(Red) Wire

I love people that help and things that promote change and last night I stumbled onto the (Red) Wire launch and being a music fiend, I was very intrigued by the site and concept.

What drew me in was U2’s new Christmas video, their cover of  “I Believe in Father Christmas”.

I don’t know why I love U2 as much as I do.  I’ve never traveled halfway across the world to meet another band or singer. No other group or voice has influenced me to write mad, passionate poetry.  No other band can make my heart hurt quite the same way, either.

I bought my first U2 album in 1984.  I still remember that December in ’84 where I didn’t really study as I was so lost in my world of books and music and crazy Jane writings. I would lie next to the little Christmas tree someone snuck into the Annex’s third floor and write while listening to U2 on my headphones. The Annex, a former sorority house at UCLA converted to housing overflow from various sororities, was a strange place for me to live and I ended up there by default after unexpectedly losing my nanny job in Beverly Hills. I wasn’t happy there. I felt lost and overwhelmed.  I was always trying to do something different, take those risks I still take, and nanny job bombed and I felt like a failure.  And because it was a live-in position in Beverly Hills, losing the job meant losing where I lived and the only place I could find to take me was the Annex’s third floor with its big room with dozens of beds.  Each girl had a narrow bed, a night table and a place for clothes and that was it.  I ended up spending a semester there, but my favorite memory was lying next to that little Christmas tree that December listening to Bono sing.

There’s a quality in Bono’s voice, call it a yearning, that made me feel, and hope, and dream, and I still use that to write, but most importantly, I still want that quality in my life.  I never want to stop dreaming.  Never want to stop believing the world can be a good and loving place. 

It’s December second and I believe in Father Christmas.