Once more, with feeling

I was home, sick, the other day (yeah, happens to the best), and finally had the opportunity to watch the excellent U2 Elevation Tour DVD, filmed in Boston 2001.

Being an engineer I always carry around that somewhat silly urge of trying to figure out how things work; from that perspective the extra material on the DVD with all the "The making of" stuff is a mandatory view. In one clip of "the making of elevation live" you can see director Hamish Hamilton jumping up and down in the broadcast bus (or whatever it would be called in TV production speak) during the very start of the live take, screaming "I love my job! Come on! Come on!!!".

And, once again, it hit me, I mean, I love my work too, but, funny thing, so far it has really never managed to provoke that kind of reaction. No jumping. No screaming. Yeah, sure, now and then you stumble across a piece of code that is particularly great performing, elegant, self explanatory and simple. Yes, subtle excitement has been known to occur on occasion. But it is pretty far from the feeling you get when you see Bono entering a sold out arena.

Perhaps we can find a way of putting more feeling in there. Or perhaps in my next life I'll do something else, drummer perhaps. Yeah. Cool. But for now, time for some more CRUD.

But then again, to quote the singer himself: A singer is someone with a hole in his heart almost as big as the size of his ego. When you need 20,000 people screaming your name in order to feel good about your day, you know you're a singer. Bono: 2001 Harvard Commencement Address

/Patrik