Desire: The 5 U2 songs I'd play for you
by Anton Zuiker on January 5, 2025
The U2X channel on SiriusXM often features listeners describing their individual playlists of five U2 songs—the U2 songs I desire the most. As the guest deejay tees up each song, we hear about loved ones, memorable U2 concerts, life and career milestones, and other short anecdotes about what the song means to the person.
I’ve been a fan of U2 since I was in high school, and here are the songs I would play:
- Where the Streets Have No Name from the Joshua Tree album.
- Silver and Gold from the Desire album.
- Mothers of the Disappeared from the Joshua Tree album.
- Stuck in a Moment from the All That You Can’t Leave Behind album.
- Bad on the Wide Awake in America record.
Here’s why:
The first U2 album I bought, on cassette tape in DeKalb in 1987, was The Joshua Tree. My cousin had lent me his yellow Sony Walkman, but I had used my summer money to buy an AIWA personal music device and so most likely listened to the cassette first on that. A couple days a week, after walking the soybean fields, I would drive my big old car to a soccer field on the campus of Northern Illinois University. I arrived early for the pick-up game, so I would sit in the car with the windows down, listening through headphones to that album. Where the Streets Have No Name was my favorite song. It was a nice interlude between work and play. When my teammates and friends arrived, I’d join them on the pitch. To this day, I remember a goal I scored on a long cross from the sideline, the arc of the shot merged with the remembered sounds of that U2 song.
I worked as a new student orientation advisor over two summers during college at John Carroll University. One of those summers, my friends and I watched the U2 concert movie Rattle and Hum multiple times. The Harlem scenes and the gospel rendition of Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For were alway good, but I most liked Silver and Gold, especially when Bono starts to lecture the audience about political and racial equality and then catches himself and says, “Am I buggin’ you? I don’t mean to bug ya.” My friends and I were committed to peace and justice; two of them would serve in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, and I’d eventually join the U.S. Peace Corps. (The newsweeklies at the time were running cover stories asking if Generation X cared about anything. That fuckin’ bugged me.) When we weren’t welcoming new students or rewatching Rattle and Hum, I was watching the World Cup.
I graduated college, deferred my Peace Corps application, and moved to Honolulu. One day after work I walked to the bookstore in nearby Ala Moana Mall, where I purchased my very first issue of the New Yorker magazine. This issue was devoted entirely to a single long feature story about the 1981 massacre at El Mozote in El Salvador. At JCU, I had studied liberation theology, learned about the life and death of Archbishop Óscar Romero, and read dense, intense novels in a class called Latin American Dictators in Literature. So Mark Danner’s investigation about El Mozote held my attention. I’m sure I listened to U2’s Mothers of the Disappeared, a sombre song about killings by dictatorial regimes, at least a few times during the week it took me to read the article. (Often after listening to this U2 song, I’ll listen to these other songs that are in the family: Brothers in Arms by Dire Straits, and both Fathers Footsteps and Mother by Rhythm Corps.)
After college, and Hawaii, and Peace Corps service with my wife, Erin, in the Republic of Vanuatu, we landed in Chapel Hill, North Carolina with an infant daughter. Erin was in graduate school, so during that first year little Anna and I explored campus on foot and took drives around the Piedmont. Anna did not like being in the car seat and she screamed her discomfort. I discovered that she’d go quiet when I played “Down in the River to Pray” from the O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack. We listened to that song more times than I’d watched Rattle and Hum, and when even Alison Krauss couldn’t get Anna to calm down, I’d play Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of but I’d change the words:
“You’ve got to get yourself together
You’ve got stuck in a car seat
And now you can’t get out of it
Don’t say that later will be better
Now you’re stuck in a car seat
And you can’t get out of it.”
Anna grew out of the car seat, grew up to be an amazing young woman, and she doesn’t seem to hold that loving taunt against me.
For Christmas 2023, Erin gave me the perfect gift—U2’s four-song Wide Awake in America on vinyl, which she found in an antiques shop in nearby Pittsboro. I had purchased a turntable, stereo receiver, and good speakers soon after we moved into our new house, and we’d begun to build a record collection. This gift from Erin included Bad, song that I hadn’t really paid attention to in the decades I’ve followed U2. But in the last couple of years, whenever U2X plays the song, I turn up the volume and sing along. I’ve also rewatched the 1985 U2 performance at Live Aid in which they sang Bad. I watched much of that epic concert on the television in the basement of my aunt’s house, though I’m not certain I saw the U2 set.
So those are the five U2 songs I’d play on the radio if given the chance.
And if you happen to visit me here in Chapel Hill, I’d play a few bonus U2 songs: Grace; Tryin’ To Throw Your Arms Around the World; The Wanderer; and 13 (There Is a Light). I’d close out our session with a record by Josh Ritter and a listen to his gentle song, A Certain Light.
U2 has been a constant in my life for nearly 40 years and I’ll keep listening as long as I can. (Another constant: soccer.)
Cathedral winds
by Anton Zuiker on January 4, 2025
There’s a big storm brewing across the midwest and Washington is already bracing for the cold snows to come. Erin and I took Malia for breakfast and then shopping for groceries this morning and then said our goodbyes. Instead of getting to the Smithsonian museum as we had planned, we opted for a short stop at the Washington National Cathedral, where the winds were howling at the awesome bronze gates at the front doors and people were getting tours in the soaring nave.
Next Thursday, Jimmy Carter and his remarkable century of life and service will be honored in a state funeral at the cathedral.
Carter was the first president I was aware of as a child and I admired him then and throughout the decades. Soon after I moved to Hawaii, he was on a book tour and I waited in line at Ala Moana to buy a copy of his memoir, Turning Point. I’m holding it now and looking at his signature. A few years later, when he was promoting his book of poems, Always a Reckoning, and Other Poems, Erin and I went through the line at Booksellers in Beachwood. President Carter’s work on fair elections and global health inspired both our graduate studies in public health and medical journalism.
I wish I could be in Washington for the memorials to President Carter, but I’m glad to have stepped into the sacred space in which he will be remembered by this nation.
Capitol calling
by Anton Zuiker on January 3, 2025
Quick overnight road trip to Washington to deliver Malia to her apartment and spring semester. We’re planning to visit the National Museum of African American History and Culture tomorrow and we’ll be within view of the U.S. Capitol, where a Republican-dominated Congress has opened. I plan to give them all a polite wave while I hold my nose and hope they do something good for the country this year.
Several sources of happiness
by Anton Zuiker on January 2, 2025
In the New Yorker, Jennifer Wilson explores the The New Business of Breakups. I read most of this article earlier this week while I was swinging in the hammock at Sprat Hall Beach. I lingered on this paragraph:
Have you ever had a client whose heart was taken up a hundred per cent by love, I asked. Sohn said yes, absolutely. A person like that, if they lose love, they lose everything. “Sometimes people tell me, ‘Well, that’s not romantic, Elena, saying that love and romance should take up, like, twenty per cent of my heart,’ ” she said. “And then I say, ‘No, no, that’s a misunderstanding, because, if you have several sources for your personal happiness, only then can you be a good partner.’ ” She stopped and looked at me intently. “Otherwise, you are—it’s a very bad word, and I don’t know if it is as bad in English as well, but in German it’s really, really bad. You are needy.”
I’ve learned about this neediness over the last few years. It’s why I’ve put much effort into time with friends and family and travel and soccer. Yesterday’s pick-up soccer game filled me with happiness—20 guys having fun, hugs and handshakes to mark the new year, compliments and laughter, good exercise and camaraderie and competition.
When I got home, the family sat down for brunch, including cinnamon rolls that I had prepared the night before. We went around the table to share our goals for the year ahead. I’ll continue to work on being a good partner to Erin, a patient father to my children, a compassionate friend and brother and son, and a happy soccer player.
Where I traveled in 2024
by Anton Zuiker on January 1, 2025
It’s late afternoon, I have osso bucco braising in the oven, I played soccer for two hours this morning, and I’ve walked up to the studio shed to write in silence. I have a lot to celebrate and be thankful for on this first day of a new year—I am feeling quite happy as I sit down to take a relaxed look at what’s ahead in 2025 and what happened in 2024.
To celebrate Christmas, Erin and I treated the children to a family trip back to St. Croix. It was perfect weather and much fun, and every one of us enjoyed the week on the island. We swam and snorkeled, went on two sailboats (the Denis Sullivan tall ship for a sunset cruise, and the Jolly Mon catamaran for a half-day adventure off the West End), visited the Leatherback brewery and Cruzan Rum distillery, hiked up to Creque Dam, and had our customary final lunch (mahi tacos for everyone, and mojitos for me and Erin) at Rhythms at Rainbow Beach. My dad and Dot were on the island, too, and we all got to spend time with them and with Aaron and Olga, including a delightful Sunday afternoon on Sandy Point where we used our new Shibumi Shade quiet canopy for the first time (using buckets filled with sand so the poles wouldn’t go into the sand directly—protect the turtles).
That was a splendid way to end the year. (I posted photos during the week over on Wan Smol Blog.)
Over on my Now page, I usually update each month to give a summary of the major activities in my life. Throughout 2024, I noted these other travel highlights:
- I visited my mother in Arkansas in January; we went to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.
- In February, Erin and I spent a week exploring more of St. Croix.
- In April, Oliver and I joined Erin for a road trip to Alabama (Erin’s final state for her 50 by 50) and the Legacy Sites of the Equal Justice Initiative.
- I was in Cleveland in June to run the Towpath Twilight ten mile race with my brother-in-law, Michael Shaughnessy.
- In July, we flew west for the fantastic Zuiker Family Reunion in Colorado. Erin, Oliver, and I hiked the 14er Quandary Peak.
- In September, I took a quick trip to Illinois to meet a cousin for lunch and a friend for dinner in Chicago, then drove to DeKalb to visit relatives.
- In November, Erin and I enjoyed tasting wines in Napa Valley before we visited Anna in Sacramento, where she is spending a year with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps.
- We also took a family road trip to Cleveland for Thanksgiving, and I flew on to cold Minneapolis to meet my brother, Joel; we attended the University of Minnesota men’s hockey game and then sat high up in the amazing stadium to watch the Minnesota Vikings in a late-game win over the Arizona Cardinals.
I was fortunate to be able to travel far and wide and to spend time with family and friends in each destination. What’s ahead? I’m planning to attend a conference in New Orleans, there’s an Outer Banks trip with friends, and Erin has a legal education conference in Ireland.
Happy New Year!