This is all interesting talk in a bar, but it has real consequences for

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people who live in Ireland. U2 has always rejected the violence on both sides in Northern Ireland. Although Bono waving a white flag onstage turned into a cartoon, it was originally in the context of an Irish kid saying, in "Sunday Bloody Sunday," that both sides had to lay down their arms and forget the past. It's a lot to ask of the Irish, for whom the past is often their most treasured possession. By calling for peace U2 was accused of ducking the issue. They clarified their position by an­nouncing on the Under a Blood Red Sky version of "Sunday Bloody Sunday," "This song is not a rebel song." When that wasn't deemed clear enough, Bono took the literally life-threatening step of including in the film Rattle and Hum an onstage condemnation of Republican violence, filmed the night of the IRA's Enniskillen bombing:

"Let me tell you somthin.' I've had enough of Irish Americans who haven't been back to their country in twenty or thirty years comin' up to talk to me about the resistance, the revolution back home. And the glory of the revolution and the glory of dying for the revolution. FUCK THE REVOLUTION! They don't talk about the glory of killing for the revolution. What's the glory in taking a man from his bed and gunning him down in front of his wife and children? Where's the glory in that? Where's the glory in bombing a Remembrance Day parade of old-age pensioners, their medals taken out and polished up for the day? Where's the glory in that? To leave them dying or crippled for life or dead. Under the rubble of a revolution. That, the majority of the people in my country don't want. No more!"

It's a heartfelt sentiment, but as U2 are Protestants (even Larry, raised Catholic, embraced charismatic Christianity in his teens) it could be misinterpreted as pro-Unionist, which it is not. One of the evidences of Britain's colonization of Ireland is that it is still, for the most part, Protestant Irish who get ahead and succeed in the outside world. If a Catholic wants to be accepted as an artist or writer or musician outside of Ireland, he must first reject Catholicism. Many Irish Catholics would say that the inclination to do that has more to do with the insufferability of the Irish Catholic Church than it does with Protestant preju­dices, but those two phenomena—the pressure from outside to abandon the Church and the Church's militant conservatism—form a blood knot that each side, in its obstinacy, yanks tighter.

The sad truth is that the Irish Catholics were screwed by the British Protestants as completely and unjustifiably as any race in history has

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been screwed by any other . . . but that cannot be undone now. What was lost can never be returned; it no longer exists. As Europe moves closer to unity the notion of England and Ireland continuing to fight over Ulster becomes anachronistic. Certainly the Northern Protestants have every right to wish not to be subjected to the laws of a state dominated by the Catholic Church, a state where, for example, divorce is still illegal. It seems inevitable that Ireland will finally be reunited with Dublin as the capital, but not as a Roman Catholic theocracy. And by the time that reunification comes and the Catholics declare victory, Ireland will have become Protestantized to the point where the differ­ences won't much matter.

Anyway, the drinks are now flowing and the Dubliners are doing what they do best: talking. The specifics of In the Name of the Father have given way to a grand dissection of cinema, drama, and art itself—the usual subjects. Sheridan is insisting that in art there is one creative explosion and all that follows are variations on that. For example, he says to Bono, Elvis Presley was an explosion and all subsequent rock has been variations on Presley. Oedipus Rex was an explosion; Hamlet, for example, is a variation.

This leads Sheridan to insist that he's sure Shakespeare was insane and trying to impose order on his lunacy. That's too much for me. I remind Sheridan that Shakespeare's plots, Hamlet included, had been around for years as entertainment. Shakespeare imposed structure, po­etry, and psychological insight on stories that may indeed have burst from some tribal or primal neurosis—but the neurosis wasn't Shake­speare's.

Bono declares, "Just as a nervous breakdown may be the sane response to insane circumstances—for example, combat—art may be a sort of safety response to violent stimulus. For example, the news."

What's really screwy is when the art you make in response to the news—be it In the Name of the Father or Black Wind or The Satanic Verses— ends up coming back to you as news again. I can't tell you how often since I joined U2's carnival I've gone home with too much information swimming through my brain, turned on the television to unwind, and come face-to-face with whoever or wherever I just left. They told me the future was interactive TV; I just didn't know I wouldn't be able to unplug it.

Meltheads

planning the triplecast/ alien ginsberg writes in the great book of Ireland/ the cyberpunk rules/ how far U2 will go to get out of rehearsing/ bono & gavin captured by british soldiers dressed as flowerpots

As U2 gear up for the final leg of their two years of touring, they have added one more burden to the pile of projects on their backs: the Triplecast. The idea is that while they are in Australia—and in addition to an international pay-per-view TV broad­cast—they will film a concert that will be broadcast in January, through MTV, on three channels at the same time. Each channel will have at least a different angle, at most a different content, so the viewer can sit with his remote control and click between options.

Among those options are going to be people who have influenced U2 reacting to or commenting on or supplying amendments to the music. This afternoon Ned O'Hanlon has poet Alien Ginsberg over at Wind­mill Lane filming his "Cigarette Smoking Rag" to the rhythm of "Numb."

Ginsberg has made a big impression on Bono this trip. Ginsberg and Bono were the last of 140 poets, 120 artists, 9 composers, and one calligrapher to contribute to The Great Book of Ireland, an ambitious (some might say vainglorious) attempt to create a sort of sequel to the ancient Irish Book of Kells. (Hey, they wrote a sequel to Cone with the Wind, right?) A joint venture between Poetry Ireland and the charity Clash-ganna Mills Trust, the book is a huge bound volume of pages made from animal-skin parchment, kept in a wooden box made from a tree planted by W. B. Yeats. Animals, vegetables, and minerals are all lining up to get in on this project!

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