Black Dot Diary

What’s it like to be on stage with U2? I never dreamed I’d ever find out. But life is full of twists, turns and gifts as I dis­cov­ered at U2’s Van­cou­ver show on Octo­ber 28, 2009.

U2’s music has been with me through a lot of my life — births, cel­e­bra­tions, deaths, dances, epipha­nies. Their music takes me to the same place I go when I’m writ­ing poetry — the almost-​undefinable, mag­i­cal place where the poetry gets lift off and seems to write itself.

I’d like to think I’m dif­fer­ent in some way from all the other U2 fans, but the truth is I’m just one of mil­lions, unlikely to ever to meet Bono.

But last night in Vancouver’s BC Place, I did get to go up on stage with U2 as a small part of the band’s amaz­ing 360 tour for their lat­est album No Line on the Hori­zon, which is fast becom­ing one of my favourites.

My story starts when I applied to vol­un­teer for One​.org, the global advo­cacy orga­ni­za­tion and cam­paign. Co-​founded by Bono and other cam­paign­ers, One.org’s mis­sion is to fight against extreme poverty and pre­ventable dis­eases. The cam­paign has helped focus much-​needed world atten­tion on Africa’s plight in particular.

About 30 of us were cho­sen to vol­un­teer and to spend the hours before the show ask­ing concert-​goers to add their voices to One.org’s two mil­lion other mem­bers (no, there was no money involved). As a spe­cial sur­prise for the vol­un­teers, One’s ener­getic vol­un­teer coor­di­na­tor Matt announced we would not only get to watch the show from inside the cir­cle, we would be in the show.

The plan was for us to join many of U2’s crew onstage dur­ing the song “Walk On”, an evoca­tive, haunt­ing song ded­i­cated to Aung San Suu Kyi, a 64-​old Burmese woman who has been under mil­i­tary house arrest for 14 years. In 1990, she was elected Prime Min­is­ter by 59% of the vote but her deten­tion by the junta stopped her from tak­ing office. She is still imprisoned.

We were to walk out onto the outer ring sur­round­ing cen­tre stage, each hold­ing up a mask imprinted with the like­ness of Aung San Suu Kyi — then turn and face the audience.

As we got ready for our entrance, I could not believe I was about to face 50,000 peo­ple. Then I heard the open­ing notes to “Walk On” and I held back tears. The song, with its lyrics “…all that you can’t leave behind…”, brought back the entire past year to me. I had watched my Mom die of lung can­cer, tak­ing with her the only thing she couldn’t leave behind — love. At least I truly hope that’s what she took with her.

I stepped onto the stage think­ing not only of Aung San Suu Kyi but also of my Mom, now free of the prison of her pain. I felt like she was watch­ing me there. And, ok, I thought of my best friend and my brother who were sit­ting at the back of the sta­dium beside the seat I would have occu­pied. There was a wee bit of guilt there for me.

Walk­ing on that stage was a moment I’ll never for­get, with the bass and drums thrum­ming, the clear, soar­ing sound of Edge’s gui­tar and Bono’s voice, so mag­i­cally familiar.

I couldn’t see the band, but I briefly expe­ri­enced what it must be like to see through their eyes — to look out at thou­sands and thou­sands of peo­ple with their hands raised in sol­i­dar­ity to human rights and the one­ness that is pos­si­ble when hearts and minds unite.

As we left the stage (try­ing to walk straight on the cat­walk with the masks still held to our faces) I caught a glimpse of Bono in the shad­ows. Then it was over and we were back by the stage for the rest of the con­cert, hav­ing the time of our lives and redis­cov­er­ing why these guys are the world’s best band.

Thank you to One​.org for an amaz­ing expe­ri­ence. I would have gladly vol­un­teered any­how (but, wow, what an unfor­get­table sur­prise!). One​.org has shown that the Inter­net is a pow­er­ful tool for peace­fully hold­ing politi­cians account­able and rais­ing aware­ness of some of the most crit­i­cal issues of our time. Protest in our times is alive and well — on the web as well as in the streets.

Talk­ing to peo­ple before the con­cert last night and sign­ing them up was an enlight­en­ing expe­ri­ence in itself. Peo­ple open up about what they cared about in the world, and what their hopes and fears about the future were. We are all more alike than different.

It’s easy to be cyn­i­cal but it’s far more coura­geous to be hope­ful, so thank you, U2, for the music and the message.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 30th, 2009 at 1:00 am and is filed under Art, Community, Media, Mind, Music, Poetry, Spirit, U2. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.