SURRENDER 40 songs, one story is Irish singer Bono's first book, an autobiography. I firstly set my eyes on it last November and took seven months to find a copy and read.
It is a book I read with much pain. When I finally closed it and put back its cover paper, I felt relieved as if a troubled episode of my life closed. For some days I resisted turning its pages, and refused to write a review.
But tiny voices somewhere never rest, truely ample reasons that I should write down my feelings. Many of his songs are a part of my life, when I was young, less care of many things.
Last week I spent a few days with my parents away from the city, that voice finally conquered me on my trip back to Beijing.
SURRENDER is a book about many things, everyone will experience, but no one can plan well in advance. Bono writes with a tender heart and wild soul, his mum's early death and his suppressed sorrow find a way out in many of his songs, and his mixed feeling toward his dad runs even deeper:
I am thinking about my da and that polyp in my throat, the lingering thought that I could have cancer too. The ol' man is dying and now his young fella is no longer young. No longer indestructible, how inconvenient. I'm thinking about Ali and our kids. About age and mortality, about friendship and family. I knew we could write songs like that, but the trick would be not to give in to melancholy, to write with defiance as well as honesty.
Even more solemn is his words about love, his love with Ali. The following is what he put down before starting his and her honeymoon:
We were the playwrights and the play, the actors and the critics. Excited and nervous to begin our adventure together. No idea where we'd be in ten years. Twenty. Thirty. I raise you again. Forty years.
We'll eventually figure out what was going on in that moment. Rather than falling in love, we were climbing up toward it.
Even his friendship is not glued by joy or fun:
We were bonding over something bigger than music.We were bonding over the reason music is made. How it is balm for the ache inside us, a dressing for the wounds we hide.
In several chapters, Bono writes calmly on death, the death of friends, families and politicians. Here is his eulogy for an Irish peacemaker:
We were looking for a giant and found a man who made all our lives bigger.
We were looking for some superpowers and found clarity of thought, kindness, and persistence.
We were looking for revolution and found it in parish halls with tea and biscuits and late-night meetings under fluorescence.
We were looking for a negotiator who understood that no one wins unless everyone wins and loses something and that peace is the only victory.
SURRENDER in many ways changed my views toward Bono, the band of U2 he loved and fighted for, and even his songs which I believed providing guidance in my life. If I had a time machine and brought this book back to my 18......thinking of it almost kills this cut and paste shabby note.
Comfort and encouragement abound too, such as the following humble worlds:
Whatever room I was in, I would remind myself that the success of U2 had me over-rewarded and over-regarded and that I must not forget how much these people had given up, working long hours and living far from their families. Trying to make the best of their lives and for their constituents.
With that I herby surrender myself to this book, with honor and dignity.
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