American Prayer: a closer look
Occasionally, people send in their views on topics discussed at U2log.com. We thought it might be a good idea to start sharing our readers' thoughts with you. Patti Culliton sent in the following essay on the song "American Prayer" which Bono showcased at his recent 'Heart of America' speaking tour.
“American Prayer” has been slagged off of a lot and I think that’s unjustified criticism of the lyrics. I see a lot of depth to them and a lot of references within the lyrics. I tend to think the song is just being slagged off because it appears on the surface to sound pro-American. But in truth it’s not really pro-American, it’s saying that America is currently falling short of what it should be doing.
I thought I would just put together a rough sketch of the references that I picked up in hopes that others will discover the depth that exists in this song. There are probably a lot of references in the song that I’ve missed, too. So if someone sees something I didn’t, please let me know.
“And this is the time to finish what you started
And this is no time to dream”
Those lines are a direct reference to the American civil rights movement for black Americans, which had most of its momentum in the 1960s. African-Americans are (theoretically) treated equal to caucasian Americans now, but their brothers and sisters in Africa are not being looked after by the rest of the world with care equal to that which white Europeans would be receiving if this AIDS pandemic were occurring in Europe instead of Africa. So even if black Americans have equal rights in the U.S., if black Africans aren’t being treated equally there is still work left to be done in the civil rights movement: “this is the time to finish what you started.” A direct reference to Martin Luther King’s “I have a Dream” speech is the next line: “And this is no time to dream.” (i.e. this is time for action now!)
“And this is the ground that keeps your feet from getting wet”
This is a line from an Irish playwright called John B. Keane. I’m not positive of the play, but I think it’s The Field. Bono’s dad used to like to quote this play when asked if he supported the Republican movement in Ireland (to unify north/south). The line went “Ireland – what the hell is Ireland? – Ireland is just the piece of ground that keeps my feet from getting wet.” Bono said at the Slane 1 gig last year that it was his father who instilled in him the value of human rights, so I find it particularly touching that he worked this favorite quote of his father’s into the song he wrote for the greatest human rights campaign of Bono’s life. It also fits contextually. Why should those dying of AIDS living on the continent of Africa have less access to the AIDS medicines than we do just because we live on the continent of North America or Europe? Why should your geographic location determine your fate of life or death? Geography is just the land that keeps your feet from getting wet. Or in this case, geography is what keeps you with or without access to medication.
“And this is the sky over our heads”
No literal reference here, just kind of a cool theme. We may be standing on different land than those in Africa, but we all share the same sky. Reminds me thematically of the line from “Do They Know It’s Christmas” that goes “Here’s to them, underneath that common sun.”
“Remember that what you see depends on where you stand
And how you jump will tell you where you’re gonna land”
Again, no literal reference here, but the line makes you stop and think about the problem of perspective. Bear with me here on a personal story. I have an aunt, a real ignorant and racist person, who one day asked my mother if I still knew Bono and whether I could tell him to go back to Ireland and shut up about Africa. (And this was long before the Heart of America tour!) My mother was further horrified when her sister later said she hopes all those people in Africa just die anyway. What an arsehole my aunt is. The more amazing thing to me was that she said these soul-less things less than two months after herself receiving a life-saving kidney transplant. It’s mind-blowing that someone could be that ignorant to begin with, but particularly when they were just given a second chance at life because someone else was generous enough to donate one of their kidneys to a stranger. How could she have that attitude about God’s children in Africa? I just shake my head and try to remember “What you see depends on where you stand.” And about that next line of “How you jump will tell you where you’re gonna land.” Well if it was up to me I can’t imagine my aunt “landing” in heaven, but it’s good that mortal forgiveness isn’t up to me I guess!
“Let’s kick at the darkness, make the light
The light brighter now”
Most of you will recognize this as vaguely similar to the line in God Part II that says “Heard a singer on the radio late last night, said he’s gonna kick the darkness ‘til it bleeds daylight” – which is a direct reference to Bruce Cockburn. If you also look at a conversation that was reported on in U2log.com on January 27, 2002 Bono and Bruce Cockburn have spoken to each other about “how to show your faith in a materialistic and self-centred rock world.” It would seem to me that when the government of an ultra-spoiled country like mine (the U.S.) won’t spend a measly $3b on the AIDS problem in Africa (comparison: the annual U.S. defense budget is $400b) because they don’t know what kind of ‘return’ they will get for the money, we have a problem of materialism and self-centeredness.
“These are the hands
What are we gonna build with them?”
So many times Bono has referenced the fact that Irish immigrant manual laborers did much of the hands-on steel-work of building the big buildings/skyscrapers and laying of the trans-continental railroad in the U.S. (along with a lot of Chinese and German workers, too). In fact if you have the Rattle & Hum Outtakes where the band is riding around NY in a van on their way to the church in Harlem to rehearse “Still Haven’t Found” with the New Voices of Freedom, you can hear Bono telling Larry that NYC should look familiar to Irish people because the Irish built much of NYC. That’s where the idea for the song “The Hands that Built America” came from, and he picks up on that same theme again here – except he is asking what are we doing with our hands today? The buildings, the railroads, the mass lines of communication are already laid. So now what are we gonna build with them? How about a bridge of humanitarianism back to Africa?
“Give me your tired, your poor and huddled masses
You know they’re yearning to breathe free”
Almost everyone has to have picked this one up immediately, but for those of you who didn’t these lines echo almost word for word a poem that is etched on the pedestal upon which the Statue of Liberty is perched. It’s from a poem called “The New Colossus” by a Jewish-American woman poet named Emma Lazarus and is in direct reference to how the country was built by hard-working immigrants who came from other places in wretched and desperate straits – poor, ill, tired. We have restricted immigration numbers now, so the “wretched refuse” of another continent’s “teeming shore” can no longer easily come here to start anew, but that doesn’t mean we can’t follow through on the same ethic and send the help to them in their own homelands. This is Bono appealing to America not as a country, but as an idea, a concept.
“If you get to the top of the mountain…”
This is another reference to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the assertion that what is going on in Africa right now is the civil rights movement of our generation. The speech that Dr King delivered the night before his assassination is known as his “I’ve Been the Mountaintop” speech – delivered on April 3, 1968. It is this speech that was excerpted during live performances of “Pride” throughout the 1990’s. I also have a gut-feeling that Bono is thinking about his father a little bit during that part of the song since Bob Hewson, too, has made it to The Promised Land. Hopefully, we can help our brothers and sisters in humanity, who happen to have Africa keeping their feet from getting wet, to themselves make it to the top of the mountain.
Only you, by pressuring your elected officials, can make that happen. So please do it.
And if people really still think the lyrics to American Prayer are cheesey/fluff, I’d be interested to hear why.
by Patty Culliton (
e-mail).