Last week, I heard this in Jewel--the nice, big one on Western, where you'd expect more of an elevated, er, moment, as they say now. I finally get it, this song.
I overlooked it, the first song on The Joshua Tree, all this time, fast-forwarding my tape purchased at Rose Records on Michigan Avenue Rock Records/Rolling Stones Records on Washington [edit: I think I've misremembered where and what the records store was. I was sure it was across from a Bennigans on the east side of Michigan Ave, but who can reconstruct chronology and geography from 33 years ago?] in the fall of 1987 to deeper cuts and deeper meanings. "Bullet the Blue Sky" fit my unending teen rage, "With or Without You" to whine and feel longing, and, later, "Red Hill Mining Town" and "One Tree Hill" squeezed my heart tight.
Sure, it sounds like winding through the curves of Jackson County, Kentucky, or coasting down the foothills of Virginia to sea level. This was a road-trip album.
But now, now, this song feels like freedom to me. And I don't mean the freedom to move about afforded by the bigger-footprinted, latest version of Jewel, retooled for the 2020s for the yups or whatever you'd call them now of Roscoe Village. Bigger aisles, more shelves to scan, less dust, less grumpiness.
No, it's the freedom I am going to feel so soon I don't want to even let myself think about it. Keep head down, keep in the game of working and preparing meals, keep making headway through tv episodes.
But I don't have to, any more, much longer.
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