Heart of Gold

U2 7 Part 2: Winnipeg.



Right before Australia, U2 announced that they were adding more dates to their summer 2011 tour and added my home city Winnipeg.

I found this out at 6 in the morning and ran into my sleeping sister’s room and jumped on her bed, freaking out, “U2 ARE PLAYING WINNIPEG!” If there was anything that could have eclipsed my trip to Australia, it was this. My favourite band finally playing my city after a decade of skipping us, I was so ready for May 29th.

The few days before the show were the most surreal of my life. For one, I was certain something awesome unrelated to the show was in my future. I wanted to meet the band and thought that I had no better chance to do it than in my own city. It was the Thursday before the show and I heard on the radio that U2 were going to be rehearsing at a downtown theatre and filming a movie. I’m quite convinced the band themselves released the information as they could have totally kept this a secret if they really wanted to. Anyway, that day the theatre (The Walker/Burt) was crawling with people who were trying to catch a glimpse of the band despite being told that they weren’t there. One funny bit from that day was this woman asking a security guard/roadie if U2 were really coming. The guy was standing in front of equipment that had “U2” written on the side and he deadpans, “No, of course not”.



That Friday was buzzing with potential energy and that whole day at work I couldn’t sit still. Over lunch, my u2 requests to a local radio show were played with the DJ wishing me luck on my Bono encounter quest. Later that afternoon, I got a text from a friend that said they knew when U2 were arriving and if I wanted my chance to meet them this would be it. They couldn’t tell me where their plane was going to be but they told me the band would arrive at 5:30.

The rest of the afternoon, I was a bundle of nerves. I kept wrestling with the decision to go. Should I go? What would I say if I actually met them?

What decided it for me was when I asked myself Will I regret it if I don’t go?

I would regret it and so I called my sister and asked if her boyfriend and she would be willing to come with me to the airport to find U2.

I guess everyone who admires someone imagines what it would be like to meet that person. Meeting Bono, Adam Clayton, and The Edge was better than I imagined it would be. For one thing, all three acted like they were absolutely excited to meet me (and everyone else obviously). Adam approached me and I remember I said “hi, Adam” to him while my sister filled in the blanks when I was struck dumb by his awesomeness. She told him I was a huge fan of his hence my inability to speak. He shook my hand through the fence and held my hand. He looked me in the eye and smiled and told me how happy he was to meet me. I must have said something but I think I only smiled.

Adam is my favourite member of the band in case it wasn’t obvious.



My sister and I both talked to The Edge. I told him how awesome it was to meet him; my sister added that she hoped his trip was fantastic. He was shyly smiling and thanked us and told my sister that the trip was great. He hoped we had a good time at the show and we scoffed and told him, “Of course we will!”

Then we met Bono and I could tell my sister was waiting for the epic freak out. To be honest, I was expecting it as well. We waved to him as he stepped off the plane and he waved back. (My sister: "Did he just wave back?") I was the second person he approached and as he stood in front of me in his Spice Girl-like platform shoes, I saw myself reflected in his sunglasses. He smiled warmly, “Hello.”

The most common remark I’ve always heard from people (even people who aren't u2 fans) that have met Bono is that he makes you feel like you’re the only person in his universe. Of course, I didn’t believe it.

That day at the airport, he kept smiling at me like I was the most precious thing in the world. Looking back on it now, I wonder how I didn’t freak out.

I mirrored his smile and said, “Hi. Umm...would you sign my picture? It’s from when you played Sydney.”

He looked at the picture and grinned, “That was a fun night.” I agreed and watched as he signed the back. He and I worked out a plan to get it back through the fence as he smudged the date on his autograph when he tried to send it through the first time. He apologized and I told him it was ok. “Aren’t you a sweetheart, “ he said.



The rest of the conversation was a blur as I was overloaded with serotonin. I remember they took the time to talk to everyone and I spoke to Bono briefly but can’t remember what I said. Finally, Edge and Adam headed to their cars while Bono started to take pictures with the people who were left. I remember slowly sneaking forward and saw my moment to ask, “Hey, Bono? Is it ok to get a picture?”

“Of course!” He said happily.

I’m going into the 3rd month of having that picture of Bono and me as my profile picture on Facebook.

U2 have officially ruined me for every other celebrity encounter I will ever have. And this was just that Friday!

Me reflected in B's glasses

The next night my sister and I went to snoop around the Walker/Burt Theatre as I had heard that U2 were rehearsing songs off of Achtung Baby (my favourite album). Though we heard no songs off of Achtung Baby, we did hear Elevation. And we arrived just as they were finishing up and they came out to sign autographs. My sister didn’t get a Bono autograph the Friday at the airport as Bono took my only Sharpie. The best bit of that night was when Bono recognized my sister from the airport and drew a flower for her as he signed his autograph.

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I wasn’t certain how show day was going to top the Friday and Saturday preceding it. Show day cracked its knuckles and said, “Oh, really?”

Since I had the end of the year ceremony for my part-time job that morning, I didn’t arrive in the Red Zone 2 line until 4. The Red Zones are 2 VIP areas near the stage that are won through auctions with some of the proceeds going to charity. Sometimes the auctions can get a little pricy (I paid 250 for the one I had in Vancouver) but sometimes fortune smiles on you (The Winnipeg Red Zone ticket was only 10 dollars more than what I had paid for my mom’s GA ticket). The Red Zone 2 line was about 30 people strong when I arrived. I ended up passing the time by trading stories with this couple about our U2 encounters that weekend. Security and cops were out in full force. I saw some cops sending people away from the tops of a nearby parking garage with a top level that looked into the stadium. I saw employees of the multiplex next door on the roof of the theatre, snapping pictures of the stage.

It was a fun environment to be in and everyone was hyper with anticipation. Red Zone 2 was a little surprised when a police car with its lights on came rolling up the closed street right next to our line. The police car was followed by a fleet of Escalades and everyone knew who was inside. When Bono rolled down his window, the line cheered and waved frantically and pressed against the fence to check out the rest of the band as they made their way into the stadium.

One of my favourite memories of that night was sitting on the pavement in the Red Zone line, when u2 started sound checking this haunting version of Magnificent. They played it 3 times, each time incompletely. Some guy yelled on the last restart, “IT SOUNDS GREAT. IT’S FINE, GUYS. LET US IN.”

My spot on the floor was great with the best view of the screen and the stage; it was also right in front of where one of the bridges stopped when the band moved to the outer walkway that haloed the main stage. My mom was surprised when the bridges moved above the heads of those in the GA pit that surrounded the main stage (she being in the pit that night with my younger sister). My mom and sister were right in front of me, across the runaway. As a result, my sister got a bunch of hilarious pictures of my reactions to whenever Bono was in front of me.

It was my mom’s second concert ever and she said her favourite part was when Bono sang “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?”

My dad meanwhile was in a parking lot nearby when U2 started the show and he said he was almost knocked to the ground by the sound of Even Better than the Real Thing starting.

The much argued over bit of Mysterious Ways mentioned below

That night, I was so surprised by the crowd. Winnipeg is well-known for its concert heckling and general hard-to-impress attitude so I could not believe how excited everyone was. People I had heard say they wouldn’t be caught dead at a U2 show were sitting in the most expensive sections. Merch was sold a day before the show because there was such a demand for it (I heard from a friend that everything U2-related at the nearby shopping centre had sold out the day of the show). When Snowbird jets flew over the stadium right before u2 came on, the whole audience reacted like little kids. And when the show finally started, people went insane. It was great! It reminded me of the Sydney crowds and the energy fueled my already extremely hyper mood.

Earlier that morning a severe storm had been forecast but by show time the sky was clear but it was so cold. I once joked that I hoped it snowed on show day and thought it might that night. I borrowed my friend Joyce’s gloves for a bit to try and get the feeling back in my hands.

Once the show started, no one cared about the temperature. At times my hands felt like they were going to shatter when I was clapping and the cold metal rail hurt when it touched my skin but that was just background noise and was like it was happening to someone else.

Winnipeg is my favourite show of the 7 I went to. Hell, it’s probably my favourite concert ever. The audience was full of energy, the band fed off the energy and gave it all back (despite Larry disappearing 3 or 4 times to put on more clothes), and the set list was full of surprises as I hadn’t spoiled myself for the show.

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Best bits?

• The sound of Even Better than the Real Thing blaring through the frozen air of Winnipeg at the start of the show
  
• The Desmond Tutu additional bits and the gospel backing that made Magnificent even more...well magnificent (Even if Bono said they messed up the ending)
  
• Joyce, her friend, and I pulling all sorts of faces (ranging from happiness to awe to “HOLY SHIT”) when Bono stood in front of us after coming off the bridge during Mysterious Ways. We later fought over who he had been singing to (it was me)
  
• The “serious” poem Bono had two girls read that ended up being the lyrics to “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet”.
  
• The singing of “Heart of Gold” by Neil Young at the end of Beautiful Day
  
• Everyone hearing me squee when they started the intro to All I Want Is You and my surprise when everyone sang along to the song
  
• Everyone hearing me squee again when they played Stay (Faraway, So Close) where they added the “You can go anywhere: Miami, New Orleans, London, Winnipeg and Berlin” lyric which caused my friend Trevor to grin
  
• Zooropa which I never liked until I heard it grooving out of the extended screen (and which a few friends asked me about saying, "What was the name of that song where the screen asked me 'What do you want?'")
  
• The slow dance where “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?” went into Where the Streets Have No Name
  
• WHERE THE STREETS HAVE NO NAME

At that last point, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry and I just cheered like I never cheered before. The red light they use for that song shined out of the 360 screen and lit up the audience like we were all around a fire getting warm. I couldn’t believe I was finally seeing U2 in Winnipeg and finally hearing Streets echo through the city. Best version of the song ever.

The coolest moment of the night was when they began With or Without You and Bono asked the audience to lift their lit-up phones to the sky to “make a Milky Way”. I’ve seen it done before but it was so cool to see it in Winnipeg. The screens of lit up iPhones, Blackberries, and other mobiles were pointed skywards and it looked like a winter sky, the “star” light sharp, ghostly and chilly.

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That weekend I met my favourite band, ended up with a picture in the paper, bought an obscene amount of u2 t-shirts, had an absolute blast at the concert, and ended up walking home that night because everyone that was at the show thought I was getting a ride with someone else.

All in all, not a bad weekend. It was so good I almost didn't want to go to Montreal and Minneapolis.

Almost.

You're One of My Kind

U2 7 Part 1: Vancouver and Sydney

Having dreams is important. At least I like to think so. There was this person I knew that loved to devalue my dreams to the point where I stopped telling people what they were. I’d store them away as I was convinced everyone would treat them with the same contempt that this person had.

One of my dreams was to see u2 as many times on one tour as I could. I always got a kick out of the stories I read on the online forums about the people who would sleep outside the stadium/arena for 4 full days before the show just so they had a good spot in the general admission.

Honestly though I never thought I’d ever do it (the “seeing loads of shows”, not "sleeping outside the stadium"). My first U2 show was on October 28th 2009 and since then I’ve been to six more. Why do I do it? I did it because I love the band and have for over a decade. But I also did it because of a promise I made to myself.

In the summer of 2008, I had been sexually assaulted. During that time, I was not in a positive place emotionally and wasn’t sure I was strong enough to make it through the aftermath. An elder once told me that when something horrible happens to you there’s a year of turmoil before the recovery really starts. I had the support of family and friends but it was me that had to climb that mountain to get to the other side. But I couldn’t do it and I was falling apart. No matter how many times I heard that what happened to me wasn’t my fault, I didn’t believe it. I felt gangrene and didn’t know how I was going to stop it.

So on a particularly bad day 2 months or so after it happened, I promised myself,

I don’t care where and I don’t care if I go into debt to do it, I’m finally going to see U2 play.

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Vancouver: Despite being at my lowest emotionally, I thought that I should try to turn things around. I finally got my degree and started my first full-time job. In the spring of 2009, I decided to go to Northern Bangladesh to volunteer with an NGO for a month, a huge deal for me as I had never traveled overseas before. I had also applied for law schools and almost swallowed my tongue when I got into 3 (2 of which are some of the best law schools in Canada). I decided I was going to go to UBC.

In 2009, U2 released No Line on the Horizon and announced their world tour. Since they weren’t playing Winnipeg, I decided to go to Vancouver as I would have an excuse to see UBC and I also wanted to finally meet my very good and awesome friend Chloe. The concert was almost a year after the assault and acted as my incentive to push forward when things got hard. On bad days, I’d turn it around and tell myself, “Only a few months/weeks/days until the show”. It kept me afloat and didn’t allow the negativity of what happened to me to spread.

The three days I was in Vancouver, I was running on adrenaline and barely slept due to my excitement. Chloe and I watched U2: Live at Slane Castle the day before the show to hype us up and shared an iPod during the long wait in the GA line. When I moved to the line I was supposed to be in, I met these three sisters (Crystal, Cathy and Tammy) that lacked umbrellas so I shared my poncho which we held over our heads with cold hands. I met this guy named Scott who, after finding out it was my first u2 show, reassured me it was going to be awesome. When we finally got in, I was in awe by how big U2’s Claw stage was. When I saw BC Place Stadium during the Olympics, I scoffed and said that they must be lying about the location as the stadium looked a lot smaller when I saw U2 play!

I distinctly remember three things about that show: my absolute happiness when Larry started the drum solo intro to Breathe at the start of the show, how awesome it was when Amazing Grace led into Where the Streets Have No Name, and it was the night I realized I didn’t want to go to UBC.

Law school came up as an option for me when I had decided that going on to graduate studies in psychology wasn’t really where I wanted to head. Law hadn’t interested me but I felt like I needed an important career. The year after I was assaulted, I put so much work into getting into schools without realizing that my reason for doing it was the wrong one. I wanted to prove to my assaulter that I wasn’t the trash he had considered me. When I got into all 3 schools I wanted to get into, I wasn’t as happy as I thought I should be.

That night after U2 in Vancouver, I realized that my assaulter wasn’t watching my progress. My pursuit to prove him wrong by trying to be a super successful lawyer wasn’t making me happy. And when I thought about it, the idea of spending 3 years doing something I wasn’t sure about made me feel trapped.



I love Vancouver but as Chloe and I left BC Place Stadium, I realized my future wasn’t there.

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Sydney: Scott in Vancouver told me that U2’s next North American leg of their tour would either have a date in Winnipeg or Minneapolis. The tour scheduled for summer 2010 was announced and Minneapolis was the lucky bastard. After the fun in Bangladesh, I decided I wanted to travel more but wanted to start small. I planned to attend the Minneapolis show and the two shows in Montreal and saved up quite a dragon’s cache for the trips.

May 2010 rolls around and it’s announced that Bono is injured and U2 were postponing their North American shows. Not surprisingly I was down about the news but understood that it was better in the long run as I didn’t want an ailing Bono to put himself in danger just for a concert. Rather than save my money for the next year and the rescheduled shows, I decided to blow it all on a trip to Australia. Australia has always been my number 1 dream destination. But I didn’t think my dragon cache was enough to cover the airfare, especially so close to Christmas when I really wanted to go. The travel gods were smiling down on me: the ticket price was a full grand lower than it usually is. I was going to spend my December birthday in Aussie summer instead of Canadian winter and turn 25 on a 30C+ day. I booked the trip and had yet another thing to look forward to.

In the fall a few weeks before the Oz trip, U2 announced that Bono was feeling better and they wanted to restart the tour.

In Australia.

While I was there.

Not that it mattered but my favourite U2 concert video had been shot in Australia (Zoo TV: Live in Sydney) and I had read on forums that the Aussies were second only to the Irish in terms of their insanity over U2. Of course I was going.

Sydney had 2 shows: December 13th and 14th at Anz Stadium in Olympic Park. I arrived in Oz on the 10th and spent the whole day wandering around Taronga Zoo as I was too excited to sleep. That night I went to check out the stadium just so I knew where I was going the night of. The stadium made BC Place look like an arena and I was surprised that there were people already there waiting; some in tents, others taking turns sitting in chairs while their friends went to catch a few winks at a nearby hotel.



Since I didn’t like the idea of sleeping on the street in a foreign country, I didn’t line up until the morning of the 13th. Here I met and teamed up with Chyloe and Emma, two girls from Melbourne. The doors to the stadium weren’t opening until 5, the opening act (JAY-FREAKING-Z) wasn’t going on until 7 and U2 weren’t going on until 9 that night. So we had a lot of time to talk. I don’t know what it is about talking to a stranger that makes you spill your guts but when Emma asked me what I did back in Canada, I said, “I work for the government but what I really want to do is make my own movies.”

I was 4 when I saw Batman 1989 for the first time and I knew then I wanted to, one day, make a movie just as awesome. My desire to make movies took a backseat to my studies in psychology but it could not be restrained. After I graduated university, I took a few workshops at the Winnipeg Film Group and made 3 short films. During the filming, I fell in love with the process and didn’t even notice when we went overtime. Though I was scared that I might not be capable of making a career out of making movies, I remember I told Emma, “It’s always been a dream of mine to come here and despite being scared to come here alone, I did it. Maybe getting into film will happen too.” With my return to school to learn more about film making, I feel like I'm taking the necessary steps to go where I want to be.

But back to the concerts, one of my favourite memories of those shows was when we were finally let in on night 1. Emma, Chyloe and I ran down the circular ramp leading to the stadium floor as distracted security guards played with their phones and quietly ordered, “Don’t run.” The entryway to the field was ablaze with the setting sun, blinding me for a second, and I stopped running. In that few seconds before I ran after Chyloe and Emma, it hit me then that I was really in Australia and it wasn't a dream.. The sun made everything golden and it was a beautiful evening for a concert outside.



The mood of those shows in Australia is why they stick out so positively in my mind. Both nights were like a huge Christmas party and everyone was happy to be there (Including Oprah and 300 of her closest friends who were in attendance on night 1). The atmosphere was electric. I had a bit of a cold on night 2 and was convinced that I would stick near the back to take the show in from there. The doors opened and I was running with the herd and headed straight into the inner circle and got THE best spot in the history of time: dead center and 10 people away from Bono’s mic stand. I had the perfect view of the huge 360 screen above and the perfect view of the band on stage.

What I remember the most about that night was when they played New Year’s Day. That song was the one I always wanted to hear them play live and when Adam started the bass intro for the song, the roar from the crowd almost drowned out the music. When everyone started to clap in time with the song, I couldn’t see the stage through all the hands in the air.

That was also the night they played All I Want is You. That song is probably tied with Magnificent and Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me as my favourite song and I was stuck on perma-grin as they strummed the intro. It was so powerful to hear 75000 people singing along. Bono added this shout out to Michael Hutchence by including lyrics from Need You Tonight near the end of the song Slide over here and give me a moment, need to let you know, you’re one of my kind

I later took credit for the fact that they played that song as I held a sign on night 1 that read, “It’s my 25th Birthday, please play All I Want is You”. Despite the fact that Bono said otherwise, I know they played it because of my sign (*sniggers*). My kingdom for a bootleg recording of that night.



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Coping as a superpower

It was somewhere over the Pacific when I was shaken from sleep. Momentarily disoriented, I clawed madly for my glasses case in the pocket behind the seat in front of me. I got my glasses on as the plane shook again. Dropping my glasses case to my lap, I clutched the arm rests for dear life. U2’s MLK played softly out of my iPod headphones but not even Bono’s reassurances could calm me down.

The flight was already nerve wracking: from thinking I forgot my passport at customs, to the attractive Aussie sitting next to me that wanted to talk about nude beaches, I was certain I was about to re-enact the intro scene from Bioshock but in the Pacific rather than the Atlantic. I was shaking under my itchy airplane blanket.

The plane shook violently and before I realized what I was doing, I was saying the oath:

In Brightest Day,
In Blackest Night
No Evil Shall Escape My Sight
Let Those Who Worship Evil’s Might
Beware my power: Green Lantern’s Light

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Back in my undergrad, my developmental psych professor loved to talk about how important coping mechanisms were to children dealing with stressors. It didn’t matter what sort of mechanism it was, a kid could get through anything using them. I had my own coping mechanisms.

My grandma had strict definitions of what a girl was like and I wasn't it. As a kid, I would hide my butt-length hair under the hat I had taken from my dad and would pretend to be my own male twin. I spent most of my childhood angry at my mom for not letting me go as Batman for Halloween 1990 after she said I couldn’t because “Batman is for boys”. My grandma made a big deal once when she caught my grandpa taking a hockey stick out of the back of his truck that he had hidden from her. He had bought it for my birthday. I got the hockey stick but I think she was the reason I never got to play pee-wee ice hockey as a kid.

Since my grandma’s first language wasn’t English, she could be really blunt. I remember being hurt when she told my dad to stop watching hockey with me because it would “make me weirder”.

Looking back on it as an adult, I know she was worried about me. It was dangerous (and still is) to be a Native girl. I reckon she didn’t want me to draw attention to myself since the more visible you were the more likely you were to be targeted. But, being a kid, I just knew that there was something wrong with me. And it upset me that I couldn’t figure out how to change to make my grandma happy.

I think things would have been different for me if I hadn’t been sick in the car one day. My dad had taken me to The Pas and we were driving home. Before we had left, he bought me a Superman comic book. I started reading it and, as I did, I began to get dizzier, my head hurt, and saliva started to pool at the bottom of my mouth.

I got to a 2 page spread of green Kryptonite and my dad hit a bump as I did so. I threw up all over the comic book. As my dad stopped the car, a bit of green rock slivered through the bits of digested chicken fries into view and I threw up again. As my dad pulled me out of the car to clean me, I realized why I was so weird. I was Kryptonian.

I had seen the 70s Superman movies before this trip and knew the sort of effect Kryptonite had on a Kryptonian. The realization of my true origin was only solidified when my dad took me to see the burial ground near the rapids that gives my hometown its name.

The site around the burial ground has been blasted and driven over by heavy equipment for 40 years and looks like something crash landed there. My arrival took root in my mind: my dad had seen a light in the sky while he was out driving with my mom. They followed it and found my ship and me, as a baby, inside. My parents raised me as their child. My grandma decided she didn’t want people to catch on to my being an alien so she was always telling me to act normal.

Call it crazy but it helped me deal with my anger towards myself over never measuring up to what my grandma wanted. Though I knew deep down that I wasn’t the last daughter of Krypton, pretending I was helped me feel unique rather than weird and to not feel so bad when people called me the latter.

Some girls think they are princesses, others think they're Supergirls.

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Imagining myself surrounded in an aura of willpower energy helped me deal with my turbulent flight the same way imagining I was a Supergirl helped me deal with my negative thoughts of myself when I was a kid. The moral of this story? Cope the way you want. And beware my power, Green Lantern's light.