A Sort Of Homecoming

[spanisheyes]

One of Bono's most inspirational, moving lyrics, and also the ones he sings with just as much passion, can be found in 'A Sort of Homecoming' in my estimation. The spiritual imagery with which he writes seems to create a natural chasm between what we can see and what we can't see, from what we now have and know to what we shall possess and be when we pass into the perfect light of day.

I would have to choose this verse, as the one that speaks to me the most.

"And we live by the side of the road
On the side of a hill
As the valley explode
Dislocated, suffocated
The land grows weary of its own"

I've always been drawn to this verse as the speaking of the temporality of this life, and that we do and will always have valleys in our lives, a land which grows weary of its own pain and injustice...many people feeling dislocated from God, possibly due and feeling suffocated from the strickness of family traditions, or religious hypocrisy. But then hope comes that cries out toward the end that is that I am coming home, I am coming home...for we must all come to the realization of what this song is bringing across and that is that this in not our permanent home, but we are just strangers passing through.

Anyone else have any thoughts on a favorite verse, or the spiritual imagery included in: sleet and driving snow, fields of mourning, light in the distance, dream landscape, borderland, a high road, bomb blast lightning waltz, build a bridge, burning rain, or I am coming home, or any other words contained within this beautiful, haunting, alluring song which is 'A Sort of Homecoming'.

And you know it's time to go
Through the sleet and driving snow
Across the fields of mourning
Light in the distance

And you hunger for the time
Time to heal, desire, time
And your earth moves beneath
Your own dream landscape

Oh, oh, oh...
On borderland we run...

I'll be there
I'll be there...
Tonight
A high road
A high road out from here

The city walls are all come down
The dust, a smoke screen all around
See faces ploughed like fields that once
Gave no resistance

And we live by the side of the road
On the side of a hill
As the valley explode
Dislocated, suffocated
The land grows weary of its own

Oh, oh, oh...on borderland we run...
And still we run
We run and don't look back
I'll be there
I'll be there
Tonight
Tonight

I'll be there tonight...I believe
I'll be there...somehow
I'll be there...tonight
Tonight

The wind will crack in winter time
This bomb-blast lightning waltz
No spoken words, just a scream...

Tonight we'll build a bridge
Across the sea and land
See the sky, the burning rain
She will die and live again
Tonight

And your heart beats so slow
Through the rain and fallen snow
Across the fields of mourning
Light's in the distance

Oh don't sorrow, no don't weep
For tonight, at last
I am coming home
I am coming home


Chris

 

[sulawesigirl4]

This is indeed a special song, and one that has many layers of meaning, I think. Just tonite, I was reading something that may or may not relate, but I'll throw it out there just the same...

Blaise Pascal:
Man is so great that his greatness appears even in knowing himself to be miserable. A tree has no sense of its misery. It is true that to know we are miserable is to be miserable, and to know we are miserable is also to be great. Thus all the miseries of man prove his grandeur; they are the miseries of a dethroned monarch?What can this incessant craving, and this impotence of attainment mean, unless there was once a happiness belonging to man, of which only the faintest traces remain, in that void which he attempts to fill with everything within his reach?

(Pensees)

I'm re-reading the book "The Journey of Desire" (you've read it, right Chris?) and this song to me speaks of the yearning that is set in all our hearts towards a time and a place where sorrow will no longer reign. Again, like many U2 songs, it deals with the idea of journey and of movement. Of not standing still but in pressing onward towards an end goal.

I think my favorite stanza from ASOH is
And you hunger for the time
Time to heal, desire, time
And your earth moves beneath
Your own dream landscape

Because for myself, time is something I yearn for. The time to heal and the time to fully experience life. It's like there are moments that I just want to freeze the clock and stay there and soak everything up. And the word desire is important as well. So often in life we shut out desire. We have learned better than to hope and we have become cynical. And yet we hunger for the time to desire. To desire is to be vulnerable. It is to listen to our hearts and to hear what they are telling us. And that ultimately requires us to be open to both joy and pain.

I am rambling as usual. I don't know if any of those thought lines make sense together, but I tried.

Will sleep on it and perhaps type more later in a more coherent manner.

-sula

 

[hippy]

And you hunger for the time
Time to heal, desire, time
And your earth moves beneath
Your own dream landscape

These are the lines that speak to me most at this point of my life. To me this verse speaks of the hunger and desire for something bigger out of life. The need to do something that will impact the world. The dreams that I have shaping the world I live in. These lines encourage me to keep dreaming and to keep pursuing life in it?s many forms. Spiritually these verses encourage me because they speak of the needs that I?m feeling right now. I ?hunger for the time? when I can see God and know that I?ve done what I was supposed to with my life. I hunger for knowledge of the temporal and spiritual worlds.

sula, I wrote this earlier this evening before you had posted, and it's a little eerie to see the thoughts I was thinking posted in a post other than my own...I agree with you on this one! (We seem to agree on a lot around here

)


------------------
"A Bono approved event is a good event!"

You can dream, so dream out loud!

"The way to be optimistic is not to shut your eyes and close your ears." -Bono

Create Light, Create Unity, Create Joy, CREATE PEACE!

 

[scatteroflight]

And your earth moves beneath
Your own dream landscape

One thing I can say for sure--or nearly--is that these are my favourite lines written by Bono, ever.

------------------
Your seven worlds collide
Whenever I am by your side
Dust from a distant sun
Will shower over everyone

-Crowded House

 

[Discoteque]

this is so weird, you guys. I never ever thought of these lyrics as anything other than about a man who is returning to his (earthly) home after being away for a long time. This was esp. poignant of course, when the guys returned to Slane 20 years later.

But now, suddenly the words are leaping off the page at me with a fresh new meaning...I completely recognize that they are also about man's struggle and trials throughout his life on earth (sleet, driving snow, fields of mourning), the way that we see the world through clouded eyes...thru a glass darkly (dust, a smoke screen all around), how the earth groans under the weight of the sin of the world (the land grows weary of its own), and how we are constantly searching for and looking for that "light in the distance," the light of God and the promise of heaven.

I'm definitely going to have to revisit this song, this entire album once again! If ever there was a band whose lyrics would merit entire courses devoted to their study, it's U2.

That Bono can write lyrics with so many layers (someone said he writes in "3D" which I thought was a very cool description) continues to impress...

*marvels again at Bono's lyric writing abilities at such a young age*

Chris, what you said below was really great, extremely succint, and sums it all up perfectly, I think.

Originally posted by spanisheyes:
I've always been drawn to this verse as the speaking of the temporality of this life, and that we do and will always have valleys in our lives, a land which grows weary of its own pain and injustice...many people feeling dislocated from God, possibly due and feeling suffocated from the strickness of family traditions, or religious hypocrisy. But then hope comes that cries out toward the end that is that I am coming home, I am coming home...for we must all come to the realization of what this song is bringing across and that is that this in not our permanent home, but we are just strangers passing through.

 

[dream wanderer]

Hmmm...I thought the soung was about war refugees having to flee their homes...and wanting to go back..

But U2 always have a spiritual application to their songs...and the ones posted here make sense...

dream wanderer

 

[truecoloursfly]

preamble: I dropped my vintage UF cassette in traffic a week before Christmas, and haven't yet replaced it. THIS IS VERY SAD.

Especially now that Chris has posted his very cool comments about ASOH, and I can't listen to the album.

I had occasion to revisit UF on the long highway drives back and forth from visiting palliative care this fall, and the setting was unusually apropos. I was newly astounded at the depth, the poetic whallop in that young man's words. Moreso, in a way, than even JT, and the rest of the songs, which tend to be (relatively) more concrete and linear, tend to be more narrative vignettes. The Unforgettable Fire is, by contrast, a kaleidoscope of images, not drawn but conjured, like dreams. ASOH in particular, gad! every phrase in that swirl of music appears like a crystal vision out of the darkness.

I always took it in terms of wartime refugees...as metaphors for lost souls, lost in the violence of ego and fear -- which is man's inhumanity to man.

And you hunger for the time
Time to heal, desire, time
And your earth moves beneath
Your own dream landscape
this is one of my favourite verses, too. The poetry! Like an incantation: time to heal, desire, time... I get the feeling that Bono is almost speaking in tongues, that the sounds are rocking him back and forth, and he is unconscious of making words.


See faces ploughed like fields that once
Gave no resistance
The portraitist in me is shocked by the vividness of this image. The poet in me is...speechless.

Dislocated, suffocated
The land grows weary of its own
I first heard this when I was in my 20s, and I could sense, if not understand, the wisdom in that observation. Fifteen years later, it nearly makes me weep, its resignation a cutting indictment of our worldly failures, our smallness, our inability to steward this earth and its children well.

I'll be there
I'll be there
Tonight
Tonight

I'll be there tonight...I believe
I'll be there...somehow
I'll be there...tonight
Tonight
And suddenly -- the "I" appears. Suddenly, a hand reaches out of the maelstrom. A flesh-and-blood Bono, who wants to re-connect.

The wind will crack in winter time
This bomb-blast lightning waltz
No spoken words, just a scream...
--God. This is built almost like a haiku, and this is the image most specific to Hiroshima, and it too leaves me -- as a writer, as a human -- speechless.

Tonight we'll build a bridge
Across the sea and land
See the sky, the burning rain
She will die and live again
Tonight
there's exaltation in these lines, somehow, there's joy and re-connection...

And your heart beats so slow
Through the rain and fallen snow
Across the fields of mourning
(here the poet in me gets all excited, too, because the word *sung* is simultaneously its homynym, and it resonates in both directions in his song, back and forth between loss and hope. Brilliant. Thrilling!)
Light's in the distance

Oh don't sorrow, no don't weep
that is so audacious
For tonight, at last
I am coming home
I am coming home

and that...well, it foreshadows his defiance of the darkness on the Tribute to Heroes, doesn't it? "I'll see you when I get Home!" Our brokenness is (our collective) illusion, our oneness in God is our eternal Home.
His last two lines are sung in bruised victory, repeated, like a man who has a point to make. Amen, Brother...

Thanks, Chris, for wrapping us up in this crazy-quilt of pearls. You make me write loooong things

(and congrats, BTW -- just noticed our mods in this forum! Ditto sula!)

peace,
Deb D



------------------
He set my feet upon a rock
made my footsteps firm

the greatest frontman in the world -- by truecoloursfly: http://www.atu2.com/news/article.src?ID=1575

[This message has been edited by truecoloursfly (edited 01-08-2002).]

 

[brettig]

I find this lyric very beautiful...and i enjoy it for, like most every U2 lyric, it brings with it so many layers of meaning. That is perhaps why the 'Sort Of' was added to 'Homecoming' in the title...for the words dont just refer to a typical arrival home. Certainly they do conjure up the images of a returned warrior or simply a traveller, but some of the words like 'dream landscape' and even the final refrain 'i am coming home' give me the impression of something higher being depicted. What the song describes exactly remains a bit of a mystery to me, but perhaps that is why i enjoy it so much.