It was a line on our second album, October, that led from one record to the other. In 1981, a young man, I’d sung, “I can’t change the world but I ca… - Bono

The greatest songwriting is never conclusive, but the search for conclusion

Segregation. There was another one. America sees this now but it took a civil rights movement to betray their age. And 50 years ago the U.S. Supreme Court betrayed the age May 17, 1954, Brown vs. Board of Education came down and put the lie to the idea that separate can ever really be equal. Amen to that.

Over the years there have been times when I’ve been mesmerized by a figure in my imagination that I mistook for someone real. A crush that could have crushed my partner’s feelings. At such a moment, while you may not be in control of who or what is beguiling or besotting you, you are in control of what you do about those feelings. The choices you make. Romantic love can enlarge a person or shrink them. Sometimes the most convincing act of love is to just let someone be who they are. Without you. As a songwriter I am attracted to any territory or subject that’s just out-of-bounds, a someone or something new who might take my imagination by surprise. As a man too. This can be problematic. I can have a crush on a person who doesn’t exist. Ali finds other obstacles in the way of her love. Were there days when both of us might resent the obligations our marriage makes of each other? Sure, but neither of us would want to live outside each other’s love as expressed through this old-fashioned but still functional construct called marriage.