I'm sorry...

...but here I am making another post less than an hour after my last one. I just had a sudden urge to share something with you, that's all. (These urges must be obeyed.)

My thoughts on trying to compare U2 and Jane Austen.

It's hard.

One of the main reasons is: Jane Austen relies solely on words. Therefore her language is always going to be a lot more well-crafted and interesting than U2's. However, U2 relies, in the main, on music. Whatever language they use has to fit itself to music. As Bono writes in one of their latest singles 'Vertigo', "a feeling is so much stronger than a thought". And that is true in that particular song.

This makes it hard to decide between them.

Specific examples: Here's an excerpt from Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen. "The evening passed off in equal indulgence of feeling. [Marianne] played over every favourite song that she had been used to play with Willoughby, every air in which their voices had been oftenest joined, and sat at the instrument gazing on every line of music that he had written for her, until her heart was so heavy that no farther sadness could be gained; and this nourishment of grief was every day applied. She spent whole hours at the pianoforte alternately singing and crying; her voice often totally suspended by tears."
Now that has got everything! The lyrical language, the music, the sadness, the feeling, even the humour at one point.

Whereas 'Sometimes You Can't Make it On Your Own', a song I love by U2, says - "You don't have to put up a fight / You don't have to always be right / Let me take some of the punches / For you tonight / ... / And it's you when I look in the mirror / And it's you when I don't pick up the phone / Sometimes you can't make it on your own."
That's hardly very lyrical but it's got all the FEELING, especially with the music.

I'm sorry to bore you with this. It had to come out. Let me just say right now that you DON'T actually have to read this post. :)

I feel I have to reach a conclusion, however. Let me just say that if I could only take five things to a desert island with me, they would be:
a) sustenance (allright, I know I'm cheating on that one, it should
be food AND water)
b) Persuasion by Jane Austen
c) U2 - How to dismantle an atomic bomb
d) a stereo
e) sunblock