OH MY GOD There's no unforgettable fire on the cover!
That doesn't look like instruction to dismantle an atomic bomb, U2 phail
A while back I ridiculed U2 for choosing such a nonsensical album title, No Line on the Horizon. Amazingly, many people here didn't quite understand that a horizon IS, in fact, a LINE. The album title is basically the equivalent of saying "no line on the line." Complete idiotic. The album should be called No Horizon, because if you can't see where the earth (or sea) ends and the sky begins for whatever reason, the horizon does not exist. The horizon is not a concrete thing, but rather what we perceive as a boundary of sorts.
But since then, I've given U2 some artistic leeway on the title. Why the heck not? Songwriters make these inane proclamations all the time. Not like U2 will realize their mistake and change the title now. Regardless, you would think the album cover would visually represent as closely as possible what "no line on the horizon" would look like. WRONG. This horizon (or the "line on the horizon", for the semantically-challenged) is as visible as the zits on a 14-year-old. Which makes the album title even more laughable. If you're gonna NAME it "no line", there should BE "no line", even one that is blurry in an attempt to mimic the intended meaning.
To show you what an album cover with no horizon SHOULD look like, here are some photos I found on the internet with horizons clearly missing. (Consequently, all of the following photos were titled or captioned 'No Horizon' on the webpages on which they were found.)
True...maybe we need to have a thread about that, then.
the topic of this trhread falls over in the definition. You cant baldly state something liek the horison IS a line.
A horizon is a perceived line. Key word is PERCEIVED. The line doesn't physically exist, it is just something we see as a barrier between to distinct phenomina. its not like on our view of the spectrum, someone grabbed a Sharpie and separated the earth and sky.
Anyway, that PERCEIVED LINE is the searation of the earth and sky. We can extend this to assume that every horizon, every perception of our extended field of view has this separation, because there will always be a perceiveable difference between the earth and sky.
The title refers to not being able to see a line that is there. The imagery is that the colours of the sea and sky melt into one, and that the line we take as given that exists is blurred into obscurity.
In no way does that not make sense.
The sky and earth never really meet. What we see as sky where it 'meets' the earth is actually a long way off behind the earth, so the meeting point can't exist. It is given that it is only perceived, and not real.
OH MY GOD There's no unforgettable fire on the cover!
I'm actually liking this whole album 10 times more since Gibson started posting about it...
Metaphorically, you dismantle atomic bombs with love. Most of the songs on that last album tried to convey that message.
They should have gone with "Springtime For Hitler" instead of "Achtung Baby."
the members of this forum are starting to get a little merge/close crazy. This is legit, the video sea/sky would have been an awesome cover, as would the OP's picture.
ohhhhhh well.
Metaphorically, you dismantle atomic bombs with love. Most of the songs on that last album tried to convey that message.
Why are you able to take one as a metaphor, but not the other?
Because even metaphors have to make sense when taken literally. For example, there are ways to literally dismantle atomic bombs. Literally, you can do such a thing with the technical know-how. Metaphorically, with love and understanding.
However, no line on the horizon makes no literal sense whatsoever. But I do have a clue what Bono is TRYING to say, except that the specific words he used are just poorly chosen. AND to top it all off, the image that the band used to illustrate the nonexistence of a horizon ACTUALLY has a horizon.
OH MY GOD There's no unforgettable fire on the cover!
That doesn't look like instruction to dismantle an atomic bomb, U2 phail
Because even metaphors have to make sense when taken literally. For example, there are ways to literally dismantle atomic bombs. Literally, you can do such a thing with the technical know-how. Metaphorically, with love and understanding.
However, no line on the horizon makes no literal sense whatsoever. But I do have a clue what Bono is TRYING to say, except that the specific words he used are just poorly chosen. AND to top it all off, the image that the band used to illustrate the nonexistence of a horizon ACTUALLY has a horizon.
Whatever you do... don't ever try to make music/art/literature.
Take any metaphor you find in literature and you'll find they can have a literal meaning that makes sense on its own. In fact, the word METAPHOR is defined as a figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting an object/idea is used in place of another to suggest a likeness between them.
Again, nothing is more nonsensical than Achtung Baby. Try explaining the merits of that. It doesn't even have a German baby on the cover.
It get extremely tiresome when you have general threads about the single, or the release date, or the album cover and then someone comes around and thinks they have something worthy of its own thread. Then the same discussion continues in two seperate threads...
There is hope on the horizon.
There is a new mortgage disaster on the horizon.
None of these fit with your metaphor test...
I think it's a mathematical thing, not metaphorical. The mathematical thing comes with the addition of the equal sign, and wouldn't work without this symbol. Technically, it's not an equal sign: It's two separate lines, one above the putative horizon, one below. If just the one above the horizon were present, you would have a line on the horizon (technically, above it), and the current title would be stupid. If just the one below the horizon were present, the album should be called 'A Line Under The Horizon' (affectionately known as ALUTH). But the two lines cancel each other out, leaving...ta-da...'No Line On The Horizon.' It's not metaphorical at all...it's the reflection of the sky on the surface of the water...life sandwiched in between these two dimensions, continuing to go on and on and on.
Actually, these phrases do fit the metaphor test. The horizon is the metaphor for the future. The horizon is a literal object. It's a line off in the distance that you can see ahead of you. The future is also ahead of you. That's why a horizon is very commonly used to depict the future.
My beef with "No Line on the Horizon" is that it literally makes no sense. When a phrase is literally meaningless, it can't be used as a metaphor for something else.
i agree with the horizon as metaphor for the future. so would "no line in the future" be a metaphor for something else? i'm just saying...
Actually, these phrases do fit the metaphor test. The horizon is the metaphor for the future. The horizon is a literal object. It's a line off in the distance that you can see ahead of you. The future is also ahead of you. That's why a horizon is very commonly used to depict the future.
My beef with "No Line on the Horizon" is that it literally makes no sense. When a phrase is literally meaningless, it can't be used as a metaphor for something else.