The 360 Degrees of a Circle.

After a lifetime of everything that happened, my mother and I walked into the stadium together.

Stadium concerts like this are amazing, especially when you get there early and soak it all in. The Greatest Show on Earth.

Jay-Z's set was spectacular. He asked the crowd to do diamonds at one point ... mum obliged.

As promised, I taught her how to do gangsigns. She's 63. If  you look closely, you can see how arthritis has bent her little pinkies. Arthritic gangsigns.

We were nervous and excited and hugging and clapping. There is a cavernous tsunami of water and backwash under the bridge of our relationship. But we sat there, holding onto each other, laughing. Mum said, "Oh I'm just sad. I don't want it to start, because I don't want it to ever end." I told her I was *so* her daughter.

I had a walk around near our seats, stood overlooking a walkway, pondering my shadow. My shadow that I can't outrun .... the shadow who I have now made friends with. It flipped me a peace sign, and I flipped it one back. We stood there for a while, staring at each other.

A few guys walked past, carrying suspiciously expensive and shiny guitars. Hmmm. Wouldn't it be cool, if this was where U2 walked out into the stadium?

Would it surprise you if I told that this was where U2 walked out into the stadium?

Do you believe in Big Things?

I do.




::

For the next few hours we were transfixed, enthralled, enlightened, heightened. I hardly sat down. I knew every lyric of every single song. Having been to every one of their concerts since 1989's Lovetown, the 360 was kind of like a retrospective. Full of imagery of tours past ... the spaceman, the mirror suit, the glitterball. Footage of the four guys from the early eighties, squeezing into that strange little car.

A complete circle.

This was the best concert of their Australian ones. Electrifying. (I have long said ... everybody needs to go to a U2 concert at least once in their lives.)

::

I had Revelations, throughout the concert. About where I am; the kind of person I want to be. I listened, nodding.

Big Things are happening, next year. Wonderful, life-changing things.

This is what receiving a Revelation looks like ...

This is what singing your heart out with unashamed abandon looks like ...

This is what the morning after looks like ... 

::

Remember a few posts ago where I wrote about the song Love Rescue Me and all it meant? Yeah - Bono sang it at the concert. They haven't played that song in public for twenty years.

I cried, and told mum he was playing it for us.

He was. I know it.

::

(Aside: Mum and I must have then looked like a couple of weepy, loony goonheads because the chicks in front of us clocked our tears and stricken faces, and kept looking at us. AND LAUGHING.

So in the middle of the amazing moment, I leant forward real close, so that the next time the meanest one turned around to look at us and laugh again - and she did - she got the shock of her life. She got a wild-eyed redhead up in her face. "Is something funny?" I asked, nay - demanded.

She shat her pants and shrilled out, nothing! And didn't look at us again. Ner.)

::

Much, much more happened. It was just the ants pants - the vibe, the Mabo. Bono described it best towards the end:

"WOW."

::

U2 play in Perth tonight. I hope they talk about the boat carrying over a hundred refugees that smashed into rocks and disintegrated at Christmas Island .... it has stunned me into silence all week. Isn't it a national tragedy? Is there anything being put into place, to ensure sobbing Iraqi men don't hold their babies above their head in the water, shouting "BABY - DYING." The death toll is 30, and rising.

::

This is 13 minutes from the concert the other night. (I didn't film it.) All I Want is You morphs into Never Tear Us Apart morphs into Love Rescue Me.


Sha la la la, everyone.

Magic exists.