Two friends discuss what they love and critique about U2.

Here’s a non-exhaustive list of names that get a mention, for those who wish to explore further:

Rev. James Lawson

Stephen Biko

Reality Winner

Hannah Arendt

Dr. Larycia Hawkins

Negativland

Walter Wink

And to learn more about Davids Dark and Dault, you can visit:

David Dault is writing things.

A collection of essays on subjects pertaining to religion, politics, and baseline moral seriousness.

DavidDault.com

I sat down for a Zoom chat with Joel Kiekintveld ahead of the release of the new book A Verb and Not a Noun: Days of Ash, U2’s Lenten Liturgy, which he wrote with a contribution by A.R. Stager. Joel is embarking on a mini-book tour which will include a stop at the Wild Goose Festival. His book is available for pre-order from outlets like Barnes and Noble, Apple Books, and Google Play books, and will be available for purchase at those locations on and after the official release date, September 5th. His blog is trailerparklevite.blogspot.com.

U2 are not the only ones celebrating a big anniversary in 2026. The RevU2 Podcast turns ten this year, so I sat down with its bespectacled hosts to talk tea, Manchester, and which of them is Bono and which is The Edge in their friendship.

Subscribe now

Last week, I shared about the U250 events promoted by the U2 Dublin Fan Club for September 25th-27th, and earlier this year I spoke with Verlinda Henning, who brought fans together in Memphis. U2 fans in the Midwest have another opportunity to celebrate on Saturday, August 29th in Bowling Green, Ohio thanks to Natalie, a fan you may know as “Natalue” in the U2 Conference Discord.

Natalie first became a U2 fan at the age of 12—“a very impressionable age for music and pop culture,” she says—when she saw Rattle and Hum at the movies. “Up until seeing it I was NOT a U2 fan, I thought they were overplayed on the radio, lol. But the movie, especially the concert footage, just blew me away. I was a fan from that day on, got cassettes of Live Under a Blood Red Sky and The Joshua Tree and nearly wore them out from playing!”

She’s not sure when she stumbled onto the U2 Conference, “but I followed it on Facebook and then moved over to Discord with it, keeping up on updates. I attended the virtual conferences, moderated a few sessions, and then pitched the idea of a book discussion for Bono's memoir. The rest is history! I've always believed there's real value in approaching popular culture from an academic perspective so having something like the U2 Conference, where fans can discuss the music on an intellectual level is wonderful.”

Discord is organized in channels, where most conversations happen via text. The book discussion on Surrender took place over Zoom as well as a series of hour-long chats with questions from the hosts dropped in at intervals. “I loved the energy in those talks!” Natalie says. “That made me want to continue meeting virtually with fans so it was fun to find things to center the discussions around. I love doing it in Discord by text because I think it gives folks time to share their ideas or come back and read what other people think about the topic. Hearing the perspectives that folks have is always so interesting to me - I always come away from those discussions thinking about the music or text in a new way.”

The meetup in Bowling Green is likely to carry some of that same energy, thanks to the schedule of events. The day will begin at 9:00 am with a meetup at Grounds for Thought Coffee at 174 South Main Street. At 10:30 am, fans will take a guided tour of the Music Library & Bill Schurck Sound Archives at Bowling Green State University. Natalie calls it “a hidden gem—they have so much cool stuff tucked away in this little corner of Northwest Ohio and I'm thrilled that people will get to see it and see some U2 items, as well!”

From there, weather permitting, fans will enjoy a bit of nature on the Slippery Elm Trail Walk at 2:30 pm, followed by a worship service inspired by U2’s music and themes at First Presbyterian Church at 4 pm. Dinner will follow at 6 pm, at a location to be determined.

There will be no registration fee to join this meetup, but everyone will pay their own way for meals and any extras. Fans are encouraged to RSVP so that Natalie knows how many people to expect, and to join the U2 Conference Discord channel #bowling-green-meetup-2026 in advance to stay up to date on plans. (There’s already talk of a potential “side quest” to visit Finders Records, an iconic record store that had been closed for many years but which is slated to reopen in late August under new management.)

Subscribe now

He says that he heard “everyone” share a similar sentiment after they played Self Aid at RDS Showgrounds in 1986: “This band are going somewhere! They’re going to be amazing!” He was living at home at the time, “and me father, he’d come in from work, and I’d have U2 blaring on the record player.” His da’s reaction? “‘Rubbish! Would you turn that down!’ But over time, he got to like them.” He took his mother with him to see U2 a number of times, including to the New Year’s Eve show in 1989 at the Point Depot.

“Me mother, when we were going to the show, we were waiting for the bus to go actually down from the city centre, she looked around and says, ‘I’m going to be the oldest person at this show.’ I’m looking at her [saying], ‘Ah, it’ll be okay.’ When BB King was on stage [with] U2, all of a sudden me mother took off her shoes and there she is dancing. And I look [at BB King] and I go, ‘there’s an old man up there, Ma. Same age as you.’ The funny part about it is, I’m much older now, and I’m still going to shows!”

Vinny goes to shows every chance he gets, and has gotten media attention for queuing up sometimes several days in advance. Once, an RTE presenter talked with him when he was in line for one of U2’s more recent Croke Park shows. “She rang to do an interview. She goes, ‘Vinny, just to say, if you were getting married today and U2 were playing a concert, what would happen?’ And I says, ‘Ah, cancel the wedding and go to the concert! You can get married any day; you can’t just see U2 when you want.’”

When social media started gaining traction, Vinny founded the U2 Dublin Fan Club as a Facebook group. The founding date was in July of 2013; today, the club has about 16,000 members from all over the world. Vinny says the moderators are what makes the club such a good place to visit—they keep out scammers and any talk that isn’t really about U2.

At the moment, the U2 Dublin Fan Club and event organizers Welcome to the Northside are promoting U250, a three-day weekend beginning Friday, September 25th with events at a number of Dublin venues (some of which are already sold out). Tickets for shows by tribute bands Zooropa and U2Baby are available from Eventbrite, and the Little Museum of Dublin is offering free entry to their U2 exhibition all weekend. “It’s just going to be crazy in Dublin with everybody over,” Vinny says.

Just as he credits the moderators for much of the success of the U2 Dublin Fan Club, Vinny heaps praise on Welcome to the Northside for their role in bringing people together every year around the band’s birthday. “Stephen Browne, himself and [the late] Aaron Govern, they started in Dublin the celebrations going back to the Innocence tour. Again, thanks to Stephen Browne—without Stephen’s help, we wouldn’t be able to organize these venues, he knows how to get the venues.”

But gatherings of U2 Dublin Fan Club members happen more than just at the band’s birthday. They’ll travel together, too—recently several of the fans living in Dublin traveled to Liverpool to meet club members local to that city, and they’ll go to Wales for the band December’s U250 event September 18th and 19th. When U2 performed at Sphere, they flew to Vegas. “The whole thing, it’s all about meeting new friends,” Vinny explains. “It’s a family; our family just keeps getting bigger and bigger.”

This idea of family connections is a theme Vinny keeps reiterating. With the fan club, “If someone is not well or someone is struggling, we’re all there to help each other,” he says. “I think that’s unique…No matter where you go in the world, you’ll always have friends. Again, that’s the U2 community.”

Subscribe now

Steven R. Harmon is the author most recently of U2’s Theological Imagination: A Guide for Pilgrims on the Way. We had a wide-ranging discussion about teaching, liberation theology, and the role Pope Leo XIV played on the timing of this book release.

Sharp-eyed fans might recognize a Kelly Eddington watercolor Edge in the background. You can find my interview with Kelly and PJ DeGenaro, and then all the previous interviews in this U2 Fandom @ 50 series here.

(Part of an ongoing series on U2 fans celebrating fifty years of U2. See my profile of Verlinda Henning here, Scott Calhoun here, and Sherry Lawrence here.)

Kelly Eddington and PJ DeGenaro are the creators of achtoonbaby.com.

Angela: How did each of you become U2 fans?

PJ: I’m the Gen-X “baby” in a family of Boomers. At first, I adopted the musical taste of my older brothers: the Beatles, Elton John, and some folksy 70s stuff. But we had excellent rock stations in the NYC area in the 80s, and I ended up getting into the Doors, the Who, and Led Zeppelin. I was a painfully shy teenager, and I think rock’n’roll gave me a personality. I was resistant to punk at first, though I hung around my local record store reading all the British magazines because I just had to stay informed. When I first heard “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” I found it irritating, like alley cats fighting in musical format. But it kept popping up in AOR playlists. “New Year’s Day” is the song that really pulled me in. My oldest brother thought the name “Bono Vox” was hilarious, and he was so annoying about it that I FINALLY rebelled against the Boomers and switched over to postpunk (or alternative, or whatever we’re calling U2 and their contemporaries). It was a relief. A burden removed. U2’s music in particular sounded so clean and spare after a steady diet of the dinosaurs of rock.

Kelly: I didn’t know anything about U2 until cable television and MTV came to my town in the spring of 1983. I was an artsy, brainy, 8th grade loner, and I loved being able to watch hour after hour of music along with those odd little movies. They included a band called U2 who were playing a religious-seeming song on a depressing brown barge somewhere, and then they were riding horses in the snow, and they quickly became inescapable.

For a few years, U2 was one of those “I’m aware of your work” bands. U2 was the nice boy in class who wasn’t as flashy as the cool guys I had crushes on, i.e. Prince, but we’d say hi in the halls and sit by each other at lunch sometimes. I was a senior in high school when The Joshua Tree was released, and what do you know? Looks like the nice boy had one hell of a growth spurt over the summer!

Angela: How did you find each other?

Kelly: After winning a “we need a new cartoonist” competition, I worked happily at [fan site] AtU2 creating watercolor-based U2 humor. It was a dream job, and I tried to push what I could do with it. My style ranged from traditional-looking cartoon imagery to realistic watercolors, my medium of choice. I had no idea I would still be doing this stuff 24 years later.

PJ: In the early 2000s I was at home, raising my son, and feeling very grateful for the internet. I became a devoted reader of atu2.com (may its memory be a blessing). The undisputed best thing about that site was Achtoon Baby, and as a former art student who’d felt stymied by what my professors deemed acceptable subject matter for ART, I was amazed that a young woman like myself was actually permitted to draw (paint!) cartoons about her favorite rock band. I had been doing that on the sly in high school, but to do it as an adult? Publicly? And brilliantly? I became an ardent admirer of Kelly. I once left a comment on her blog and she ignored it, and I’m not even mad. We eventually found each other on Tumblr in 2015.

Kelly: My blog never sent me notifications when somebody commented, so that must have slipped through the cracks. Sorry about that, Peej! And while I realized what I was doing was not True Studio Art (which I also created), I never felt like I needed permission to do it. Plus the amount of time, skill, and brain space I poured into my Achtoons made me a better, faster, and more accurate watercolor artist. It also acted as a handy litmus test for people I was dating. Can’t deal with this level of fangirl? Goodbye!

Angela: What inspired you to collaborate?

Kelly: PJ and I became fast friends via Tumblr. We share a similar sense of humor, and our affection for U2 is boundless and near-identical. She is a brilliant writer, and I was flattered that she knew about my work. I wanted to continue to impress her. For over a decade and on an almost daily basis, we’ve been chatting with each other about U2 and everything else under the sun. I’m an introvert and the friends I do make are extremely important to me. I feel so fortunate that PJ is my best friend. We cheer each other on, and creating U2 content with her is the easiest thing in the world.

PJ: Kelly very kindly got me on board at AtU2 when management was looking for new writers. I think this was 2018 or 2019.

Kelly: I was overjoyed when PJ joined AtU2, albeit just as the site was entering its death throes. During this period of upheaval, things were not always easy for her as an essayist and news writer.

PJ: I tried to make my stuff fun to read, even when I was just doing the weekly news roundup. I’m still proud of a couple of essays I wrote at that time.

Kelly: She and I were looking for other ways to work together. We wanted to inject more humor into AtU2, which had a tendency to take itself very seriously. When Covid hit, we came up with an advice column by Fake Bono and Fake Edge for AtU2’s readers and had a lot of laughs. But we saw the writing on the wall.

PJ: In our chats, Kelly and I were already imagining a site where we could be fans in our own style: funny, feminist, and occasionally naughty.

Kelly: When it became apparent that it was only a matter of time before AtU2 would disappear forever, taking with it nearly two decades of my work and PJ’s writing, I knew I had to find a new home for it. And instead of just creating an archive, why not make that feminist fangirl U2 website we had been dreaming about? Back when I recommended PJ to AtU2’s news staff, I said I thought she was “the future of AtU2.” As it turned out, she became the future of Achtoonbaby.

PJ: To have this passion project during the worst part of the pandemic was really a blessing.

Kelly: We call Achtoonbaby “the U2 art project that attempts to be amusing.” Not long after the site was live, we hit the ground running with a 1,500 word think piece about Bono’s nose, and that set the tone for what we’re about.

PJ: After so many years of fandom, we know what’s important. Give the people what they want!

Angela: Speaking of giving the people what they want–when it comes to U2, I love peeks behind the curtain of their creative process. What can you tell me about your own creative processes? What does it take to get a U2 watercolor into the world, or one of PJ’s birthday poems?

PJ: The birthday poems began with a one-off I wrote for Bono after seeing U2 play live for the first time after many years. It’s the first one, here. I went to several shows in a row, all but one in G.A., and he was so magnetic that I was in an absolute fever. Kelly and I both call these guys our muses, and we’re serious. The poems have become a tradition now, but they get a little tougher to conjure each year. I don’t want to fall into clichés (Bono the shaman, Edge the cool engineer, Adam and Larry the pulse and spine, God forbid) so I sort of grasp at what’s out there in the ether (politics, current events) and try to envision how the particular birthday boy might respond. Sometimes I’m just observing the boy, or even arguing with him. I enjoy trying to get inside their heads. Next victim: The Edge! Though I don’t think I’ll ever top this one.

Kelly: PJ’s poems are one of my favorite things about the site, and over the past few years I’ve created paintings to go with them. Several weeks before a birthday, I’ll ask PJ for vague ideas of anything she’s envisioning, such as colors, or whether she plans to write about Bono when he was younger or present day, for example. Then I’ll go through photos by my fellow U2 fans. I’m picky and tend to scan hundreds of them before landing on the one that’s just right. The majority of what I find on social media is live shots, and there’s almost always something wrong with them: a microphone is blocking Bono’s face, or the light on Edge isn’t bringing the drama, or Adam’s mouth is doing something weird, or Larry just doesn’t look Larry enough. That’s really the thing: I only want to paint from reference photos that are unmistakably THEM. I’m looking for UltraBono. Once I find him, I’ll DM the photographer, get permission, and promise to credit them. Fan photographers have always been extremely generous with their work, and I couldn’t do this without them.

The same process happens when I’m putting my cartoons together. (What I do barely qualifies as “cartoons,” but that’s what we’re calling them.) I also pull from screencaps from official U2 videos, which I feel are fair game, and the odd press photo if I know I’m going to change or simplify it. I like the fact that my work still retains an old school, handmade feel in a fandom that is being taken over by A.I. slop.

The ideas have never stopped coming to me. Just when I feel like I’ve exhausted what I can do creatively with this band, they inspire me with something new, or maybe one of them is simply wearing a hat I find questionable. It doesn’t take much. Inspired by their new video, I started working on my next Achtoon and will begin painting four 9”x16” watercolors tomorrow. I’ve already written the text, and it’s just waiting for me to add those images.

Angela: What are your thoughts on the phenomenon of fandom? That’s vague, but I want to keep it open ended because you can address it however you like.

Kelly: I think most fandoms can be broken down into two factions: fans who consume and fans who create. U2’s consumer fans are the ones who express their devotion by attending as many shows as possible and amassing enormous collections. Periods of band inactivity are difficult for them because they have all of this love and nowhere to put it. Creative fans always have somewhere to put it, so the years of band downtime are not as bleak. I live in the middle of nowhere. Traveling to multiple shows is a hardship for me, so I saw only two dates on the E+i tour and one at the Sphere. For a superfan, that’s not many! But at the same time, I don’t have to see them as much because I can make them. I can paint a Bono so uncanny he gives me chills. If you can pour your love into a fandom-related project, believe me, the kick you get from it can definitely be as good as buying something and almost as good as seeing the real thing. And you just might make other people happy with it, too!

PJ: When I first started using Tumblr, the average age there was 25, and I was in my late 40s. It was a real crash course on fandom. You absolutely have to remember that the subject of your fandom is separate from you, and is made of real people (or residents of Gallifrey or whatever) who have never heard of you. But for band fandoms in particular, the loudest voices tend to be male, and they are very much concerned with things like how they would re-order POP or No Line On The Horizon to make them better albums. Honestly, I don’t consider that any of my business, anymore than I would want Bono popping into my poems and changing the enjambment. I’m similar to Kelly in that I haven’t seen that many shows over the years (and I have regrets about this) but some of my most treasured experiences are things like driving through the night with an important person while listening to Achtung Baby in stunned silence.

Angela: Something else that happens when fans create is that they may draw a community together too. What’s been your experience of the Achtoonbaby “community”–those that appreciate and are inspired by your artistic output?

PJ: In all honesty, with the exception of a few stalwarts, I’m not sure who’s in the Achtoonbaby community. I think most people are drawn in by Kelly’s art. And that’s okay, her paintings are stunning, and the internet and social media are visual spaces. Getting anyone to sit and read for more than two minutes is a huge ask these days. But I do feel that Achtoonbaby is part of the wider U2 fan community.

Kelly: It’s kind of strange for me because I began creating work for Achtoonbaby way before social media. So I’d submit a new Achtoon, get some immediate praise from [AtU2 founder] Matt McGee, who posted them and liked being the first person to see what I’d made. Maybe some of the AtU2 staff would reach out to me the next day, and my little circle of U2 friends were always sweet and enthusiastic. Once in a blue moon, an actual random reader would figure out how to email me, and I’d get a heartfelt message that made me smile. So in my imagination, it seemed like no more than a dozen people ever looked at my cartoons. But sometimes Matt would casually say that I’d received over 5,000 hits that month and blow my mind. I’ve been fortunate to be able to show my work at fan gatherings at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and other places and meet my readers face to face. People have even recognized me at the few shows I manage to attend (it’s the hair). After I involved my cat Bunny in occasional cartoons, people fell in love with her, and a cat from Texas even mailed her a marriage proposal. Surreal and wonderful!

Now that AtU2 is no more, our readership is nothing like what it once was. But we’ve retained a small group of readers from the old days along with some new ones. Their support means a lot. It’s easy to get lost in the algorithm, and people just don’t visit actual websites the way they used to in the 1900s. But something like a dozen people tend to comment on what we create, so in a roundabout way, I’ve retained the same feeling that I had when I first started.

What PJ and I do is niche, and while we love getting attention for it, we don’t require it. This work is fun, and ultimately we’re doing it for the love of the band and for our own amusement. We’re the weird girls who sit in the back of the U2 classroom muttering to each other under our breath, and some people get us, and some people don’t.

Angela: With the band being around as long as it has, and fans sticking with them for the long haul, I’m curious about the different evolutions of your connection to U2. What comes to mind when you think of different eras of your experience of the band? What do you think would be different about your life had they not been around?

Kelly: U2 have created musical touchstones every few (and not so few) years for the duration of my entire adolescent-to-adult life, and I’ve always been interested in what they’re up to because their music is an important chunk of my life’s soundtrack. They are about ten years older than I am, so it also provides a glimpse into the future for me. I think U2 really began to get under my skin when I started my first teaching job. I was overworked and isolated from people my own age, and, as usual, U2 were there for me. In their absolute prime. And that’s when the nice boy from school and I got married. (And my Actual Husband, who was initially charmed by my geeky interest in this band, has since come to accept the crushing, unending reality of his wife having four other husbands. That’s a joke. I’m a cartoonist, and Bono is my Charlie Brown.)

PJ: I was a teenage girl when I discovered U2, and I would be lying if I said their youth and cuteness didn’t play a part in my seeking out their music. But I believe my judgment was sound. Their early records spoke to my insecurity and latent defiance. Their 90s output? Heartbreak, sex, technology, and burgeoning creativity? I couldn’t have had a more perfect soundtrack to the years I lived and worked in and around NYC. Now that I and the band have reached a certain decade (though they will always be a few years older than me), I think it’s interesting that their songs have taken on an awareness of mortality, but balanced with their usual defiant joy. I am so, so happy that they’re still out there creating.

Kelly: It is such a rare privilege to watch the band you love evolve from teenagers to senior citizens. I’ve even been able to paint that transition. The older they get, the more precious they are to me. I can’t imagine my life without them. Simply because they exist, I met my husband and my best friend. U2 gave me an audience and 10,000 hours (probably more like 100,000 hours) of watercolor practice that led to a successful career as a full-time artist.

PJ: As Kelly says, it’s a rare privilege to have had U2 with us for all these decades. I really don’t even like to think about a U2-less world. I have loved watching the lads’ faces and interests change. I love how smart and eloquent they are, each in his own way. And I love the people they’ve brought into my life.

A few more U2 portraits by Kelly below…

Subscribe now

On Saturday, July 18th, from 10 am to 1 pm, residents of the Benton Park West, Gravois Park, and northeast Dutchtown neighborhoods can engage with the development of their neighborhood through the second annual Neighborhood Open House. Residents will have the opportunity to learn about the existing neighborhood development plan, give their input and priorities for what they would like to see change, and learn more about organizations at work in their communities.

“We're going to be at the Golden Record, which is a great event venue on Cherokee Street,” explains Xandi Barrett, who works for Dutchtown South Community Corporation, the host of the open house.

“When you arrive, you’ll have a chance to engage with a lot of different boards.” Xandi here is referring to posterboards that will have various polls, maps, and Post-Its for recording attendees’ thoughts on different aspects of neighborhood life: streets, housing, education, arts and culture, and more.

“Then we’ll have 25, or 26, or maybe even more organizations from around the neighborhoods tabling, so you’ll have a lot of opportunities to speak with different folks who are working in the neighborhood. We’ll also have food and childcare. So if you need someone to watch your little ones while you’re moving around the space, we’ll have that available. And then, of course, lunch from some of our great local restaurants.”

Xandi is the Gravois Jefferson Catalyst, working on behalf of a resident-led planning effort that was adopted by the city of St. Louis in 2018. “This year we’re in a big transition, because we are going to get a new neighborhood plan that is developed by the city into the end of ‘26 and into 2027,” Xandi says. The strength of the current plan is that the voices of residents are front and center. “That’s not going to go away. That’s going to continue into the next plan. But I think we’re going to, hopefully, get a lot more city collaboration because the city planning department is really pushing this forward.”

Residents who attended last year’s open house listed “vacancy, street and sidewalk safety, and then trash and illegal dumping” as their top priorities. “We took that information and passed it along to a coalition of organizations that work in our neighborhoods to figure out how we, as organizations, can address these issues.” But city collabration is key, Xandi says. They want to “push the city into thinking deeper about their responsibilities in the neighborhood.”

Volunteers who would like to help at the open house are encouraged to sign up by Wednesday, July 15th at volunteersignup.org/PKD4X. “That’ll give us enough time to make sure that you have the information you need to be prepared and ready to go on on the 18th,” Xandi says.

Subscribe now

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

AP: Sherry Lawrence.

SL: Angela Pancella, how are you?

AP: More importantly, how are you?

SL: It’s been a long 50 years of fandom, although I’ve only been on board since 1988, so my youthful glow is still with it.

AP: I don’t know if I’ve ever actually asked you this. What first got you into U2?

SL: Ironically, that was the first article I ever wrote for [fan-run website] @U2: explaining my fandom. It was a Latin field trip to New York City, believe it or not. While I vaguely remember watching U2 for things like Amnesty International [the finale of A Conspiracy of Hope, a benefit concert] when it was on TV and Live Aid, at that point in time, I was more into people like Duran Duran and Phil Collins and all that. They were just the speed bump to get me to the act that I wanted to watch. [Laughs] When I look back on it now, it’s like, wow, I needed some time to fully appreciate this particular band for what they were offering.

But it was a Latin field trip; our Latin class and German class combined went to New York City. It happened to fall on the day that my grandfather was being buried. Ironically, two days prior to that, we all knew he was passing on. He wanted to have final moments with everybody. And he told me, no matter what happens, to go on that field trip.

The weird thing is, at that point, it was like he had one foot in this world and one foot in the other. And it was like he was trying to communicate to family cryptically whatever he was being told to tell us, if you believe in that type of thing, and I totally do. That trip is what changed my life trajectory.

Had it not been for me buying my first U2 album and getting into the album and getting into the band, I would never have met my husband, would never have had my kids, would never have the family that I have, would never have the life that I have. My whole future was because of that date: December 15th, 1988.

The whole reason I bought Rattle and Hum: We had just finished up dinner in a German Konditerei in New York—worst food I’ve ever had, sorry. And there was a Crazy Eddie’s [record store] right next door. I needed some fresh music for the long bus ride home. There were two people who were arguing over who was going to buy the last copy, on cassette, of Rattle and Hum in the store. And while they were arguing, I kind of snuck in behind them, I took the cassette and I bought it out of spite so that they would be arguing over nothing. So it wasn’t even that I was buying U2 because I was interested in U2. I did it because [laughs] I wanted them to realize that they were fighting over nothing.

AP: There’s actually a parable about, again, your fan trajectory in that story. Everything is encapsulated in that story.

SL: Pretty much! And so I popped the cassette in, not really realizing what I was about to be in for. And by the time I got to Hawkmoon 269, I’m like, this is my band.

Somehow, I totally missed The Joshua Tree. Totally. In 1987, the only thing I remember is being on a school bus—I was in 7th grade, my parents only listened to oldies music, so we were always listening to 1950s, 1960s music, didn’t really have an opportunity to be watching MTV, didn’t really have an opportunity to be into that stuff, and like I said, at that point, I was still kind of a Durannie—I remember people wearing Joshua Tree concert t-shirts from when they went to see them in Hartford, Connecticut, because I lived in Connecticut at the time.

But somehow I completely missed the boat on 1987.

And I didn’t even know that they had a movie coming out. It was just that

they had a soundtrack. And of course, by the time I got into the soundtrack, the movie had already left movie theaters because it only stayed in movie theaters for what, three days? So I was kind of bummed about that.

But anyway, after hearing “Hawkmoon 269,” I just dug into that album for the rest of the ride, and over and over and over again. And by that weekend, I had gone to our local record store and with whatever money I had in my little piggy bank, I bought J-Tree. I bought War. I bought Under a Blood Red Sky. I bought Unforgettable Fire and Wide Awake in America that weekend. And I just did a deep dive into it.

And then the following weekend, I was at my dad’s house for weekend visitation. We went to the local video store and we rented the Unforgettable Fire documentary. I rented that for the weekend and watched that, li,ke nonstop.

Once I got into it, it was...It was it. I wouldn’t call it an obsession, but the way I’m describing it, it kind of was. It’s like, no other music mattered to me. That, that was it. It tapped into a vein and I couldn’t get enough of it. It was like speaking to me in a way that no other music ever had spoken to me before.

At that point, I’m reading the liner notes, I’m reading the fine print, I’m reading who did what on what song. And at the very end, it said, “If you want to subscribe to our fan club, Propaganda, here’s what you do.” I dutifully went down to the bank, I got a money order—remember back when you had to have money orders?—sent it off, and the magazine came pretty quick—which is the probably only time a magazine for Propaganda came pretty quick. If you know, you know, people!

And in that magazine, it had the Grapevine. These were all people who were looking to either trade bootlegs—like, “Bootlegs? What are these things?” I didn’t know anything about anything.

I learned through the process in 1989 of how to connect with the fan community globally. I must have sent out, I’m going to say about 100 postcards. I basically sent something to everybody who was listed in that issue of the Grapevine. And I’m still in communication with one person, Andy Robertson in Scotland, who was among my first round of postcard sendouts.

AP: And again, tell me again how old you were at the time?

SL: I would have been 16, 17, around there.

At that point, I was making connections with other fans. “What’s your favorite album? What’s your favorite song? How do you like the band? Oh, isn’t Larry hunky?” You know, that type of deal. We found our Larry fans pretty quick. It was a pleasant change from all the Bono people!

It became very expensive because postage wasn’t cheap. Maxell cassette tapes weren’t cheap. If somebody sent you a show, it was expected that you were going to reciprocate. Now I’m scurrying around locally: “Okay, who’s a U2 fan locally that I can get a show from?” Then all my trading started, and then I started finding local fans and local friends, and it was all about connection. It was all about tapping into the community.

So, you know, when Bono sings, “Let it be unity, let it be community,” that was at the basis of my fandom back in 1988, 1989.

AP: This opens up my whole understanding of, not only your DNA, but the DNA of U2’s online fandom is in this because you were very early in the online fandom too. You were one of the first names that I saw and recognized on [the early U2 fan internet mailing list] WIRE.

Yeah, it also helped [my screen name was] U2isABLE.

And for people who haven’t figured it out yet, U2 is Adam, Bono, Larry, Edge.

It serves multiple purposes that “You, too, are able.” In the same way that it was pitched to them about the band being named U2 and the multiple meanings with [that name], that’s how I got the moniker of U2isABLE and I’ve kept it. Because it’s also a positive affirmation.

We can do anything. People have the power!

AP: Tell me about finding the online fandom. How did that come about?

SL: My dad was the person who got me my first computer when I was a senior in college. Now we’re talking 1994. I heard through the Grapevine in Propaganda from one of my peeps, like, “Oh, do you know about WIRE?”

I’m like, “No, how do I get there? How do I become a part of it? Oh my God, what is this all about?” I’m like, “My people, I found my people and there’s thousands of them! Oh my God!”

AP: Cheaper than sending out all of those letters.

SL: Yeah, but you still had to pay for internet at the time. If you had AOL, which I did, you were paying a lot of money before they shifted. I had to figure out how I was going to come up with $500 a month, because once you went over your number of minutes, it got very expensive very quickly. Kids nowadays have no idea about any of that!

WIRE was interesting because when it really took off, that was around the time of Passengers, and Pop, and the Pop Mart tour.

[At] the Pop Mart tour, thanks to our friend Angie, who created the WIRE tags, we were able to identify ourselves at the shows. We were wearing these little yellow Wireling WIRE tags.

AP: Rather large yellow WIRE tags.

SL: Yes, but they were rather large so you could identify it. And then we had a big banner that ended up getting stolen. And I don’t know if people know this, but my dad worked for a cloth company and donated the cloth for the replacement banner and made sure that was made out of a ballistics material. It made it very heavy, but it made it super durable.

We went over to our friend Dale and Donna’s house in Massachusetts because they had a large enough yard. And we got the “WORLD WIDE WIRE” printed on it and we got it ready to go and we sent it on its way for the second U.S. leg.

We just felt like we were building that community that with every show it got to, every person you saw with a WIRE tag, every signature you got, and then you found out, “Oh, the band signed it. Oh, Paul McGuinness signed it. Oh my God, this is amazing.” That community-building only reinforced why I love this band and why I love the fandom so much, because we were all about community.

And then it was around that time that a person you and I know very well, Matt McGee, reached out saying, “Hey, I know you have a journalism degree. Do you want to put it to use?”

So I’m like, “Sure, what do you need me to do?” I think I was the second or third hire at @U2, back in the day. At that point, we saw our little website as a way to reach out to the community with news and views you can use. I always saw my role with @U2 as wanting to connect people to either the music, the meaning behind the songs, although, you know, there’s always going to be [interpretations], but, you know, researching what Bono was into at the time or why Edge used this pedal or why did they record here or whatever.

I became known for my rather lengthy articles because online, you don’t have to worry about print space or number of letters. To all of my editors over the many years at @U2, I certainly owe you more than five drinks because I kept you up many long hours editing my pieces. I owe so many people so much.

AP: I’m curious how you would think in the long span of things, what is it that has kept you connected to U2, and then we’ll talk about keeping you connected to the community as a separate question. What’s kept you connected to U2?

SL: It’s just that I have continued to enjoy the music. I’ve continued to enjoy being a part of whatever this circus is. As times have changed and people have shifted and we’ve aged, the music has remained consistent and that messaging has remained consistent. [Like] the Eugene Peterson [quote—where he quotes Nietzsche], “a long obedience in the same direction.” I mean, it’s been that. I love consistency and I love that dedication.

I love the fact that it’s never the same thing twice with U2, that there’s really no place to be bored. They’re challenging you. In return, you challenge yourself and you challenge each other.

And unfortunately, as the times have shown, the message from 40 years ago is just as relevant today as it was 40 years ago. That’s not a good thing, but it’s not a bad thing. It just means that wherever that font was, it’s been true. It’s been steadfast. I know that where they get their source inspiration from is also a firm foundation.

I feel like there’s more than just, “I’m enjoying this for the sake of enjoying it.” It’s feeding the soul in a way that not many other things can.

AP: Would you say there’s a similar answer to what keeps you connected to the community?

SL: Yeah, because the community continues to embrace each other, we continue to lift each other up, we continue to be there for folks. There will always be different areas of the community. I look at the U2 fandom as a body. and I’m very much the spleen filtering out the crap. That’s how I see my role. Others may argue with me that I’m just, you know, a little capillary somewhere. I don’t care. We all serve a purpose.

You know, there are people who think of the church in that same way. Bono’s written enough songs that he calls psalms that I just see that even the four people who are in the band are part of the larger body. And we are part of the larger body. And that, you know, within everything that there is that higher purpose, and it’s undeniable. I do appreciate the fact that the band isn’t hiding that anymore. Maybe it’s because they’ve been around for 50 years that now they don’t have to worry about being pegged as a Christian band. They’ve lost all their F’s. They’ve got none to give and neither do I anymore. They’re just putting it out there and it’s up to you if you want to accept it or not. They’re very good about the free gifts.

AP: If you’re talking to somebody who’s not in the fandom, what do you find hardest to explain about like what it feels like on the inside?

SL: It depends on the generation of the person that I’m dealing with, because I will say this: I have a 17-year-old daughter and a 19-year-old son. That generation, unless they have parents who are U2 fans, do not know U2. That’s been my general experience. They see Bono more because he’s more out there, but they just don’t connect him with being the Bono that we all know him to be. It’s kind of like somebody who hasn’t really been into the Rolling Stones, and they know Mick Jagger is pretty famous, but they’re not really into the music. And I know that the band do not like being compared to the Rolling Stones. Absolutely hate it. Do not say anything like that in front of them. They will give you the eye roll like you’ve never... do not do that. #SpoilerAlert.

Anyway, depending on who you’re working with or who you’re talking with, they may have only come on board in 2018, they may only know them from their latest song. They may only know them because that’s all that their parents played and they can’t stand their parents’ music.

So, I just say, they’re an acquired taste, but you can’t get away from them. You could be in any store at any time and the Muzak is playing their stuff. You cannot change any radio station and avoid their music. They are unavoidable at this stage in everybody’s lives. When you have a repertoire of over 500 songs, across 50 years, across however many commercial releases and soundtracks, you can’t avoid them.

I just say, hey, if you can’t beat them, join them. I mean, is there one song that you can latch on to? And most of the time it’s usually “Beautiful Day.” Or it’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” It all depends on the generation.

And then I’m like, okay, well, why do you like that song? And then kind of dig in there like, well, if then, then I kind of feel like I become like Spotify or Pandora: “If you like that song, might I introduce you to this song? You might enjoy this album more. Here, let me send you a link to a live performance of that song.”

Once you see them live, if you can get somebody to an actual concert, they’re forever changed. Nobody walks out of a U2 concert feeling like they did when they first walked in. They always leave differently. There is something tangible that is intangible, if that makes any sense, about a U2 show. Some people call it a religious experience. Some people call it a spiritual awakening. Some people are like, “that’s the first show I went to where I didn’t feel like I had to drink at it.” You know, there’s just something. And the band know it and we all know it. And so, if you can convert somebody that way, getting them into a show, then they will know it too.

And then I’ve had more than enough times when somebody has turned and said, “I see what you mean now. I understand this now.”

AP: What do you find easiest to explain to folks who are not in the fandom?

SL: That they’re fiercely loyal. But [U2 fandom] is not a supplicant relationship. We have no problems sharing and debating, but we do it respectfully. The band, you know, is very democratic in the way that they determine things. I mean, if Larry doesn’t like something, it’s not getting released. It does make me question some choices. But that’s another discussion. It’s like, “You wore me down. I’m done. Fine. Passengers can be released. Sure.” But that’s what people enjoy debating over drinks or at a U2 confab or in a GA line for 18 hours or more.

You know, there was an ad back in, I think it was 1979, 1980, and they had it up in the Little Museum in Dublin. Something along the lines of “U2 has people talking.” And it’s true all these years later. If only they knew! We’re still talking about them. I think they knew at that point they were already creating buzz and now they’ve got all of us talking.

AP: What are particular highlights of your fandom that stand out to you?

SL: I actually have stuff around here [reaches back to grab some items]. I’m going to start with the most recent and work my way back.

I was fortunate enough to go to 10 Sphere shows. I just paid off the credit card for that last month. It was not a cheap endeavor and I’m not happy about it.

But talking about community, there were just so many people who knew me from various iterations. And it’s funny because now people know me as the Mustache Lady, because I had this cockamamie idea of “let’s do a thing for Adam at Sphere” because Sphere didn’t feel like it was a U2 show. You didn’t have Larry, it wasn’t touring, you had a lot of non-fans at it. So I’m like, “What can we do to U2-ify it?”

One of the shows in February [I said] “Okay, we’re all going to do a flash mob and we’re going to put on mustaches for Adam during Mysterious Ways.” We were able to get mustaches to over 500 people in GA. Others brought their own. I later found out in person that the crew were in on it and made sure that there were mustaches up on stage, but Bono didn’t know.

So yeah, that was fun.

So now I’m known as the Mustache Lady, but I was also dubbed by the Garden Tarts, one of our favorite podcasts, the Mayor of Sphere Town.

So my daughter made me the Pop figure of the Mayor of Sphere Town with a mustache. [Displays a personalized Funko Pop titled “Mayor O’SphereTown”]. That’s one of my favorite things.

What else do I have? 1997, talking about fan community, it was after the Foxboro shows—and just for the record, Foxboro is not Boston. Boston is about 45 minutes north of Foxboro. We had to hightail it out of there, but we made it to the band’s hotel in time to be there before the band got there. Don’t know how we did it. But I was able to get a lemon signed by Paul McGuinness, by Edge, and by Bono [displays said lemon]. So that’s a highlight.

But I think that the one thing that I am known for in the fan community

is the @U2 20th anniversary birthday party that we had in New York City where Edge and Adam crashed our little shindig. It still amazes me to this day. You know, I never thought in a million years that they would do it. But I also know that if you don’t ask, the answer is always no. So I threw it out there. I threw it out into the universe. I got it to people who could make decisions and come to find out, they surprised us. So that, I think, is an ultimate highlight.

But you know, there’s just so many over these many years. I can’t even—you know, Bono and Edge performed on Cape Cod for a radio station. I lived seven miles away. I was able to go. I’m like, “Dude, you’re right next door!”

AP: It would be rude not to show up.

SL: I’m going to crash the event. Absolutely. You’re literally in my backyard; how could I not be there?

So, you know, there’s there’s just too many to go through. But, I see those opportunities, as awesome as it is for me, [and I ask] how can I include more people in? How can I, so, with the signing of the lemon, I had about 15 of my friends with me and we did it as a community. The @U2 party, we had over 400 people there who were partying and celebrating with us, with the Unforgettable Fire, who is an awesome band themselves. You know, how can we bring in more people? Because it’s not about me and it’s not about you individually. It’s about we, you know. How can we enjoy each other’s company?

AP: And you know this, but I will tell the folks listening to this or reading this that when we were on staff together at @U2, and How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb came out, you helped people understand how to throw parties. I threw [an album release listening] party in St. Louis and got to meet St. Louis fans.

SL: [fellow @U2 staffer] And Tassoula and them had one out in Seattle and we had one in Boston and, you know, and that night, oh my God.

I barely slept because as soon as that party ended, we were in a car heading down to Brooklyn to be at the Brooklyn Bridge for the promo show that they were doing at the Brooklyn Bridge. So driving from Boston to Brooklyn on very little sleep, we were listening to the album nonstop because we had just done the listening party.

And so here we are, and I knew a lot of people at the Brooklyn Bridge show, and we’re singing back the brand-new songs. Bono was like, “How do you know the lyrics?”

“We heard the album!

It was like, “This song hasn’t even been released yet. You’re all singing along to it.”

“It’s not that it was bootlegged! Your people gave us the album!”

AP: What are you looking forward to?

SL: I don’t know! I mean, this is a different terrain right now because, you know, as I’ve sort of read the tea leaves, the band isn’t really hyping up their 50th anniversary. Everybody else is. They just want to remain current. They don’t want to look or feel old. You say it’s the 50th anniversary, it automatically puts you into an AARP category. And they don’t want that. They don’t want to be seen as a heritage act.

AP: Not a legacy band, right.

SL: No, absolutely not. And as we’ve seen with the two surprise releases with Days of Ash and Easter Lily…I mean, my God, they still have whatever it is. I mean, that was as punk as punk gets, what they did. So, I have no idea what this new album is going to be like or will sound like. I’m not basing anything on all the stuff that we’ve seen with “Street of Dreams,” all the little little bit of tidbit of sounds.

But what I do see is, I mean, you remember for their 40th anniversary, @U2 partnered with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame out in Cleveland and we did this big weekend and it was great. We got fans together. Adam crashed our little shindig again via video. Nobody knew about that. That was a nice surprise. Thank you, Dave Fanning. But they posted a video where it was just the lamest looking birthday cake with a little “happy birthday,” and they popped the balloon, and they’re like, no.

So I’m like, if that’s how they felt about their 40th, they absolutely don’t want to be doing anything for their 50th.

AP: So we’ll do it. We will celebrate.

SL: Yes. Well, they don’t have a choice because we have our own free will and we are doing that. But for them, they’re celebrating with a new era, new music, a newish look, new everything, because that’s who they are.

I remember writing for my, for one of my articles about the Songs of Surrender, Stories of Surrender, the Surrender era. They’ve been looking back for the past 11 years. They’re done looking back. They’re done being introspective. They’re done revisiting all of that stuff. They just want to go full steam ahead. So I’m taking a page out of their book and I’m really not looking at these 50 years in retrospect.

I just see them getting started. And they’ve reached a maturity level where, like I said, they’ve got no Fs to give. And I’m like, bring it on. Bring it on.

I want to attack the future. I don’t want to, you know, live in the past until the future dries up.

AP [raising a water bottle] Here’s to the next 50 years then, Sherry. Cheers.

SL: You got it. [raises a mug that says “Free Yourself to Be Yourself”] Cheers to you as well.

(Part of an ongoing series on U2 fans celebrating fifty years of U2. See the debut here.)

Subscribe now

I’m sure you’ve done it. You’ve been chatting with a friend, and suddenly the two of you come up with such a cool idea for a project. “We should totally do this!” you tell each other. Maybe nothing comes of it…but maybe something does.

Scott Calhoun has had the happy experience of option 2. In the early 2000s, he was chatting with his friend Bob about academic conferences, when the thought hit them both: What about a conference on U2? Bob got busy with other things, but Scott held onto the notion.

Let’s back up. “Many people who study these things say that the band you fell in love with as a young person, in adolescence or late adolescence, generally sticks with you forever and is formative in some way,” Scott says. U2’s album Achtung Baby came out in November of 1991, during his first fall semester in college. He’d already discovered U2’s Red Rocks performance on MTV, The Joshua Tree and Rattle and Hum before he got there. U2’s music was playing in the dorms constantly. And after college, he started to discover the “substantial” online fan community.

“It seemed like many, many people were participating,” he says about his early impressions of fan groups on Yahoo, blogs, and sites like one he later wrote for, atu2.com. “There were, and there are, many voices: voices with passion, voices with opinions, voices that were asserting views on an album or a song or critiquing the flubs of a media rollout. The voices seemed to be coming from a place of depth and conviction. There was a substance to it all that appealed to me and kind of intimidated me, to be honest.”

But he didn’t let intimidation keep him from making his own contribution. As he started thinking about a conference, “I felt like, well, this might be a lark or a whim or foolish or foolhardy, but there are some very, very thoughtful fans who would probably want to show up and talk about U2 in a thoughtful way.”

Pop culture conferences were in their infancy at the time; he remembers one on the Grateful Dead and on Bob Dylan, but otherwise the academic fan or “aca-fan” landscape was fairly barren. Nevertheless, Scott, by now a professor, had support for his idea from his university—until he didn’t. “They were going through a very, very significant cultural change in leadership and vision,” he explains. Suddenly, the people who had supported the idea for this conference were no longer in leadership, “and then the university pulled the plug on the whole thing.”

The sudden loss of institutional support made Scott and the team of volunteers he’d assembled scramble a bit, but they made a happy discovery: “An academic conference can be done independent of any one academic institution.”

The U2 Conference officially launched in 2009 at North Carolina Central University in Durham, North Carolina. Since then, they have taken place at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in Belfast in Northern Ireland, in Sydney, Australia, and online. Along the way, there have been many memorable moments: Bono providing a video introduction to a talk by Ugandan nurse and AIDS activist Agnes Nyamarawo and giving a shoutout to the “confab” from the concert stage; visual artist Catherine Owens sharing the inspirations and process of creating the stunning imagery for the Popmart stage; and Andy Rowen sharing how being at the scene of car bombs exploding in Dublin helped create the inner turmoil he later sought to calm with heroin—and how a confrontation with the lyrics of “Bad,” written with him in mind, later helped him commit to recovery.

Moments like these may grab attention, but, Scott says, “For me, the more meaningful things that I’ve really cherished and appreciated that have come out of the conference are getting to know so many people, so many more fans than I could have ever found on my own. I just had [U2’s Songs of Trauma and Hope author and conference participant] Ingunn Røysland speak in my class about her work on U2 and trauma recovery.”

Learn more about The U2 Conference at U2Conference.com.

On Good Friday, I was in the house where I grew up in St. Louis. More precisely, at 12:30 am on Good Friday, I was startled awake by the DING-DONG chime that is my mom’s way of letting me know she is ready to get out of bed. I don’t remember now if I stumbled into her room grudgingly or put on a cheery smile; she feels guilty enough about having to ask for help, so I try to be as pleasant as possible to her when she does so. Sometimes, though, the middle-of-the-nightness of it all weighs on me and shows up on my face.

Cheerfully or not, I’d helped Mom get into the bathroom, then, since I was up anyway, I checked my phone. On Facebook, my friend Steve Harmon had shared the cover art for his book U2’s Theological Imagination: A Guide for Pilgrims on the Way earlier in the evening. His post popped up on my feed because he’d left a comment: U2 had just dropped a second EP six weeks after Days of Ash, called Easter Lily. I started listening to the first track, “Song for Hal,” right there and then, and stayed up until 3 am or so playing and replaying the rest.

What does one do with two surprise U2 EPs back to back? I might as well ask what to do with all these extra days I’ve gotten to keep my mom around. The answer is the same: enjoy them. Blessings overflow sometimes.

And I wonder what it is about U2 that makes them especially good in moments that are especially bad. Maybe what they offer is candlelight. A taper is small and wan and barely there at noon on a sunny day, but in the dark its light is brave and bold.

I don’t have the luxury of time at the moment to go too deep with my thoughts on this EP. I can direct you to a few others who have:

• PJ and Kelly of Achtoon Baby, who inspired me to listen for the “gorgeous tiny music box” in the outro of “Song for Hal”;

• Sherry Lawrence, who helped me appreciate the skipping stone/ocean floor metaphor in “In A Life”; and

• Tyler and Jonny of the RevU2 Podcast. Tyler’s awestruck wonder at the impact “Scars” had on him, the way he struggled to put his feelings into words, felt to me as transcendent as the song itself, in its own way.

But what I really want to talk about, at least at the moment, are these lyrics in “Resurrection Song”:

If love is in the air, let's take a breath
If I sound ridiculous, I'm not done yet
All these signs to forever, have we got heaven for you
Or you can go to hell together till death dies too

Steve Harmon notes that this line recalls the doctrine that makes its way into the Apostle’s Creed—that Jesus “descended into hell” before the Resurrection. But I have reason to believe that the immediate inspiration for the line “Or you can go to hell together” is AC/DC.

Let me explain.

In December of 2022, Bono was interviewed by Jon Meacham at Washington National Cathedral in D.C. In the midst of talking about his faith, and his admiration for highly moral people who profess no faith at all, Bono suddenly veered into a story about how he discovered the AC/DC song “Highway to Hell.” There, in the sanctuary of the cathedral, after persuading a bemused Meacham to look up the lyrics on his phone, Bono started reciting them, honing in on the line “My friends are gonna be there too.”

"That's the powerful part of this lyric,” Bono gushed. “‘My friends are gonna be there too.’ That's an invocation. That's like, ‘I'm with you.’”

He read on:

“I’m on the highway to hell
On the highway to hell
Highway to hell
I’m on the highway to hell.”

Ever the showman, Bono raised his eyebrows as the audience laughed. But then he drove his point home: "I just want to say that...that's the Jesus I believe in. Because Jesus would want to be there too, with His friends, and will always go the distance, will always find you where you are."

So yes, I do think Bono is invoking the doctrine of the Descensus Christi ad Inferos. I just think he’s paying tribute to AC/DC as he does so.

The BRIC on Facebook

The BRIC on Instagram

The BRIC’s website

I talked with Keisha Blanchard about her connection to The BRIC and the importance of their work with those affected by bullet related injury (BRI).

Back in 2016, Karisa volunteered for a local politician, knocking on doors and getting out the vote. She thought of this involvement more like a hobby, but when Donald Trump won the presidency that fall, “It just felt like the world was going to end,” she says. “So I just threw myself into every organization I believed in.”

Fast forward to 2020. She felt a calling to either work for a nonprofit or for the city, and encountered Dutchtown South Community Corporation at a Hispanic Chamber of Commerce job fair. They were hiring for a community empowerment organizer; Karisa saw that and thought, “Those are all words I love.”

She got the job, and started as the COVID lockdown began. That meant her first weeks were spent calling residents of the neighborhoods served by DSCC—Dutchtown, Gravois Park, Mount Pleasant, and Marine Villa—to see how they were doing. In a Facebook post celebrating her sixth anniversary at DSCC, she noted, “There was no guide for community organizing during a global pandemic, but I was surrounded by thoughtful, committed people who stepped up to meet the moment.”

Karisa has since gone from being the community empowerment organizer to the director of DSCC, and the organization itself has moved away from an organizing model into focusing more specifically on housing (they maintain some of the most deeply affordable apartments in Dutchtown). What has she learned about housing in that time? “The more I learn, the less I know about housing,” she says, but “it’s a subject that I love talking about. I like digging into different theories and different practices. I like learning about different projects that have been done in other cities or even within St. Louis in the past.”

As an example, Karisa cites the city zoning code, ‘Which was designed to clear cut large swaths of St. Louis. They wanted a reason to start tearing down buildings…it was [designed] to take our neighborhoods away.” (The city is now going through a Zoning Upgrade process they are calling the ZOUP, if folks reading this want to help rewrite the script.)

“But the big thing I’ve learned through the years here when it comes to affordable housing,” Karisa notes, “is that when it’s completely reliant on, and it often is, subsidies that have very specific strings attached to them, like government subsidies, it means that when those subsidies are over and those strings are done, either we have lost those affordable units because they now need to be making enough money to cover their expenses, or we are looking at resubsidizing them through a LIHTC [Low Income Housing Tax Credit] project.

“That just creates a wheel constantly turning. And so St. Louis doesn’t currently have a mechanism for quality, naturally occurring affordable housing. That’s one of the things that we talk a lot about here at the office: what does it look like to create affordable housing in perpetuity, and not just the first ten years the building exists.”

The approach DSCC is taking for this problem is a Mixed Income Neighborhood Trust, or MINT. “The concept behind it is that it's in a perpetual purpose trust. Because of that, the units themselves will be governed mostly by the tenants who live there, which is important to me because renters are often times at the whim of a landlord. I say this as a landlord! My tenants, I do my best by them, but at the end of the day, I control their access to housing. That’s not an equal footing relationship that we have. Trying to create that equal footing is important.

“That is an important aspect of this project,” Karisa continues, “but it also would have half the units to be market rate for the area, and then the other half would be deeply affordable”—which means they would be primarily for people earning 30% of area median income or less.

“The market rate units would subsidize the affordable units,” Karisa says, which is why the name “Mixed Income Neighborhood Trust.” “How it is mathed out is that the units would have enough money to be well cared for, to have the needed major repairs done, so the affordable units and the market units would be indistinguishable from each other. And all of that would lead to these units being an affordable unit within the footprint for as long as the project can sustain itself.”

The current push at DSCC is to find philanthropic support to get the MINT up and running, so drop Karisa a line if you have any ties to a family foundation or the like!

Today I debut a new series, The U2 Fandom @ 50. The band U2 got its start on September 25, 1976, so I think quite a few publications may focus some attention on their golden anniversary this year–but for me, the U2 fandom is just as interesting a topic to explore.

And a great place to start is to talk about a fan gathering coming up May 15-17 in Memphis, Tennessee, organized by the U2 Conference and specifically by a fan in Memphis, Verlinda Henning. I spoke with Verlinda about her fandom, what drew her to get connected to the Conference, and what fans can expect at the upcoming meetup.

Verlinda is inspired by U2’s status as “last band standing”–few, if any, bands formed in their era are still together with their original lineup intact. She remembers seeing U2 in Dallas, Texas for their Joshua Tree 30th anniversary tour in 2017 (they also played in Tennessee that year, at Bonnaroo, but “camping out is not my ideal fun”). Bono, Edge, Adam and Larry stood together, arms round each other’s shoulders, and for Verlinda this gesture speaks volumes:

“All the things they’ve been through, ups and downs and conflict, the stuff they’ve worked through to stay together…that is inspiring to me on every level. It’s easy to get relationships destroyed over little things, much less big things! That’s where a lot of my love for them comes from: because they love each other, and it shows. And love is hard, love is tough”–to quote lyrics from “Please.”

“it’s not for wimps,” she says.

U2 first came on Verlinda’s radar when she saw U2 Live at Red Rocks: Under a Blood Red Sky, their 1983 concert film. “They had a presence that commanded that stage, but not in an aggressive way–an inclusive way.” She went back and started buying albums from their back catalog (“I still have the vinyl of October”) and she also subscribed to the official fan magazine Propaganda. Then the album Unforgettable Fire came out, featuring not one, but two songs inspired by Martin Luther King, Jr. “Living in Memphis, you can’t not be touched by MLK. And when people from across the ocean are singing about him, you know, that’s something that hits.”

It’s that U2-Memphis connection that will be celebrated May 15-17 at the U2 fan meetup, organized by Verlinda through her affiliation with the U2 Conference, a gathering spot for anyone interested in exploring the music, work and influence of the band and those who love them.

In-person U2 Conferences happened in 2009, 2013, 2018, and 2019, but Verlinda did not hear about this gathering space for fans until the first virtual conference, in 2020. “Some kind of way it popped up on my radar and I’m like, ‘I love U2, what’s this about?’ So I dug into it and poked around a little bit. I did a little research to know that there had been in-person conferences before, but of course, COVID stopped that. Then there was this online offering, and they were looking for people to pitch a project idea.”

As with more standard academic conferences, a type of “call for papers” had gone out, and Verlinda decided to give it a try. She didn’t know what to expect, but her idea was accepted: “It was largely about Memphis. I pulled in some footage of the Civil Rights Museum and things that are around town that had a connection to [U2].”

So, in a way, this fan gathering comes full circle–now that in-person offerings are possible again, Verlinda is eager to introduce people to the U2 connections throughout her city: Sun Studios, Graceland, the National Civil Rights Museum, and Tom Lee Park overlooking the Mississippi River (featured in Rattle and Hum, where Edge slid down the hill). It’s all because U2 clearly loves Memphis. “There’s something so very moving about that to me that they love my hometown,” Verlinda says. “I have a great fondness for people that love Memphis because it’s a hard town. It’s a tough city. I mean, you have to be tough to make it here, but it is a city that will love you back. We embrace people. If you love us, we love you and we’ll fight for you, know?”

Find the full schedule of Memphis events at https://u2conference.com/memphis26/.

On Ash Wednesday, I was in New York City, in a bed and breakfast run by Hare Krishnas. (More on this later.)

I was awakened from a mid-day nap by my phone telling me an email had arrived. One of my U2 fan friends (Scott Calhoun, Director of the U2 Conference) had sent it–the subject line was “The Tears of Things,” the body of the message mentioned Franciscan friar Richard Rohr, and there was a YouTube link.

When I clicked it, I couldn’t quite grasp what I saw: a playlist of lyric videos all purportedly by U2. I didn’t recognize any of the titles. Had Scott gotten taken in by someone posting AI-generated music? It was only after I hopped on Facebook and saw the general freakout happening among other fan friends that I realized it: yes, this was a real, surprise, U2 EP.

Time doesn’t pass, it waits in place
Until it meets you face to face
–“One Life at a Time”

Time had been pummeling me since early December, when my 94-year-old mother, who up to that point had been acting more like a spry 80-year-old, had to go to the hospital. Over the next six weeks she went back and forth between the hospital and a skilled nursing facility, and my brothers and sisters and I dropped everything we could to be with her. We coaxed her to eat. We praised her when she pushed off from the bed to stand with a walker. We wheeled her in a wheelchair to look for diversions. She’s back home now, on hospice, but Jesus seems in no hurry to come take her all the way Home, which annoys her.

The future, as everyone knows
Is where we’re gonna be spending the rest of our life
–“Song of the Future” (by way of Plan 9 From Outer Space, I suspect)

The future being a known unknown, and while we still were planning on recovery rather than hospice for Mom, I took a leap of faith and booked a trip to New York City to attend a taping of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. I didn’t realize until much later that the show I’d be seeing was on Ash Wednesday. I didn’t realize until much later that the bed and breakfast I booked (because the price was right) was run by Hare Krishnas.

God above a mother’s love
A guiding hand to pick you up
–“American Obituary”

When Mom decided in mid-January not to seek further medical treatment, we got her home. This meant a flurry of phone calls and paperwork to arrange transportation, home health care, a hospital bed and a wheelchair; it meant canceling scheduled appointments, and finding times for family and friends to visit. My trip to New York City was a hazy mirage in the distance–something to look forward to, a chance to jump off the merry-go-round of emotions for a while, if it was going to happen. And it would only happen if Jesus was (from Mom’s perspective) planning on being a bit tardy in picking her up, which indeed He continues to be.

The week before I was scheduled to leave, I confirmed with the hospice nurse: she may be sticking around a while, right? Right. I told Mom I would be going to New York, and she looked pleased on my behalf. As I was leaving for the airport on Fat Tuesday, I told her, “Be good!” She sighed and said, “That can be difficult.”

I was made for worship
Before I spoke I sang
–“The Tears of Things”

Early Ash Wednesday morning, I walked from what I now knew was a Hare Krishna-run bed and breakfast to the nearest Catholic church for Mass and ashes. Wednesdays were also when the Hare Krishnas gave out food to folks experiencing homelessness at a park a few subway stops away. They’d invited me to join them, but I got there too late to participate. They had lots of food left over, however, so I got a nice meatless lunch for my trouble, plus a t-shirt proclaiming “All Ya Need is Luv.”

So that takes us to my decision to take a mid-day nap, and U2’s decision to crash-land into our collective midweek.

I want to take the rest of this space to talk about my thoughts on Days of Ash, as U2 are calling this sequence of songs (and a poem), but I wanted to scene-set a bit because DoA arrived at not just a particular moment in the political life of our world, and not just at a particular liturgical moment (draped in Lenten purple, as Steve Harmon [author of an upcoming U2 book!] pointed out, in a year when the beginning of Lent and the beginning of Ramadan coincided), but at a moment when I would be most receptive to a message like

You are not lost out there because
You are not alone
–“Yours Eternally”

(And speaking of not being alone, I reached out to a few other folks I know in the fandom to ask if I could share their thoughts on this EP along the way. And I’ll also put in a plug here for U2songs.com, whose coverage has been comprehensive, and for the U2 Conference Discord, where folks are celebrating the band’s 50th anniversary all year long.)

(And though no loose ends can be truly tied up, perhaps you will want to know that my mom is currently doing wonderfully, using a walker to go from room to room instead of getting wheeled about in a wheelchair, spending her days playing card games and sudoku and solving mini-jigsaw puzzles. And I thoroughly enjoyed seeing a Late Show taping, and I even got back home to St. Louis before a blizzard hit New York. So, a good start to Lent all around.)

Let’s go song by song.

“American Obituary”

Bono’s bullhorn-enhanced proclamation, “You have the right to remain silent–or not,” recalls “This is a public service announcement–with guitar!” from The Clash’s “Know Your Rights.” What U2 have said is that these songs felt urgent, of our present moment; my personal theory is that Bruce Springsteen releasing “Streets of Minneapolis” was the prod U2 needed to get off their duffs. “America will rise/Against the people of the lie”: they’re dreaming up the world they want to live in. Many times I hear people talking like another American civil war is an inevitability. I like hearing this alternate future voiced.

Christopher Endrinal, Assistant Professor of Music in the Bower School of Music and the Arts at Florida Gulf Coast University, had this to say on the “lie” in “American Obituary”:

“In a lot of pop & rock songs, sections that are 4 measures long or some multiple of 4 (e.g. 8 & 16) is the norm. “American Obituary” starts with a 7-measure pre-intro (4+3); we expect 4+4. The first chorus is 9 measures long (8+1), with Bono singing the word “war” in that extra measure. The second verse is made up of two 6-measure chunks (4+2), not terribly uncommon but still not the norm. The following pre-chorus is two beats shorter than expected (this expectation was set up by the first pre-chorus (0:43), which is 8 measures long (4+4). What does all of this mean? I think these ‘irregular’ section lengths are musical ‘lies,’ representing the lies Bono is singing about. These sections ‘lie’ in that they betray the previously long-held conventions and have no shame doing it.”

He also noted that the chant “The power of the people is so much stronger than the people in power,” in its final iteration, does not end on the word “power,” but on “people,” reinforcing the message of strength in collaboration.

“The Tears of Things”

A major stylistic shift. Sinatra is in Bono’s world-weary delivery: “Here we go again.” And no wonder–Bono wrote “Two Shots of Happy, One Shot of Sad” for Ol’ Blue Eyes. This is a sibling song, with more like two shots of sad. Appropriate, given its focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The title comes from a book by Richard Rohr, subtitled Prophetic Wisdom for an Age of Outrage. Rev. , in his reflections on Days of Ash, quotes this passage from Rohr’s book: “...we begin in a state of empathy with and for things and people and events, which just might be the opposite of judgmentalism. It is hard to be on the attack when you are weeping.”

Bono sings as “David, the giant-killer,” startled to discover he has gone straight from his battle with Goliath into a marble statue “with heart-shaped eyes” (a bit of trivia I never knew about Michelangelo’s statue!). Being marble, he is unable to shed tears, but admits that, in response to the sufferings he witnesses, “I’d cry them if I could.”

This evokes Sinead O’Connor’s “If You Had a Vineyard,” her take on Isaiah 5’s “Song of the Vineyard,” in which she weaves in sentiments from Jeremiah 9:1 and Isaiah 9:5, quoting God:

Oh, that my eyes were a fountain of tears
That I might weep for my poor people

For every boot stamped with fierceness
For every cloak rolled in blood
Jerusalem and Judah
I’d cry if I could

(The connection is given more weight because there’s a live recording of O’Connor introducing her song by saying she intends the word “Jerusalem” to refer to the Israelis and “Judah” to refer to the Palestinians.)

PJ DeGenaro, in her Achtoon Baby review of Days of Ash alongside Kelly Eddington (who speed-painted a portrait of Bono alongside David for the occasion), says, “I’d love to know if anyone agrees with me that [“The Tears of Things”] evokes Leonard Cohen, in content and in structure.” Yes, PJ, I do. I even suspect Bono asked Cohen to bless him from his perch in the Tower of Song before he penned these lines, easily among the best in U2’s catalog (and not a bad summation of one of the band’s major themes):

I was made for worship
Before I spoke I sang
Songs of grief, of disbelief
How a woman can love a man
The naked song, the sacred song
That every soldier fears
‘Cause when people go ‘round talking to God
It always ends in tears

“Song of the Future”

Another big stylistic shift, a poppy, breezy number. The lightness is pierced when you know the song is about Sarina Esmailzadeh, a 16-year old-Iranian who died after being beaten by security forces during the Woman, Life, Freedom protests.

Christopher Endrinal once more: “What stands out for me on this EP is Adam’s bass lines. In recent years his playing has incorporated more funk. There’s an attitude in his lines that wasn’t there before. His bass part has always been thumpy and broad, but on Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience–and especially this new EP–he’s going after the lines instead of relegating himself to the background (not that Adam’s sound is ever really in the background). But the interlude in “Song Of The Future” (2:19-2:49)...oof, that’s a nice bass line.”

“Wildpeace”

“Sometimes the shape of an album is easy to visualize, and I see “Wildpeace” as a straight vertical line that divides Days of Ash in half, roughly,” Kelly Eddington says.

I was just sleep-deprived enough as I was writing this reflection to realize what it reminded me of, with its ambient chords and technological quirks applied to the Nigerian artist Adeola Fayehun’s voice as she recites Yehuda Amichai’s poem: the spoken-word interlude “Fitter, Happier” on Radiohead’s OK Computer.

“One Life at a Time”

This one is a cousin to “The Troubles,” all atmosphere and keening and a self-mocking refrain:

You say you wanna save the world
Well, how you gonna get that right
You say you wanna save the world tonight

A very clever songwriting trick, capturing the voice of the Critic in one’s own head and putting it on the page. Somewhere–probably more than once–Bono has said that as a kid he was puzzled by the very notion of writer’s block–a writer who thinks they have nothing to say should write that down: “I think I have nothing to say.” He has an answer for the Critic at the ready: “One life at a time.”

And this is something I have seen U2 live out. They have a tremendous spotlight directed at them as music superstars; they take that spotlight and turn it on Palestinian activist Awdah Hathaleen, in this case, or Renee Good, or Sarina Esmailzadeh. Love is paying attention. Believing in the power of the people means believing in individual persons, not a faceless collective. It’s why I don’t really think of myself as knowing U2 fans; instead, I know Aaron, Anca, Andrew, Avril, Beth, Cathleen, Christopher, Daniel, David, Derek, Hillary, Jenny, Joshua, Justin, Kelly, Kenneth, Khoa, Kristal, Lisa, Matt, PJ, Rob, Scott, Sherry, a couple of Steves, Tassoula, Tim, Verlinda…

Which brings us to

“Yours Eternally”

I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to mention The Return of Larry. When U2 last performed concerts, they did so without Larry Mullen, who needed surgery and recovery time after decades of beating up on things. Having him back playing with U2 has a “nature is healing” vibe.

Larry would have the appellation “of the martial drumbeat” if Homer put him in an epic poem. I picture him in the studio, learning for the first time that this song was an imagined letter from the Ukrainian frontlines: he’d want to go full throttle, but he would also like to prevent re-injury. In the new digital issue of Propaganda (I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to mention The Return of Propaganda, the official U2 magazine, here as a fortieth anniversary special edition), Larry says he is changing how he is drumming, and these changes are about “my approach and intention.” His intention here gives us inhalations and exhalations, restraint and intensity. Listen for how the drums are silent, or just providing a pulse, for long stretches, and then rattle like an ambush.

So, yes, this song is set in Ukraine: it features singer Taras Topolia, who himself served as a paramedic after Russia invaded his country. The way Bono accents unexpected syllables seems to be a nod toward someone speaking English as a second language, and the wry humor (I love “Dearest friends or whatever/we are calling ourselves these days”) feels very true to the Ukrainian spirit.

But it’s true to U2’s spirit as well. I hear it as a full-throated, full-hearted declaration of loyalty. Fifty years after that first practice together in high school, each band member says to every one of his mates, and then to all of us:

Don’t bet on gettin’ rid of me
Yours eternally

Postscript: in a fit of giddiness, I wrote to friends back home, “It’s Ash Wednesday, U2 just surprise-released a six-song EP and I am seeing Colbert tonight. Can this day get any Angela-er?”

To which one friend, knowing my love for the mythical beasts, replied, “You could find out that Hare Krishnas have unicorn rides in the garden.”

I kid you not—on my way to the airport the next day, I discovered I was sitting under this subway ad:

Part of why I am writing Eclecticity is to support Dutchtown South Community Corporation (DSCC). I believe in its vision of equitable, thriving neighborhoods on the South Side of St. Louis. Any money I receive from paid subscriptions to Eclecticity will be donated to DSCC.

“I just feel so helpless right now.”

More than one friend has said this to me recently. The awfulness–killings, detentions, and rising measles outbreaks, just to name a few examples–is so heavy it can feel paralyzing.

Then I read the large, friendly letters headlining the introduction to Cynthia Changyit Levin’s new book Advocacy Made Easy: “YOU ARE NOT POWERLESS.”

Those words alone soothed and encouraged me.

I know Levin through volunteering together for the ONE Campaign, where we advocate and lobby Congress to show global leadership, particularly by confronting health and poverty inequities affecting millions of Africans. So I reached out to learn more about this, her second book, an expansion of ideas first explored in her debut, From Changing Diapers to Changing the World: Why Moms Make Great Advocates and How to Get Started.

“What I saw was a need in our country right now for just a really clear, practical handbook to give you the nuts and bolts about the advocacy process for seven particular actions that I think are particularly powerful,” she told me in a conversation via Zoom.

Levin based her handbook on her years of experience as a volunteer for myriad advocacy organizations.

Her own journey into advocacy began when she brought her newborn home. “I had wanted to breastfeed because I heard that that was the best. But what I didn’t understand is that my child wasn’t getting the nutrition that they needed from me. My child wasn’t thriving. There were no wet diapers and I could tell my baby was getting weaker. I called my doctor, she explained I needed to supplement, so my husband jumped into the car on Christmas Eve and picked up some formula and that baby guzzled it down.”

While the crisis was averted, it quickly led Levin to reflect. “I saw how a simple intervention like formula and clean water can really turn a baby’s life around,” she said, adding that she knew formula and other nutritional interventions were not readily available for infants and young children in many parts of the world.

What happened to mothers and children who didn’t have access to such life-saving measures?

People at Levin’s church saw how passionate she was about this and invited her to begin volunteering for Bread for the World, a Christian agency focused on ending global hunger.

“They invited me to start writing letters to Congress,” Levin said. “That was the very first step. It was something that I could do in the middle of the night when a baby woke me up crying.”

Advocacy gives Levin an opportunity to do something about the inequities of hunger, health care, and poverty, “to live out that word of the Bible to feed the hungry, to take care of our neighbors.”

Levin’s commitment is one that honors human dignity, and she extends that respect to the lawmakers she seeks to influence. She aspires to practice “relational advocacy,” something she describes as “a wonderful way to break through the partisan divisiveness, to build relationships with aides, and hopefully members of Congress, [using] stories; keeping the conversation issue-based instead of party-based.”

One encounter with a senator from her home state of Missouri gave her an opportunity to reflect deeply not just on this philosophy, but how controversial it can be.

“Josh Hawley had photo opportunities for constituents that would come meet with him in D.C.,” Levin recalled. “You could sign up for an afternoon coffee and everybody would have their opportunity to talk with the senator for, oh, maybe three minutes or something like that and have a photograph taken.”

In 2023, Levin was in Washington with the ONE Campaign lobbying for continued congressional support for PEPFAR, AIDS relief funding that began under President George W. Bush in 2003. She decided to use the photo op with Hawley to continue the advocacy conversation she’d begun with his aides. “I put on my ONE Campaign t-shirt, and I just came in with a lot of energy. My goal was to be positive, energetic, memorable, and to find something that I agreed with the senator on, because that is often the basis of relational advocacy at its best,” she said.

After standing in a long line, Levin finally reached Hawley and asked if he knew about PEPFAR. He had, adding that he considered it the best thing President George W. Bush had ever done.

When it came time for a photo, Levin said, “Would you play rock, paper, scissors with me?” Hawley agreed, and their photo captures the surprise on both of their faces when they both chose “scissors.”

“He looked at me and said, ‘Do you want to do it again?’” Levin recalled. “And I said, ‘Nope, that was perfect because we agreed on something.’”

Levin shared the picture of the two of them on social media, which prompted two main types of responses. “From people who engage in relational advocacy–from the ONE campaign, RESULTS, and Bread for the World, I got a very positive response: ‘Thanks for doing the work,’” she said. But others called her naive or foolish, saying Hawley could not be trusted.

The spectrum of responses gave Levin an opportunity to reflect on her goals. “The people who suffer from AIDS and tuberculosis and malaria the most have no way of reaching members of Congress,” she said. “ I feel it is my responsibility as a global neighbor to do everything that I can to help”—including trying to make her message to lawmakers as positive (and as memorable) as possible.

Levin said wrote Advocacy Made Easy with two audiences in mind. The first is people who are inspired to start reaching out to their elected officials, perhaps after a catalyzing event like she experienced after her baby was born. The second is long-time advocates who have friends and family asking them how to get started. With both groups, she recognizes the helplessness people feel when their representatives vote in ways deeply opposite to their values.

“If you have a member of Congress that is on the opposite side of a political spectrum for you, especially then you should be talking to them,” she said.

Levin also puts high value on connecting with advocacy organizations. “If you want to work on global vaccines, you can go to Shot at Life. If you want to work on malaria, you can work with Malaria No More. I’ll say something else about why it’s great to go as a group: it can keep you accountable for yourself,” she said.

“If I set goals, if I tell my ONE campaign buddy Angela that I’m going to call a congressional office, well, I’m more likely to call the office instead of just getting tired and blowing it off because I don’t want to let my teammates down. And those people are going to have your back—you don’t have to feel so alone.”

Advocacy Made Easy is available now at Left Bank Books and can also be ordered online. Find out more at changyit.com. Subscribe to Advocacy Made Easy with Cynthia Changyit Levin on Substack.

Subscribe now

Imagine an island slowly sinking into the sea.

The people of the island have lived there so long, and so self-sufficiently, that while there is a word for “boat” in their vocabulary, they no longer remember how to build one.

They discover, however, that the island is shrinking, bit by bit. Beaches disappear, then trees on the edge of the forest. Water is claiming everything.

A young girl grabs one end of a piece of string, and hands the other end to her parents. “If we fall into the ocean, I don’t want to lose hold of you.” She then thinks of her best friend. She ties another string to the first, and runs to her friend’s house. This means her friend needs to bring her parents and brothers and sisters too. More strings are tied.

More mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, grandparents, grandbabies, cousins, teachers, students, doctors, patients, priests, deacons, best friends, childhood friends, family friends, acquaintances and enemies tie knots together. The web is thick with overlaps and windings. Water laps at everyone’s heels as they stand in a circle clutching the ends of strings.

And when the water erases the ground beneath their feet, a strong wind catches the web up, and the inhabitants of the island keep holding on as if they are clutching the end of a kite string, or better yet, a parachute. They float like this all the way to a new island.

The young girl smiles. “Ah! We must have built ourselves a boat!”

Tying one string to the next

My idea of a good life is holding a fair number of strings in my hand, knowing that I can tug on one to feel the corresponding tug from a friend at the other end. I like the feeling of being connected myself, and I also like connecting one person to another. Perhaps this space, in all its eclecticity, can be where we can find some common ties.

Why “Eclecticity”?

To me the most beautiful cloth is woven of the most disparate threads, with every color and thickness imaginable, and a few metallic strands thrown in. In this Substack, I’ll write about faith, community, art, music, St. Louis, history, idealists, science—any number of things. So, what ends up here will be an eclectic mix.

(The name “Eclecticity” is also a nod to The Eclectic Mix, a radio show I hosted for a few precious years.)

What to expect

All the writing I do here will be free to all, but if you like what you see and want to contribute, you have that option, too.

Part of why I am doing this is in support of Dutchtown South Community Corporation (DSCC), because I believe in its vision of equitable, thriving neighborhoods on the South Side of St. Louis. Any money I receive from paid subscriptions to Eclecticity will be donated to DSCC. Occasionally, I will share a donation link for DSCC where, if you are so inspired, you may support them directly.

I also have a “founding member” support level. I will thank you profusely if you choose to be a founding member! And DSCC will thank you, too.