An Open Letter to Bono

So you've published an autobiography. That's great! The world needs more memoirs by rock stars the way it needs more self-help books by movie stars and crime thrillers by politicians. No, I haven't read your book, I'm not going to, and this isn't even about your book, it's about Achtung Baby. And about the fact, which I and the world learned during all the publicity for your book, without even trying to learn anything about you, because that's how outsized the publicity has been, filling every nook and cranny, that you've been married for 40 years. To a woman you've been with since you joined U2. Hey congratulations.

You're very old -- you're actually a year older than I am! Wow! That's old! -- so I  may have to remind you: in 1991, U2 released an album called Achtung Baby, in which you wailed and screamed about your broken heart. Out here in the general public, millions of us thought we could relate, because we've all been dumped at least once. We listened to you agonizing through songs like "The Fly," "One" and "Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses," and from the way you carried on, we all thought: Wow, that guy has been dumped like a bag of dirty laundry! Like a dump truck's worth of garbage! Like a very large block of BST, late in the movie Wall Street!

 

But, apparently, no. Since you've been married since 1982, to a woman you've been with since several years before that -- hey, congratulations again, well done -- that means that what sounded, to any normal person listening in 1991, like you getting dumped, was you having a rough patch! Sleeping on the sofa for a night -- maybe for two nights in a row!

You let all of us out here in the real world believe that you understood. We heard you sing lines like "Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief/ All kill their inspiration and sing about the grief," and, especially if we were artistic types, we staggered around in agony, clutching out heads and screaming, "No! No! What have I done?!" when what we had done was destroy a beautiful relationship and then attempt to write a novel about it. Maybe with a happy ending unlike real life. But we never finished it. Because all we were doing was trying to hang on to the most wonderful thing that had happened to us, although it was gone. That was why we could never finish that novel. Because finishing would mean letting go That was why why had to stop trying to finish it, and let go.

And we thought you had done something similar. Now it's not at all clear what you did. Got your wife to stop speaking to you for an entire afternoon, something like that, apparently. 

I got the one word "ONE" tattooed onto my freaking forearm, you humongous jerk!

All the best. I'm glad you're so happily married. Really.

Yr pal,

The Wrong Monkey