"As we enter the park, I want to play for you U2's Joshua Tree album.... so just listen and take it all in", our guide Tom said, as he cruised into one of the most austere, expansive and hauntingly beautiful places on earth, Joshua Tree National Park.
I have had many blessings in my life and one of them is the opportunity to travel. This November, My family decided to explore the desert with our long time friends and their children. From the ice-capped mountains to the chic mid-century modern architectural mecca of Palm Springs, we discovered the American Southwest and the many faces of California, yet what resonated with me the most was my experience at Joshua Tree National Park. With it's desert landscape filled with rows of Joshua Trees and boulders the size of buildings seemingly positioned by the hand of God, you feel how insignificant you are and how vast the planet we live on is.
As Tom played U2s iconic Joshua Tree hits, "Where the Streets have no name" and "I still haven't found what I'm looking for", I couldn't help but feel perhaps what U2 themselves felt as they traversed the US touring for their 4th album, Unforgettable Fire in 1985. These timeless and emotional songs combined with the endless alien desert in front of me evoked feelings of a land full of danger as well as endless possibilities.
As reported by Perry in the Independent, U2 "fell in love with America" during this tour. But he goes on to write that their experience with American Foreign Policy left them with a dichotomous view of the country. he writes "Struck by the contrast between these competing visions of the most powerful nation on earth, the fantasy and the brutal reality, Bono sketched out ideas for the next U2 album, which he tentatively titled The Two Americas".
The Two Americas, became the Joshua Tree after Bono changed his mind during the cover art shoot in the Mojave desert. As Perry writes " It was named after the desert plant dubbed by Mormon settlers after the Old Testament prophet Joshua because their stretching branches appeared to be raised in prayer. The album would become the most successful of the Irish band’s long career".
The Two Americas. One saturated by polarizing partisanship, economic inequality and rampant violence and the other characterized by freedom, liberty, opportunity, and natural beauty seem to exist simultaneously and in precarious balance, with the scales wobbling back and forth every few years.
Political musings aside, What I realized that moment riding through the park listening to U2 was that our life is a string of moments and memories. Many of these moments, are watermarked or punctuated by music. So no matter how distant the event. the moment can be triggered or relived by hearing a song. Neuroscientists and Psychologist have known this for awhile and have even mapped the neurotransmitter response to music.
The culmination of all these little moments seared into you brain by certain music is called the soundtrack of your life.
We all have one. Whether its one artist or multiple. Whatever the genre, songs often take us back to seminal events. For me, and I suspect for many my vintage, U2's various albums have watermarked or punctuated our lives, First love, first breakup, first death, perhaps a certain trip. Odds are, there is a song or songs stuck in your brain somewhere that brings it all back.
I specifically remember listening to U2's "Far Away, So Close" from their 1993 album Zooropa, while sitting on a balcony in the former Soviet republic of Lithuania in the 1998. I can picture everything about that scene still to this day if I hear just a few chords of that song.
This moment with my family in the wild expansive desert peppered with Joshua Trees will forever be locked into my memory by the Joshua Tree album. Perhaps its wishful thinking but maybe my kids one day when they are older might hear the guitar intro to "Where the Streets have no name" and think fondly of the day in the desert with Mom and Dad and the vastness of the world they live in. More likely, they will have their own soundtrack of their lives, likely Taylor Swift inspired, but equally emotive and particular to them. So I guess there is only one thing left to ponder.
What's the the soundtrack of your life?
Comments