In dozens of early letters, the artist Georgia O’Keeffe raved about walking in extreme wind. “I love it,” she wrote, again and again. A few other walkers have enthused about mud, snow, rain, darkness and cold. And yet, as the days draw in and the temperature falls, most of us hang up our walking boots.
Big mistake!
Stalls heave with huge sides of bluefin tuna, expertly transformed into more manageable portions by knife-wielding workers, while early-morning shoppers pause to inspect boxes of squid, flounder and sea pineapples landed only hours earlier.
Despite the bounty on display in this small port town, a growing body of scientific evidence – backed up by anecdotes from fishermen – points to a bleak future for Japanese cuisine as a result of the climate emergency.
Like a great many famous people who go by just one name, Bono isn’t really known for subtlety. As the lead singer and public face of U2, the biggest rock band on the planet during much of their existence, he fills stages and records with a largeness of self. He’s never been shy about wanting to change the world (not that there’s anything wrong with that). He has so much juice that he convinced Apple to flood every iTunes user with the 2014 U2 album “Songs of Innocence.” He’s kind of a big deal.
So it’s a pleasant surprise to discover that his first book, the musical memoir “Surrender: 40 songs, One Story,” is defined largely by humility. This is an introspective story written by a man whose spirit is never far removed from the sadness and grief of his childhood; the hunger, literal and figurative, of a teen wannabe rocker; and the gratitude of one who worked his butt off and made it to the top. Some have speculated that a ghostwriter is responsible for these pages. His publishers say no, and I believe them. The tone feels too honest and direct, the details and memories too sharp. And he apologizes for that whole iTunes thing.
But like U2, “Surrender” soars whenever the spotlight comes on. Bono is never more powerful, on the page or the stage, than when he strives for the transcendence that only music can offer. “I had to create that fusion, to make a chemistry set of the crowd,” he says, “finding some moment that none of us had occupied before, or would ever again.”