Is part of the attraction that you want to be destroyed?
I’m the spirit on the water, you’re the formless void
This lead couplet is signifying two Bible verses, the lead being Genesis 1:2: "And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." Now because of the first line in the couplet, this is pointing at another verse, Isaiah 51:9-10: "Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the LORD; awake, as in the ancient days, in the generations of old. Art thou not it that hath cut Rahab, and wounded the dragon? Was it not you who dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep, who made the depths of the sea a way for the redeemed to pass over?” -Rahab here represented Egypt, but Bono's deliberate coupling here invokes a feminine of the leviathan still reflected slightly in Jewish tradition, a vestigial throwback past Genesis that cast light on prior origin myths, for example the Babylonian god Marduk slaying the sea serpent Tiamat (representing ending chaos with order) to form all of creation, here analyzed culturally/agriculturally. The only verse that might juxtapose with this from the Genesis creation record (it doesn't involve any slaying) is Genesis 1:2. (Bono's deliberately combined them here.) The verb "moved" is actually a mistranslation of the Hebrew "flutter" or "shake", the action of a bird shuddering her wings while brooding a nest to maintain a perfect temperature for her unhatched eggs, used as the first action in making creation.
This couplet mirrors the analogy of "Hand of God" on CARNAGE (which Nick Cave produced after I sent the letter to Martin Gore December 2020, and archived the same letter for Nick Cave's personal benefit because the letter was created to intercept the feedback loop with Nick Cave's L.I.T.A.N.I.E.S, (Nick was responsible for penning the lyrics) by sending/online archiving the letter and sending Nick Cave the link the day the album was released) even capturing the true analogy of the river, as explained (in the letter, the intro, the book and right below). While the phrase puts it on the exact same plane as CARNAGE, the distinction is and remains what Bono has always done for nearly thirty years, which is that he was the one who isolated me as object in the real world by describing me in terms of my real existing circumstance, which just graduated to naming me by my real name in this context. Which is a very big deal, because it's considered to be fully deliberate, since Bono got my book at the half draft mark in 2011; (-which seems quite signified by Bono juxtaposing "Book of Your Heart" (the last line of the lyrics is wrong, it's "it's not so easy") on Songs of Experience).
So Bono knows Rahab is my first name, and I made the mistake of telling him this in the book based on what my dad had told me (p. 427, but the passage starts on p. 424, and was when I first realized what the river arch-type might mean in "Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses", and came up with the analogy of it meaning the universal unconscious (it is also the first of Bono's songs I talk about, after the couplet in "The Fly"):
“Rahab literally meant “wide”. But its first use in Jewish tradition is as the name for the wild untamed sea. In taming the sea serpent “Rahab”, God tamed the waters in Genesis. It was an allusion to taming Chaos. When her father first told her what her name meant, he told her it meant chaos. But it was years before she learned the full meaning that had to do with her name, and her analogy of the universal unconscious sea and her being in it in a way that reached others developed over time. It began here though, in recognition of this song. It stood to reason if this analogy she was identifying with “Wild Horses” was in any way real and pertinent, Bono was going to bring out this association between her and the water; the emphasis should be strong.”
In Arabic Rahab means "wide" like the horizon. (I may have been right about the Jewish tradition but it was never meant in a good way. Such is my pretension that I may be able to successfully invert formerly bad meanings in the name of integration, but it's a dangerous place to play, maybe too much, as the couplet says.) The other thing about Bono speaking as God is that with the second biblical reference he uses to do this in this song he is speaking as Jesus Himself. In between (like in the week before this song was released) -I realized that was what Bono was doing (on purpose) with the last U2 song that's in the book "Window in the Skies". (A big time #fixedit moment, which "just happened" to line up with this next, giant, #FIXEDIT moment, in the same vein.) I was just too afraid to register it for what it was then, though of course I was registering its meaning at the time. But that's not the resurrection I thought it was referencing, exactly, as in the big one. I was regarding it as a figure of speech.
In the context of the book (and the letter too), there's more to the couplet, because this was exactly the attraction. It was the willingness to abnegate one's self completely and disappear if the situation was wrong, and rest the prospect of personal restoration or personal resurrection solely on God's will, and having Christ appear in the vacuum.
I was looking for a rhyme in time and space and you broke me -the original letter explains that Bono broke me, not the other way 'round, but I'm not including any of this in the revised version. It was a little more complicated than that because I abnegated him first, before he abnegated me, not the other way 'round, so this is true, by half. Doesn't fit the context Bono ascribes to the song with him speaking as God. Does happen to fit the context personally if he's speaking as himself and deliberately naming me as the song's object, using both my real name in a veiled Bible verse allusion, and deliberately re-juxtaposing the situation exactly as I myself did in my own book, inverting it from a negative connotation to a positive, and in addition, again referring to what I wrote to him in the book (that is a serious, serious divergence on standard Christian theological thought), as follows:
It was Adam not Eve who threw God out of the garden you wrote me
“Part of the conceptualizing included that Eden was not the true inception of Original Sin, nor was a woman responsible. The schism had occurred before and was what had brought about Creation and the creation of man, as a correction. Her father provided a substantial verse by verse analysis to show that things were already contrary and Adam was already acting contrary to God’s will before Eve was tempted by the serpent, who was already present in the garden. Why had Adam insisted that he could find a partner among animals rather than following God’s guidance? Why was an exercise of naming all the animals to reach the conclusion that none was suitable even necessary?” -On p. 79 of the book Bono received from me 2011.
This is also the part that Bono in the quote (where he talks about what he's doing with the song) explicitly says he's culpable for, namely "it was me not Eve who got us thrown out of the Eden". If you use his statement as an overlay of the lyric, he's in the context of Adam referring to an Eve as object with this song. Let's just combine the two for a second, and I'll tell you about how I first unnofficially became an investigative reporter and published my first work online. My fifth article was a very long winded way of saying (in the context that lay between him and me that I wouldn't talk about (the book does)), Bono literally threw God out of the Garden. That is why it's titled, "How U2's 2017 Joshua Tree Tour Acclimates American Theocratic Fascism". How do you do that? You susbstitute America in the feminine instead of your professed feminine Holy Spirit, turning your spiritual concert experience into the Church of America instead of a Church. It's just that the audience was unaware of his professed belief by being Biblically ignorant and unaware what he's been hawking all these years. Oh and, there was that Bank of Amerca 2008 financial crash philanthrowash he did using his feminine "mystery" he rendered "Invisible" as well, -right after that f***ing settlement. Piss and vinegar I am, and when I dish out piss and vinegar, I get it right back.
What are you ready to give up? -we gave up each other, but Billy was the one to do so first. (Letter records this.) Again since these are the sections of the letter I'm revising out, you're just going to have to take my word on this. This is the perspective in which how this all transpired was really no one's fault. As I put it in the original letter (omitted in editorial), "It is something I would have had to let go of and had burned out of me 100% to see." -p. 44
When you’re climbing from the wreckage of a burned out star
-Again, unfortunately, this is part of the letter I'm leavling out, but for those aware of it, p. 21, "And it forced me through a full abnegation that felt like a comet’s disintegration hitting the atmosphere for a full five days." (Also I made the typo mistake that this was Spring Break when it had to have been Thanksgiving Break (November). I didn't mention that when I went to pick up my children, (they'd been away for the five days when this happened), -my daughter had inexplicably drawn a blazing comet in chalk on the cement patio deck.) And, like I said, "That sense of devastation made a momentary false appearance inside “California” on Songs of Innocence. (-Oops. -And there we have it. Santa Barbara! This is heading for Santa Barbara. - Oh irony.)
It's just your light gets dimmer if you have to stay In your bedroom
In a mirror, Watching yourself cry like a baby
California, blood orange sunset brings you to your knees
I've seen for myself There's no end to grief That's how I know"
Oh yes and, Bono's been using star as a symbol for his feminine object ever since "The Fly" and "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me", the progression of which in terms of a symbol (and where he went with it after he met me), is all in the book.
But deep down you know
The smooth will make excuses for the rough
You know it shouldn’t be this tough -This still causes a measure of fury. If what was needful was confirmation for the sake of evidence, then who's at fault, given Bono's responsible for twenty-one years of deliberate silent omission where he hid everything, making it too unsafe to articulate? Which caused all of the sagotage in between all those years? By the looks of it he does want this articulated in a public way (no different than pretending he can have it both ways when he's the obstruction, a double standard he's not conscious of):
Tell the oceans, tell the sun
Tell the weatherman, tell everyone - So if I go out on a limb now, individually by myself with no supporting evidence (which just by providing simple verbal confirmation Bono could provide at any time), and he continues to maintain his silence of omission, that's the equivalent of throwing me to the proverbial wolves. It's the same as willingly allowing me to get pilloried as being delusional in a public context (and even interpersonally by my own family members), when it's not true. Is that what he's still willing to do to me, if I refuse to keep internalizing this in the prison he's consequentially made of my own mind for twenty-one years? Only time will tell.
Then we get the verse on the economy, with Bono speaking again as God (namely Jesus), saying if you wanted to see Jesus on this earth actually you could, and the way liberate Him is to serve the poor: If you wanted you could see me, when you serve the poor, you free me. This is based on Christ’s parable of The Sheep and the Goats, Matthew 25:31-46, so this is a veiled reference to final judgment on the self-absorbed wealthy (or those incapable of loving/serving others without expectation of some form of reciprocity/pay off). And if you got the first letter, you'd know that I intended a verse in the self same parable as a rejoinder, personally, to Bono for the effect of his silence on me and my family (top paragraph p. 124, Part 1). The song verse opens with how the extreme wealth addicts are running out of resources, both raw and human, to exploit, all the money junkies are running out of veins. This accords with my view that the amoral perpetual growth economy has hit the late capitalism stage of cannibalizing society (global policy on Covid-19 makes this pretty irrefutable, as it was only bungled on purpose), humanity and the planet (financialization of very last remnants of the natural ecology under the guise of combating climate change); -with the added audacity to label this cannibalization of the future "profit". It silently believes in a human exponential population growth rate to provide its otherwise untenable econnomic growth rate. It is dependent on an exponential human population growth rate in order to furnish wage slavery, -granting the necessary critical mass of human suffering it needs to enforce unlimited human exploitation.
This hidden existential nature of an amoral economy, which is designed to provide the outcome of such extreme wealth among such a precious minority it has the ability to control the rest of the planet (implementation of Covid policy a la Gates has just provided the ultimate graphic demonstration of the concentration of power to inform world health policy), has been the crux of a years long disagreement between Bono and myself, to put it mildly. To spare you, I have diverted the spate to a sub-page you can read only if you actually want to find out (you will fully understand the reason for "you know you must do something other than complain", which can be blamed on just longevity, but of course possibly other things too), bearing in mind that unless you were to absorb the articles themselves (not to mention the essay that started it all and isn't provided here), this is merely the tip of the iceberg of what informs my present Covid-19 suspicions. Since I broke this scandal individually with no journalistic background, I suspect it informs the substance of the lyric, "the clever learn who not to trust", given the nature of the previous verse. The "judgment" verse is also an adroit exemplar of the "where it started, how it's going" meme, (as if a veiled inveighing of Final Judgment wasn't enough), with what looks like an unmasking of the slave harvester at the verse's end, with "your head's shorn".
-Hurricane reference. I live in Florida. I gave Bono my home address in 2011.
these are not more labour pains, [....] maybe you're being born -Interestingly this is the only lyric reference of Bono's which, if I'm interpreting the song in terms of the letter, is not editorially excluded. It's what happened on September 27th, '20, on p. 38. In terms of the transcendent analogy, this is the first time either of us has had this perspective on it. In the book, with the last U2 album on record, it was still being viewed as a woman in labour to birth love (p. 1950). The analogy's still carrying inside the letter on p. 35. The first time it shifts into past tense is on p. 38, and this is the first time Bono's shifted the analogy into past tense in his creative output. He also knows I prioritize the planet to the point of, well, let's just assume maybe he's read Chapter 7.