NO LINE ON THE HORIZON
Well, you see, I know that horizon. Most mornings and evenings between September 1991 and July 1994 I took the local Dublin train system (Dublin Area Rapid Transport – DART) along that horizon. Killiney Bay is a beautiful scene, that I marvelled at every single journey, and Bono’s house gazes out over it towards that horizon that could be the photo on the front of the album. And the song is about home in some ways though Bono’s lyrics have always been able to be cosmic in their most intimate, objective to all in their own self indulgent subjectivity. If Leonard Cohen has been obsessed with the Divine beloved as well as the lust for the disposable carnal loved, Bono has been similarly artistically occupied although the latter for him is not some physical object to be selfishly enjoyed but his wife Ali who is his friend, married lover, soul mate and navigator towards the horizon. She philosophizes and sticks her tongue in his ear in one sentence, no line between life and eternal life!
It is a song about the future too. The band are heading towards what is yet to be and on into infinity or eternity. Writer Cathleen Falsani has nailed it, better than I could, in her review of the album, “Without a line on the horizon, we may feel like there is no limit to how far we can go. But it also makes the seas difficult to navigate. That is, in many ways, where we find ourselves today. It’s as infinitely terrifying as it is exciting. Where do we go from here and how do we find our way?” When on the first single U2 launched this album with the line “The Future needs a big kiss” they were looking for that U2 optimism that by-passes passive naivety with a call to defiantly take on the bleak possibilities on the horizon and hone them into some better Kingdom Coming day. The rest of the album will help us in the navigation.
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