Interpretation

For those who are wondering, the title "Sunlight on My Face" is from the U2 song "Where the Streets Have No Name". Here is the first half of the lyrics:

I want to run I want to hide
I want to tear down the walls
That hold me inside
I want to reach out and touch the flame
Where the streets have no name

I want to feel sunlight on my face
I see the dust cloud disappear
Without a trace
I want to take shelter from the poison rain
Where the streets have no name

Where the streets have no name
Where the streets have no name
We're still building then burning down love
Burning down love
And when I go there I go there with you
It's all I can do

I was thinking today that the effectiveness of the line "I want to feel sunlight on my face" depends on how it is said, or sung. Reciting it in my normal speaking voice I find it ineffective, but as sung by Bono I find it powerful. It is a matter of interpretation.

I have noticed that when people try to interpret someone's art without performing it themselves they are generally way off the truth. The only way to interpret music is to perform it. Then you make your interpretation another truth. I've come to find the whole process of criticism and external interpretation, without performance, abhorent. Usually I would be thinking of classical music, but this song is actually a good example, partly because everyone is familiar with it. I read the wikipedia article and feel the authors' interpretation misses the point and feeling of the song. As I said the song is itself the only true source, but I find that Bono's comments make more sense. From a 1987 interview with Propaganda magazine:

Where the Streets Have No Name' is more like the U2 of old than any of the other songs on the LP, because it’s a sketch — I was just trying to sketch a location, maybe a spiritual location, maybe a romantic location. I was trying to sketch a feeling. I often feel very claustrophobic in a city, a feeling of wanting to break out of that city and a feeling of wanting to go somewhere where the values of the city and the values of our society don’t hold you down. An interesting story that someone told me once is that in Belfast, by what street someone lives on you can tell not only their religion but tell how much money they're making — literally by which side of the road they live on, because the further up the hill the more expensive the houses become. You can almost tell what the people are earning by the name of the street they live on and what side of that street they live on. That said something to me, and so I started writing about a place where the streets have no name...

Erin