5 December 1993
Wim Wenders must really be a great director if he can make me believe a U2 song is dreamy and lovely. Back in my mid-teens, when I was impressionable in many things but not impressionable enough to buy a U2 album, I consumed ‘Stay (Faraway, So Close!)’ through its Wenders-directed video, and I fell hard for its world-weary romanticism, swooping shots of Berlin, and tender storyline of guardian angels helping tired mortals. It wasn’t enough to make me move to Berlin—I eventually chose Paris—but that promo, plus the continental arthouse films (including Wenders’ own Wings of Desire, to which Faraway, So Close! is the sequel) in the familiar Artificial Eye covers that I rented from my local video stores, fired my imagination: I would leave Ireland and hit out into the aching sophistication of old-world Europe. And I did.
Maybe I’ve grown jaded and cynical—Paris does that to you—but listening back to ‘Stay (Faraway, So Close!)’ today I hear its clunky, contrived verses (“You stop in for a pack of cigarettes / You don’t smoke, don’t even want to / Hey now, check your change”) that are more to do with Americana (7-Eleven, “talk shows”, Miami, New Orleans) than Europe. The big, soaring chorus and “oh-oh-oh-oh” refrain are effective but not very fresh or original: I feel I’m being led along to a purely calculated moment. That said, the video (below) is still lovely, although the less said about the CD artwork (above) the better. And I still haven’t been to Berlin.
