Car accidents, vertigo and U2

One of the fun things I get to do is write for the website @U2. It's a topnotch fan and news site that follows the music, work and influence of the band. I recently wrote an article there about the car accident my family was in and how it relates to U2's "Vertigo." Here's an excerpt.

Spinning. Slipping. Colliding. These are the moments in life when all hell breaks loose, overwhelming us with the chaos and fear of loneliness, uncertainty, doubt and a host of other staggering emotions. This post-9/11 world only adds to feelings of isolation and insecurity. The culture that so quickly engulfs our souls (especially in Western nations) has left us distrustful of politics, unsure of the economy, cynical of science and skeptical of religion. There are moments in life, for many of us, when nothing seems permanent or stable anymore. These are the moments that challenge our assumptions about what is important.
 
U2's "Vertigo" is a song that I've come back to again and again since it showed up in 2004 on the How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb album. As a musical piece, the song was enthusiastically received by fans and critics, often recognized as a modern reinvention of the band's post-punk roots. The grinding guitar and driving rhythm work well to support the emotion of the song. In the official music video, the band members spiral up and down, trying to hold their ground on wildly undulating rings of an enormous bullseye, while being blasted by a gale-force wind in a featureless desert. On the recent 360 tour, images of U2 playing live spun increasingly faster around the gargantuan circular screen until they were a blur of speeding faces. As the lead track on Bomb, "Vertigo" sets a tone for the album and reminds us of the tenuousness of life through both music and lyric.
 
I can identify with Bono's acknowledgment, "I'm at a place called vertigo," and also with Edge's response, "Donde esta?" (loosely meaning, "Where are you?"). The song offers both confession and question. I especially like the Jacknife Lee mix in which Bono sings an alternate lyric in the fourth line:
 
Lights go down
It's dark, the jungle is
Your head can't rule your heart
And fear is taking over every thought
Your eyes are wide
And though your soul, it can't be bought
Your mind can wander
 
Fear. We fear all kinds of things. I'm finally coming to terms with my greatest anxiety: the fear of uncertainty. This gets particularly complicated in a world that never seems to stop spinning, a world that was once predictable but is now so uncertain. My mind wanders.
 
Bono has said "Vertigo" is a commentary on the culture we live in. He talks about the song in U2 By U2.
 
"In the case of 'Vertigo,' I was thinking about this awful nightclub we've all been to. You're supposed to be having a great time and everything's extraordinary around you and the drinks are the price of buying a bar in a Third World country. You're there and you're doing it and you're having it and you sort of don't want to be there. And it felt like the way a lot of people were feeling at that moment, as you turn on the telly or you're just looking around and you see big, fat Capitalism at the top of its mountain, just about to topple. It's that woozy, sick feeling of realizing that here we are, drinking, eating, polluting, robbing ourselves to death. And in the middle of the club, there's this girl. She has crimson nails. I don't even know if she's beautiful, it doesn't matter but she has a cross around her neck, and the character in this stares at the cross just to steady himself."
 
In a 2005 interview with Rolling Stone, Bono suggested that, in the midst of all the turmoil and chaos of life, there are images -- in this case the image of a crucifix -- that can capture our attention so completely that they ground us. It is somehow in these moments, and through these images, that we find hope and meaning. We are finally able to make sense of the insensible. And it is in these moments that love breaks through, teaching us, molding us, grounding us.

For the rest of the article, and more about our car accident, on the @U2 website, click here.