Orpheus and Eurydice

January 26th, 1999 - On January 26th she found the first hint of “The Ground Beneath Her Feet” (the lyrics to the opening verse were released), which played on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice as employed by Salman Rushdie in his novel, framed in modern day rock music with the two being rock stars, also existing simultaneously in a parallel reality. She was astonished in reading Bullfinch’s mythology at the level of correspondence between the actual myth of Orpheus and Eurydice and what had transpired at a distance between Bono and herself, -to a point. His employ of the theme signaled to her that Bono perhaps had begun to fully acknowledge that it had been her death, or strangely it was as if he’d found the perfect opportunity to express where things really stood. She admitted that in a sense she hadn’t been solid on the notion herself, until she found it thrown into relief in Cave’s work on November 3rd. “It’s like fainting. You don’t know that you’re gone until you’re back.”

“So, in case you missed it: Orpheus is Bono. The marriage referred to took place on November 3rd, 1992. The prognosis there was not good: I was crying at the end [of the “ceremony”] because there was no way I could explain how I had arrived at the juncture to him, and no way of meting it out. Also it was born in the midst of sorrow. That was captured in the conclusion with Love is Blindness, the little death without mourning in particular. The presiding of Hymen touches upon The seed is spilled the bed defiled, For you a virgin bride. Bono’s lyric from “Love Comes Tumbling”, 1985. That alludes to my union with my father, and his curse on this one. The pursuit by the shepherd post-nuptials is the same. I divorced (fled) and was destroyed for it with Holy Damnation (the serpent), on Thanksgiving, 1995. After that I was in a living death. I did not know whether or not I was damned. Bono said he would follow me down. In terms of rendering the deconstruction, he did. It was rendered with a lot of sorrow, and ludicrously called PoP. The second death, when we were almost free, (by Orpheus’ hand, or backward glance), was when Bono destroyed our association with the song “Gone”, the rendering of my worst fears. For this Eurydice had no reprimand, and bid him final farewell. –Bono could not bring me back. In this scenario, without another way out, the only way we would have met again was likely post death, which is how the myth ends. At least they’re back together.”

Her rejoinder was that it wasn’t going to end the same way.