Updated with direct links and info.
U2 is home in Dublin for three shows, and you know I’d love to be there in person. But I’m not — so many thanks to Pat McGrath of RTÉ (Raidió TeilifÃs Éireann — Radio Television of Ireland) for letting me be there in voice and in spirit, by including me in a segment about U2 on the Morning Ireland radio show aired Friday morning, July 24. The focus of the segment is joy in U2’s music, and Pat found me through this essay on the joy in U2’s live performance of the song “Elevation” at Slane Castle in 2001.
The segment includes excerpts of my interview as well as interview/music clips from U2. It’s a little over 5 minutes. Give it a listen here, or at the Morning Ireland archives.
If you’re at a U2 show this weekend — or wherever you are — I wish you joy. Ná bog ar an gcaoi a bhfuil eagla ort; bog faoi anáil an ghrá, bog faoi anáil an lúcháir. (Do not move the way fear makes you move; move the way love makes you move, move the way joy makes you move.)
You rock! Pat made an excellent choice in picking you to talk about them.
I think you should at least get a back stage pass for such an eloquent insight into that experience.
And I love the last thought here.
Nicola is right, it does sound like you’re all in the same room.
It must be awesome to have been working with someone for more than 25 years. The pro experience. And friendship.
I enjoyed reading your “Elevation” essay. The power of music: to make us fly, to make us feel, to remind us we are large inside.
Music really does make me remember that I am bigger than the everyday moments of my life. Don’t get me wrong, I love my life — it’s just that there is more to it than what “happens” in it, no? All those dreams, feelings, fears, all those stories that come to me, the way that sometimes only dancing will do — music touches all those parts of me and brings me to understandings of myself that I’m not sure I would have otherwise.