I’ve been putting off writing anything about Bono’s inaugural column in The New York Times on Sunday. It’s not that the piece wasn’t funny, or that I’m lazy, it’s just that Bono is so friggin’ insane, I don’t even know where to start with it. First, some back story: The NYT apparently has some problems hiring columnists who aren’t A) insane and B) liars. So when neoconservative Bill Kristol’s year-long contract came up, the NYT’s editors decided to do this revolving door of several columnists, all to fill Kristol’s old space. Yeah, they might want to rethink that.

Okay, now to Bono’s insanity. First, Bono does this faux-Kerouac rambling thing, and then I think he’s having a conversation with himself (?). Then, there’s all of the gratuitous name-checking. Frank Sinatra, Miles Davis. Nina Simone. Bob Dylan. All mentioned by Bono – see, because if he names them, he absorbs their energy, right? Like, Palm Springs, MAN. Like, do you even remember Sinatra in Palm Springs when Bono was in Dublin drinking a pint with Nina Simone and Miles Davis and it was heavy? Had enough? I’m going to try to edit down the “highlights” of the column, but if you want to read the whole thing, try this to blow your mind.

I’m in a crush in a Dublin pub around New Year’s. Glasses clinking clicking, clashing crashing in Gaelic revelry: swinging doors, sweethearts falling in and out of the season’s blessings, family feuds subsumed or resumed. Malt joy and ginger despair are all in the queue to be served on this, the quarter-of-a-millennium mark since Arthur Guinness first put velvety blackness in a pint glass.

Interesting mood. The new Irish money has been gambled and lost; the Celtic Tiger’s tail is between its legs as builders and bankers laugh uneasy and hard at the last year, and swallow uneasy and hard at the new. There’s a voice on the speakers that wakes everyone out of the moment: it’s Frank Sinatra singing “My Way.” His ode to defiance is four decades old this year and everyone sings along for a lifetime of reasons. I am struck by the one quality his voice lacks: Sentimentality.

A call to believability.

A voice that says, “Don’t lie to me now.”

That says, “Baby, if there’s someone else, tell me now.”

Fabulous, not fabulist. Honesty to hang your hat on.

…As the year rolls over (and with it many carousers), the emotion in the room tussles between hope and fear, expectation and trepidation. Wherever you end up, his voice takes you by the hand.

…We had spent some time in his house in Palm Springs, which was a thrill — looking out onto the desert and hills, no gingham for miles. Plenty of miles, though, Miles Davis. And plenty of talk of jazz. That’s when he showed me the painting. I was thinking the circles were like the diameter of a horn, the bell of a trumpet, so I said so.

“The painting is called ‘Jazz’ and you can have it.”

…If you want to hear the least sentimental voice in the history of pop music finally crack, though — shhhh — find the version of Frank’s ode to insomnia, “One for My Baby (and One More for the Road),” hidden on “Duets.” Listen through to the end and you will hear the great man break as he truly sobs on the line, “It’s a long, long, long road.” I kid you not.

…Like Bob Dylan’s, Nina Simone’s, Pavarotti’s, Sinatra’s voice is improved by age, by years spent fermenting in cracked and whiskeyed oak barrels. As a communicator, hitting the notes is only part of the story, of course.

…To what end? Duality, complexity. I was lucky to duet with a man who understood duality, who had the talent to hear two opposing ideas in a single song, and the wisdom to know which side to reveal at which moment.

This is our moment. What do we hear?

[From The New York Times]

Here’s the thing – I really Jack Kerouac and that whole stream-of-consciousness style of writing, if it’s done well. When Kerouac did it, it was innovative, dramatic and powerful. When Bono does it… well, it’s just sad and pretentious. I’m not Bono’s biggest fan, but I admire much of the work he does in Africa, and I really hope that the NYT editors force him to write his next column about something important, like AIDS or debt. No more of this rambling about Sinatra. Please.

Here’s Bono attending the Freud Annual Christmas Party in London on December 18th. Images thanks to WENN.