Preparing myself for U2's concert in Camp Nou later that evening by going to the supermarket to buy groceries for the children, I saw my mother in the row at the checkout. She wasn’t my mother, of course, that would have been impossible, but with her light brown hair, her big eyes with the sad, knowing look and her long, skinny limbs she looked a lot like my mother would have, judging by the photographs I have of her, if she had lived to become forty years old. And I thought not for the first time, strange how stories and lives seem to repeat themselves, and since it was quite probable that this woman was born after my mother died, I couldn’t resist contemplating the possibility that she indeed was some sort of a remake, leaving me wondering if we should get acquainted, offering her the chance to meet one of the children she had had to leave behind at such tender age. I decided against it because the woman seemed rather preoccupied with herself and anyway, it might sound a cheap and bad-tasted introduction line to tell someone they strikingly resemble a deceased person. So I kept to absorbing her features and chewing away on the impossible opportunity of having a conversation with a woman I have no active memory of, just to show her what had become of me and perhaps to get to know her version of the stories my father told me about her. Certain thoughts are better kept private, I considered, their beauty is too frail to withstand the cold and sometimes even cruel logic of reality.
I wandered back to this little moment of magic when I was in the stands of Camp Nou, surrounded by thousands of people of all age, from fifteen upto fifty at least, demonstrating their devotion to the tiny screaming figure who ran around a circular stage that encapsulated a very few thousand chosen ones; that is to say they got themselves up there through an auction of entrance tickets, the revenues of which were to be held apart for some good cause. I don’t question Bono Vox’ voice nor his capacities as a showman. The big round screen high above the stage offered an excellent visual spectacle that combined with the superb sound quality at times presented us spectators with a live videoclip. While Bono and friends were followed by four camera’s, two of them handheld, the other two running over a rail and lifting their little egg shaped heads when required, the pre-designed lightshow under the roof of what resembled a space invader figure from a nineteen eighties video game, gave a strange intimacy to the gigantic dimensions of the whole set-up. It was like watching television with some friends and I sometimes got the feeling this was meant to be, as if the truth (and truth after thirty years of performing still seems very important to U2) can only be transmitted through a screen. Anything that is actually happening has become so unreal to us, that we apparently need screens to convince ourselves of its existence.
But back to the religious devotion that befalls Bono by his fans, all singing and hand clapping and standing up for the full two hours the concert took. Given his performing qualities, I can’t make head or tail of what he is telling me. His songs describe emotional situations without cause or effect that I, although of almost the same age, am unable to relate to, and his handling of charity moments is, well, awkward. The band paid tribute to Michael Jackson and although they served his music well, the way Bono after claiming he had met the popking a couple of times wasn’t able to say anything nice or comforting other than that the man was a musical genius (like we didn’t know that already) was rather embarrassing. And when the whole congregation of a full Camp Nou spared a few thoughts on Birmese political hostage Aung San Suu Kyi, I couldn’t help wondering why her and why now, since I couldn’t detect any real personal consideration from Bono’s part, making it all so unnecessary and incidental. Do they perhaps serve up a new dissident on every next gig of what is to be an almost two year long world tour?
So how has this clumsy, disattached boy become such a huge star, I wondered, and then I realised the answer lies in the adjective clumsy. I started noticing that to many of his followers Bono must seem like the boy next door who got lucky in life, the ordinary bloke who against all odds saw a universal dream fulfilled. Without really having a special talent he made it big time as a rockband frontman and he did so because the public allowed him to. They recognized him as one of them, dreaming of stardom as a goal in itself, not the reward or burden for possessing a unique talent, a talent they the public lacked or never had found in themselves, and thus they cheered him on and they bought his records and they kept doing so through the years, reason why he still is the personification of everybody’s secret craving. I could have been you, they think, that could have been me there on that stage being bigger than life, and although the assumption is false, he really sings very well and he has learned how to wind a crowd round his finger, the public’s willingness to forgive Bono his flaws very much is the product of this one of us feeling. He never had to fight for applause, it was worship from the word go until the lights went out above his head, a collective creating of magic, the shaping of a daydream that not necessarily would withstand reality. The only time the audience didn’t give him what he asked for was when Bono, after ad nauseam informing us of his love affair with the city of Barcelona, wanted us to chant its name along with him. He tried and he tried and he dangled his mike, but the crowd wouldn’t give in.
Perhaps there were too many strangers among them, sick of hearing about Barça and Barna all the time.
