somewhere in the chaos and the calm, may you find your Self in all of your splendor
1987
I emerged from the pool, chilled to the bone, energized.
Picked up my towel lying on a bench.
Guitar notes, looping, cutting, from the overheard speakers
in the natatorium.
It was an Olympic sized pool, making it impossible to do
more than 30 or so lengths each time I came. I came twice a day. It was my
therapy and my bane.
Weighing 120 pounds, the water was freezing to me. I would
get in that water and sprint my laps, trying to swim faster than my thoughts.
It was the only way I could outrun the depression.
Swimming kept me super-charged for up to 2 hours. I was
relatively clear-minded in that time, my depression incredibly lifted. But this
was my bane, too, because it was so damn psychologically taxing, like swimming
along that yogi’s razor edge.
Between the time we had driven to the concert in Detroit
until now, I had fallen ill. A grave, clinical depression, anorexia, anxiety.
Sometime in that space of two years, I had gotten religion,
Eastern religion. I meditated at first with enthusiasm and blind ambition. I
was going to take enlightenment by sheer force of will.
But the mystical path kicked me on my ass. I could
recognize my own attachments and aversions, take steps to eject desire and
anger from my mind. But hubris and lack of self-compassion were in my blind
spot.
I stood toweling myself off, my ears demanding that swooning
guitar to reveal more. Bono’s voice kicked in, “And you give yourself away…give
yourself away…” My buddies had said they’d played some songs from their upcoming
album at that concert. This was it, The Joshua Tree. It was first exposure to
it.
Oh my, what a lovely song. It made me ache for the old days
– when I was a civilian, uninitiated into yoga meditation, a carefree college
kid.
But there was something else here, a gift from the band
whom I had passed on two years prior. “I can’t live…with or without you…”
Yes, this was my story, more than anything on Unforgettable
Fire had been. What I was doing couldn’t be called living, neither could I live
bereft of God, my divine Shiva.
1985
We saw the marquee as we approached. “U2”, the sign read. Underneath
it, “The Waterboys”. All with little fanfare.
We had been under the impression that The Alarm was
opening, a spectacular double bill that brought me and four friends to downtown
Detroit from Ann Arbor.
The music hall was not a big venue, nothing like a stadium,
not even like the Q here in Cleveland.
I was enamored with U2’s last album, The Unforgettable
Fire. Imaginative, a sidelong glance at how they felt, encountering America.
Passion, grief, longing. The Alarm was a newer band with just one EP out. They
were equally fascinating to me, evoking a sense of revolution, punk heroism.
I had heard some from The Waterboys, was disappointed by
the fact that they were opening. It’s not that they weren’t intriguing, just
that…this was not what I had come down here for.
I told my friends I was going to get some food and would be
in the car when they got out.
They were disappointed, but not shocked. At 18, I was known
for my odd behavior, impulsiveness. As they stood in line to enter, I went to
the corner, scalped my ticket for fifty bucks.
In search of the perfect sausage sandwich, I found a late-night
deli.
There was no seating inside. There was a dent in the
bulletproof plastic sheeting lining the inside of the restaurant. I enquired of
the cashier sitting behind the hole, like it was a clandestine drug deal. I was
soon handed off a piping sausage in a soft roll, piled high with onions and
peppers.
Walking back to the parking lot, sucking down my quarry, I
passed a movie theater. The next film playing was Under the Cherry Moon, a
Prince movie. I could easily have made it in time for the end of the concert. I
equivocated, but decided to pass.
Finding the car, I curled up in the back seat, sleeping
until my friends returned.
