There Is No There: Running Down Nameless Streets
In the mid-2000s, my older brother was a member of a very cool, semi-exclusive music appreciation group in Cape Town. There were ten members, all cultured, wise, and interesting people from different parts of the world. They met once a month and took turns selecting a theme for the gathering. Everyone would bring a song to share, say a few about why they chose it, and open the floor for discussion.
In 2006, I visited him the day after one of his music group meetups. The theme they’d discussed was titled, ‘There Is No There,’ borrowed from a Gertrude Stein quote. Stein was describing the neighborhood where she grew up in Oakland, her hometown, which had been leveled and replaced by an industrial park. For the group, my brother explained that they were asked to think about a specific sound that brought up memories of a lost moment or era.
The final compilation of songs he came home with is interesting. Artists ranged from Neil Young to Hugh Masekela, Broken Social Scene, and Tree63.
It might have something to do with living in a country far away from where I grew up, knowing that my hometown is changing in ways I don’t understand, and being homesick a lot, but I think about the theme of this compilation constantly. It has become a screensaver that always seems to crop up at 3am when I can’t sleep or feel restless.
And the song I always come back to is, ‘Where the Streets Have No Name,’ from U2’s Joshua Tree album.
Ghastly, right?
Before I get into this, I’d like to openly state that I’m aware of U2’s gradual shift into musical/cultural purgatory. I, too, am perplexed by Bono’s post-Zooropa career choices. Once considered pop royalty, their notorious ‘Songs of Innocence,’ blunder is still an ear sore to everyone with an iTunes account.
All that aside, ‘Where the Streets Have No Name’ is still my song, even if it is deeply embarrassing.
The opening bars to ‘Where the Streets Have No Name’ immediately transport me to family holidays at the caravan park in Jeffrey’s Bay from 1987 to 1989. A lifetime ago. My father had Joshua Tree on cassette and played it from beginning to end, consistently over the weeks, occasionally changing gears to The Traveling Wilburys and Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors. When the guitar riff slowly fades behind the keyboard, a vivid collection of memories emerges as a mental collage.
I see my brothers and I riding skateboards along the gravel road to the beach. We’re playing on tire swings in the park. Hanging out with my cousins. Eating Surf Joy ice-creams and hanging outside our caravan on warm nights, the smell of fire burning cutting through the sea air. That song sounds like the night the campground’s pipes burst and our tent filled up with water. It takes me back to that time I lost my family while walking on the beach and thought I’d never see them again. I see my brothers and I eating watermelon in the hot sun. And then getting sunscreen basted across faces by our mother. My young mother. Her blonde hair hanging longer than it is now. My young father, too. I also see my young grandparents in lawn chairs, sitting in the shade playing cards. That song is the look, feel, and smell of so many other things that I’d recognize in a heartbeat if my brain could only recall them with more clarity. And the only thing that helps me get there is the opening track on goddamned U2’s best-known album.
There is no other song, album and artist that sounds like so many beautiful things that live in the past.
*
In 2015, I visited Joshua Tree National Park for the first time. My wife and I booked an Airbnb and made plans for a romantic getaway in the desert. The night before we left, I started thinking about the Joshua Tree album and stayed up for hours Youtubing U2’s live performances.
On the first day of our trip, we pulled up to Indian Cove and saw people scattered like ants atop the giant rock piles. We parked, stretched our legs and drank up the setting: the burlesque rock structures that tower over the parking lot and run on forever. Everything seems bigger and smaller at the same time. Like a dream.
To cap off the afternoon, we scaled a big hill that would give us a view of the sunset. I was about halfway to the top when 1) it dawned on me that we were going higher than I first estimated and 2) I started to worry about how we’d get down.
I had a lot to think about up there before those bridges needed crossing.
*
I don’t remember the exact moment I first discovered that Bono wasn’t cool anymore—or if I ever really thought of him in those terms. It was sometime in 1997, the late grunge era.
I’ve lived long enough to see great artists die. Prince. Kurt Cobain. Layne Staley. Michael Jackson—twice. Their music is also an anchor to memories from the past,
Knowing that I’ve outlived the music of my youth makes me feel like an old sea dog. I sometimes wonder how cool Bono would be if he’d died after making Joshua Tree.
*
Whenever I publish a story or a blog post, one of the most shameless things I do is forward the link to everybody on my list of contacts. My friends. My family. Acquaintances. Everyone.
Mass-emailing is not a proud move.
I need them to see my work and like it and tell me that it’s good. And as soon as the desire for their approval has met the reality of my action, it always feels like I’ve dropped a plastic bird at their feet. Which starts the process of ruminating over how pathetic I am; a real artist doesn’t mass email their entire contact list. A real artist doesn’t need to self-promote. No matter how lame I feel, every time I write a new post, I’ll send the thing out and keep hoping for compliments.
*
Back at Joshua Tree National Park, we made our way back down the hill at Indian Cove, daylight fading all around us, and I started wondering how the U2 band mates spent their time here.
This place is synonymous with the climax of their career. They will likely never have a single as well loved as ‘With or Without You,’ or win Grammys for their music videos, like they did with ‘Where the Streets Have No Name,’ or need to run and hide from the paparazzi.
They flew close to the sun.
Descending the hill at Indian Cove was scarier than I’d imagined. An eerie breeze whistled along the cracks at my feet, making the ground pulse and shake. I needed to make a two-foot step over a twenty-foot drop, and my body tightened up. Like a clenched fist.
While I tried to pry my cold fingers from the rock and make some progress, something profound occurred to me: I could very well have been in the same place where the Edge decided he’d never take his beanie off again; where Bono decided to wear red sunglasses for the Zoo TV tour.
After a while, it was clear that I was stuck and couldn’t get down. As calmly as possible, I informed my wife that she would need to get chopper assistance. Or bring me a sleeping bag and a flashlight.
And then it all hit me: maybe the iTunes thing was Bono’s moment of weakness and pride, him reaching for that high one last time. Maybe pre-loading their album onto everyone’s iTunes library was just to get that old feeling of approval back. Was this the single largest mass email in history?
Maybe, beneath it all, Bono is just like every other artist in the world.
These things became clear as I butt-dragged myself downhill.
*
The Never-Ending Story II came out in 1990, the year we stopped going to the Jeffrey’s Bay caravan park. In the movie, a sorceress named Xayide creates a machine that steals one of Bastian’s (the protagonist) memories every time he makes a wish. The whole movie revolves around making wishes to help rebuild Fantasia. Throughout the film, as he reconstructs an imaginary world, he loses touch with the real world at home and all the memories that connect him to it.
Her goal is to make him forget where he comes from or why he is in Fantasia, and eventually die there.
The Jeffrey’s Bay that exists in my mind is a rustic, sleepy shell of the place today. The town has grown exponentially. There are shopping malls, apartment complexes, traffic lights, and restaurants. The stuff of modern life. It’s a relative metropolis compared to photographs from 1988. The caravan park looks out of place, a disheveled clinger to an era long gone.
And me, I don’t have any cassettes or CDs anymore, and I’m not sure I have too many musical revelations left. I have a Spotify account and try to keep up with all the new stuff, but it’s hard to care about new music the way I used to; I cared too much about the old stuff.
Instead, I keep this long playlist of songs that I’ll listen to at work or in the car.
Once upon a time, it had the full Joshua Tree album on it.
Over the years I’ve been removing songs one by one, for various reasons (mostly, I get tired of explaining why there are U2 songs on my playlist to coworkers and friends).
I started with ‘Mothers of the Disappeared’ and ‘Exit’, both of which I was never that attached to. Then I moved on to ‘Red Hill Mining Town’ and ‘In God’s Country’, my least favorite. Then ‘Bullet the Blue Sky’, ‘With Or ‘Without You’, ‘Trip Through Your Wires’. More recently, ‘I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For’ was culled.
All but one is gone.
And I will not give in to Xayide and wish it away.
*
My wife and I were out on a day trip again last weekend and ‘Where the Streets Have No Name’ started playing. She instantly got annoyed and asked me to skip the song. She didn’t care for Bono and found his voice irritating. “Grating,” was the word she used to describe it.
For a moment, I started to see what she meant. All the glitter and nostalgia I normally feel when I hear that song wasn’t all there, it was fading.
So, I changed the song. Quickly.
And when I got home, I put the whole album on another playlist, a private one just for me. I didn’t want to taint the memories of Jeffrey’s Bay, the years between ’86 and ’89, my young family. Those memories are too precious.
I’m sure Bono would agree.