U2 in London

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Stephen Hawking once said that we are all time travelers, always traveling headlong into the future. What he failed to mention is that we can also travel back in time. The transcendental power of music allows us to revisit past experiences, to reconnect with loved ones we haven’t seen in ages and to savor moments we thought had been lost in time. In fact, music and life experiences are sometimes so inextricably welded together that the thought of one invariably evokes the other.

This is the reason why I couldn’t listen to “Achtung Baby” or even “Joshua Tree” for years on end. I only truly understood the powerful meaning of these albums at the penance of great heartbreak, and what a searing, miserable experience it was. Since then, I could never listen to U2 again with the same innocent bliss of days irrevocably gone by. At least not until tonight.

Seeing U2 play perform live in London for the first time made this time traveler revisit the past while diving into the future. The end result was pure catharsis and sublimation. And the irony of it all? This was actually called the “Innocence + Experience Tour”.