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April 29, 2006
Bono: the book, Love: the book, and other thoughts
The interview format is not as revealing as memoir. There aren't as many beautiful passages in this book as there are in Chronicles, Volume One. Still, it is a compelling read. It offers a way into the mind of An Artist that is accessible and understandable.
Most artists stray farther afield in their pursuit of art than Bono. At the heart of his life the same people remain: his high school sweetheart, their four kids, his high school band mates, and the two close friends from grade school. I've never heard the tale of such a provincial person having such a worldwide impact.
Then again, it is the personal that I look for in biographical material. So I'm left wondering how exactly his marriage works; what his wife is like; how his children feel about his extended absences.
Still, I used to believe it was important to cast aside the past to see the future. Certainly, you can't dwell too much on what's behind you. Bono certainly doesn't. And yet, he's maintained strong relationships with people from his childhood; how many of us can say that? And what is it about our society that pushes people to cast people aside?
Perhaps I'm over-generalizing. In my life, the only constant has been my family, a group of people I am more grateful for everyday. And my college mates are true pillars of friendship. Perhaps something about my restlessness and inability to stay still in the same city for longer than a few years is the reason I marvel at people whose ties are so long-lasting.
Harry Frankfurt, that professor who wrote On Bullshit just published a new book, The Reason of Love. His idea is that the pursuit of love is the key to life. Publisher's description:
This beautifully written book by one of the world's leading moral philosophers argues that the key to a fulfilled life is to pursue wholeheartedly what one cares about, that love is the most authoritative form of caring, and that the purest form of love is, in a complicated way, self-love.I read that description last week and it's been haunting me ever since. As U2 says, "but I still haven't found what I'm looking for." I like the path I'm on and I can see the future: it's still an Impressionist blur but it is bright and shiny and I'm full of excitement at bringing it to fruition.Harry Frankfurt writes that it is through caring that we infuse the world with meaning. Caring provides us with stable ambitions and concerns; it shapes the framework of aims and interests within which we lead our lives. The most basic and essential question for a person to raise about the conduct of his or her life is not what he or she should care about but what, in fact, he or she cannot help caring about.
The most important form of caring, Frankfurt writes, is love, a nonvoluntary, disinterested concern for the flourishing of what is loved. Love is so important because meaningful practical reasoning must be grounded in ends that we do not seek only to attain other ends, and because it is in loving that we become bound to final ends desired for their own sakes.
Frankfurt argues that the purest form of love is self-love. This sounds perverse, but self-love--as distinct from self-indulgence--is at heart a disinterested concern for whatever it is that the person loves. The most elementary form of self-love is nothing more than the desire of a person to love. Insofar as this is true, self-love is simply a commitment to finding meaning in our lives.
I watched BBC World News tonight and was amused at what they consider "world" sport. In their mind world = EU, emphasis on the UK. So congrats to Chelsea!
And poor Cubbies...they got their asses whooped today by the Milwaukee Brewers, 16 to 2. Maybe next year they'll have enough healthy players to have a shot at the big time...
Posted by cj at April 29, 2006 11:15 PM