If I get more skills, they might still not be enough. So it goes, brothers and sisters, so it goes. We don’t know what will happen. But until the axe falls for real, I’ll be back with my dreams, occasionally getting my pride chopped off.

Because it’s only pride. It grows back.