I heard last night that Horton Foote (March 14, 1916 – March 4, 2009) died a couple of days ago. If you don't know Horton Foote, you should really check out his screenwriting chops. He's also known for writing the Academy Award-winning Tender Mercies (one of my personal all-time favorite films and filmed near my home town--the rolling prairie land that makes up its geographical setting fills me with longing too deep for words...memory, dreams, Sehnsucht).On another note...U2's No Line on the Horizon is quite the record. When I first heard it, I was dubious. I thought, "Ah, their music's gettin' soft...what is this poppy stuff." But then, through more listening, I think No Line is a truly comic album: an album that celebrates "love" that "can heal such a scar." This sentiment expresses a perfect answer to Achthung Baby's "Love is clockworks and cold steel / Fingers too numb to feel...Love is drowning in a deep well /All the secrets, and no one to tell./ Take the money, honey...Blindness." The former is the hopeful answer to the tragic limitations found in the latter's disordered love (HT to my friend and colleague, Brett, for that last thought). Bono has progressed as a writer, his artistic vision moving toward the wholeness of the time when heaven and earth will be one--as in "no line on the horizon."
If you don't own No Line already, give it a listen at U2's Myspace page. It has free streaming of the whole album. I'll leave you with a live version of the title song "No Line on the Horizon."
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