I finished listening to SURRENDER: 40 SONGS, ONE STORY, the new memoir from Bono, last week. Even if you’re not normally an audiobook kind of person (I frequently struggle with my attention drifting when I listen to audiobooks), I recommend the audio version of SURRENDER. It’s just a damn-well-produced production - utilizing various instrumental, acoustic and standard versions of U2’s song library to underscore Bono’s rich delivery and writing.
Bono writes about his life and career with all the rich metaphorical gooiness you might suspect from a man who’s written pop lyrics for over forty years. As he details everything from the process of making music with his band to his humanitarian efforts across the world to the way his faith and family have carried him through his triumphs and challenges, Bono writes with beautiful delicacy - weaving through his inner and outer lives like a Venitian gondolier. Bono’s a damn good narrator too - putting on voices for folks like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bill Clinton and Nelson Mandela.
As somebody who was born in 1984, I came into the music of U2 pretty late. While my friends were jamming to STANKONIA and KID A, I was getting really into THE JOSHUA TREE and ACHTUNG BABY. U2’s music just really spoke to the angsty emotional kid pushing his way through the tail-end of high school and songs like “Mysterious Ways” and “All I Want Is You” are engrained in my formative years in a way that the actual popular music of the late ‘90s and early ‘00s will never be.
While I loved U2’s music, I didn’t actually know too much about the band and their personal life. To be fair, I’d prefer not to know about most of the artists I admire. Less chance to be disappointed that way. I did know Bono had a reputation for being a goody-two-shoes and I watched as Matt Stone and Trey Parker felt the “Desire” to portray him as a teat-sucking piece of crap (literally) in an episode of South Park.
Reading SURRENDER, I learned a lot more about what drives Bono in both his music and his extracurricular activities and a big part of that is his faith. I guess, in theory, I knew Bono was religious but - and I’m going to probably sound like a huge idiot here - I didn’t realize just how religious U2 is. As in, I didn’t realize that almost all their songs are about God and stuff. It’s like when you attend a party and, in between the snacks and drinks, you start to realize you’re having a lot of conversations about UFOs and mental health and, eventually, you realize your hosts are trying to sell you on joining their cult and then you realize the E-vite had a picture of L. Ron Hubbard on it and you really should have known better.
Bono gave us all the clues, Mr. Policeman. U2 is a Christian band.
So much of the life Bono has lived has been led by his faith. He truly wants to put good out there into the world - that’s why he has worked with politicians on both sides of the aisle to fight world hunger, the HIV/AIDS epidemic and various other social causes. He’s also a rock star, with all that implies. Is it hypocritical for a man who flies around on a private jet and wears designer clothes and has partied with Frank Sinatra to tell us normies we could be doing more to help those in need? I get why folks think Bono’s an asshole - I really do. I get it, but I think they’re wrong. Bono is trying his best to be a Good Boy™.
Listening to SURRENDER made me think about another recent bit of entertainment I enjoyed recently - Guillermo del Toro’s PINOCCHIO, a stop-motion retelling of the classic fairy tale set in Fascist Italy. The movie (which hits Netflix this weekend) takes a lot of wild swings with the traditional story (I am obsessed with del Toro’s Biblically-accurate blue fairies) but - at its core - it’s about what PINOCCHIO has always been about, a little wooden creature’s best attempts to learn how to be a good kid and make his poppa proud.
Life is a constant stream of temptation - a magnetic pull to take shortcuts, to be selfish, to ignore the right thing to do. I know I’ve certainly made poor choices and strayed from the path of righteousness more than I would have liked - and nothing’s going to change. Until the day I die, I’m going to fight against my basest instincts - the part of me that has learned that being an asshole is just fine enough most of the time. It’s hard work being a good person, as both Pinocchio and Bono have tried to teach me. And to be a really good person? What kind of life does that actually look like? If I took the concept of absolute good to the furthest limits, I’d be living in a monastery somewhere, having dedicated my life to the service of others.
Fuck that shit. I like material things, I like sloth and gluttony and envy and lust and so many of my other favorite deadly sins. Most of us don’t actually want to be that good of a person - we just want to be good when it counts. We want to make the right choices most of the time. And that’s fine! If you have a driving force - whether it’s religion, guilt or just an inner drive to be a better person - helping you make the right choices, you’re doing great.
I’m not a religious person but I can get behind the kind of religion Bono writes about in SURRENDER - the kind of religion that is distrustful of organized communities that spend more time telling people how they should be living their lives instead of asking themselves how they could be helping others. I can really get behind the idea of living a good life and putting good out into the world as a form of missionary work - spread your beliefs with your actions, not your words.
SURRENDER is a great book and it has officially joined the shelf of books and movies in my head that offer real guidance to the kind of person I want to be. Stuff like THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST - which speaks to me of true sacrifice - or BETTER CALL SAUL - one of the best analyses of the real work and struggle that comes with changing who you are as a person - or Christopher Moore’s LAMB - a powerful treatise on faith and compassion that just happens to be about a kung-fu-wielding, zombie-fighting Jesus Christ. SURRENDER is about service and loyalty and love and how we are simultaneously small within the confines of the universe but enormous in our potential to make an impact in the life of another human being.
U2’s music made an impact on my life. SURRENDER made an impact on my week. I’ll never stop trying to pay it forward by trying my best to be a good person most of the time.