by Dona ''69

Sometimes you feel it crawling under your skin, moving slowly as Bono’s voice is going up and down in soft whispers and tiny shouts.... your hips are moving in circles, it’s an intense, sexual feeling, you close your eyes and shivers are going down your spine.. You wish it will never stop; this is “In a Little While”: Bono singing “sweet soul music” and Edge playing acoustic guitar and singing as well.

Sometimes it starts slowly, a tingling sound coming from the bottom of your soul, growing stronger and stronger, finally reaching your ears as if from a long distance.
Then the drums: the music is raising inside yourself, your blood gets sparkling then it starts fizzing, bubbling, boiling; the feeling is rising and you just can’t control it, until Bono gets “I want to run, I want to hide, I want to tear down the walls that hold me inside” and it’s an explosion of energy inside your veins, like a “star exploding in the night”, like a river overwhelming everything along the way and you can’t stop it; and the best part of it it’s that nobody can, there’s no one who can among the 71.000 people surrounding you.

Sometimes you feel like a child looking up to the blue sky, you feel again the pure, unconditioned joy of when the world was brand new to you and you were happy, nose up to the sky, following the trail of your Kite moving in the air.
In “Kite” music is drawing in the sky those very same movements and you feel fresh, free, happy and innocent as if you were just born, like Bono’s little child John Abraham, “Blue”, to which the song was dedicated.
I’m not sure he wanted to dedicate this song also to Carlo Giuliani, victim of violence during Genova’s current “black weekend”, but even if he didn’t, the words he wrote for “Kite” are a perfect epigraph for this young boy’s death: “I’m not afraid to die, I’m not afraid to live, and when I’m flat on my back I hope to feel like I did”.

Sometimes it’s your rage, your anger, your need to say “NO!”, “STOP IT!” and you shout at the top of your voice “NO MORE, NO MORE... WIPE YOUR TEARS AWAY..” and feel that never before had these words had more sense than today, after what happened just yesterday in Genoa and the world’s just watching, speechless.
And, what is most serious, the “Big Eight” are speechless, as if they could not speak out (or maybe understand???) what is really happening to the world.
Bono is just expressing everybody’s feeling as he shouts “VIOLENCE IS NEVER RIGHT, in the streets of Genoa, VIOLENCE IS NEVER RIGHT in the streets of Northern Ireland”. You think of the images of riots in the streets, blood and violence you have just seen on TV 3 hours before the show and start silently to cry.

Sometimes it springs from the bottom of your soul, it’s an intense, often heavy feeling, like a pain in the chest. “With or without you”: it’s slow but continuous, dark, coming from the depths of your heart and it expresses emotions, sorrows, pains which you tried to forget but were just sleeping, and now they erupt like a river in flood and you have to face them, ‘cause now they’ve turned into music and you cry and shout for yourself and your poor heart bleeding, finally releasing all anguish and fears.
Thousands of hands rise up to the air, and it’s shocking to think that every person will be going through a storm of personal feelings and emotions which this song can and will raise inside.

Sometimes the words which you hear yourself singing along are the most appropriate, the simplest, the only words you would have liked to find to describe how you feel.
“You gotta stand up straight, carry your own weight, these tears are going nowhere, baby”.. “.. and if you way should falter along the stony pass, it’s just a moment, this time will pass”. “.. and hardness, it sets in, you need some protection, the thinner the skin....”
It’s just the way you feel, exactly, precisely the way you feel and no one could say it better.

Sometimes it’s a universal feeling, a loving glance to the persons you care for and who are sharing this moment with you: your friends, your lover, the persons who help you bearing the burden of life, those who share with you joy and sorrow.
“One life, you get to share it, it leaves you baby if you don’t care for it”.
And you cuddle up together in a big, huge embrace, as big as the stadium, as big as Italy, as big as Europe, as big as the World.
“One love, one blood, one life you’ve got to do what you should. ONE LIFE WITH EACH OTHER, SISTERS, BROTHERS. ONE LIFE BUT NOT THE SAME, WE GET TO CARRY EACH OTHER, CARRY EACH OTHER, ONE...”
You know the world is becoming small and you feel even smaller before the universe.
You’re not different from any other human being on the earth; you, your friends, the guys sitting next to you, all the people in the Stadium, Larry, Adam, Edge and Bono, all the people in the world are now a family, and you’ve got to take care of each other.

Bono is wearing a T-shirt and a worn-out pair of jeans; Edge, Larry, Adam look very simple now, like common people, and you feel as never before that they are just like you, four “ordinary people” but so special inside.
That’s their force and you know it can be yours as well.

You realise with surprise what you are thinking; that if a day should come when you apparently hadn’t any reason to stay alive, U2’s music would always be there and this would be enough. And the reasons are all listed above.

You look to the giant screen: Bono has the very same expression you remember on his face during the “Red Rocks” 1983 concert.
It’s nice to see he’s found the same freshness and spirit, he doesn’t even look older, not to your eyes in this moment.

You’ve just had 2 hours and ½ of strong feelings, intense emotions, love, joy, pain, rage, sweat and you are thankful for that.
U2 have just had 2 and ½ hours of unconditioned love and adoration, spontaneous and uninterrupted singing, handclapping and shouting.
Bono is looking satisfied and moved to the point he whispers something to Edge’s ear and states “one more song for you”.
We all know this is an encore which was NOT foreseen, but anyway the Italian audience is famous for having always been hot and responding so.... we deserve it!!
Bono starts singing “Out of control” and he reminds us that more than 20 years have passed since he first performed it.

It’s the end of the night but nobody wants to let them go.
We could just stay there for the whole night and over.
We look into each other’s faces and know we’ve just lived together a great moment.
Everyone of us knows, deep inside, that all those feelings, all the emotions experienced, all those songs are “all that you can’t leave behind” and everyone is now leaving Stadio delle Alpi with his own personal suitcase packed and full.
And the heart inside is still beating.

These were, to me, some of the best moments of what I experienced yesterday.
I had seen U2 during “Joshua Tree”, “Zooropa” and “POPMart” tours, but this was really unique, just like the first time.
I apologize for not concentrating on “technical” details, I think what I and all those who were there felt is something more worthy describing. I hope I have managed to express what I think most of the loving U2 fans who were there felt yesterday.
U2, thank you for being born.
Dona ‘69

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