Love Is Blindness by U2 Lyrics Meaning – Peering Through The Veil of Desire
Lyrics
I don’t want to see
Won’t you wrap the night
Around me?
Oh my heart
Love is blindness
In a parked car
In a crowded street
You see your love
Made complete
Thread is ripping
The knot is slipping
Love is blindness
Love is clockworks
And cold steel
Fingers too numb to feel
Squeeze the handle
Blow out the candle
Love is blindness
Love is blindness
I don’t want to see
Won’t you wrap the night
Around me?
Oh my love
Blindness
A little death
Without mourning
No call
And no warning
Baby, a dangerous idea
That almost makes sense
Love is drowning
In a deep well
All the secrets
And no one to tell
Take the money
Honey
Blindness
Love is blindness
I don’t want to see
Won’t you wrap the night
Around me?
Oh my love
Blindness
U2’s ‘Love Is Blindness’ is a hymn of paradoxes, a song that entwines love and despair in a dance as old as time. Wrapped in a shroud of darkness, the lyrics evoke a landscape where emotional extremities bleed into each other, portraying love’s ability to both anesthetize and eviscerate.
Released as a part of the emblematic album ‘Achtung Baby’, ‘Love Is Blindness’ is often overshadowed by its more radio-friendly compatriots. Yet, it’s in the shadows that the depth of this song’s soul is truly illuminated, offering fodder for the heart and mind to listeners who dare to take a closer and more careful listen.
The Binding Gloom of Passion Unraveled
The opening verse of ‘Love Is Blindness’ sets a chiaroscuro backdrop, a stark canvas splashed with the ink of romantic longing. By pleading for the night to act as a lover’s shroud, there is an implicit desire for blindness, to not see the potential ills or truths that might break the love-soaked stasis.
This invocation of darkness embodies a double-edged sword; the cocoon of night is both a refuge and a prison. The lyrics wrestle with the idea of love being a form of willing blindness, a means to inoculate oneself against the glaring imperfections that daylight might cruelly expose.
An Ode to the Intoxication of Incomplete Love
In a standout verse, Bono laments a love that seemingly finds completion in a ‘crowded street,’ suggesting a unity forged in public spaces, susceptible to external gazes. This is the fragile thread that lies at the crux of the song, the thread that’s prone to fraying, a relationship precariously dependent on the existence of an audience.
The ‘parked car’ is a confessional booth, a limited space where intimacy and isolation coexist, where secrets spill and love potentially sours. It’s this intricately woven fabric of love’s more banal realities against its ideals that ‘Love Is Blindness’ painstakingly delves into.
The Unyielding Machinery of Heartbreak
Bono’s imagery morphs from the ephemeral to the material as he describes ‘love as clockworks and cold steel.’ These metaphors transform love from a mystical feeling to a concrete yet insensate construct, inferring a routine or mechanical process devoid of warmth.
In the emotional numbness, there looms a threat of violence against the self or the extinguishing of something once cherished—a ‘blow out the candle’ moment. The song grapples with the notion that sometimes the end of love is not a crescendo but a quiet, cold snuffing out.
The Hidden Meaning: A Dangerous Idea That Almost Makes Sense
When ‘Love Is Blindness’ speaks of a ‘little death without mourning,’ it tugs at the threads of existentialism. The ‘little death,’ or ‘la petite mort’ often used to describe the post-orgasmic state, hints at an ending that carries no weight of sorrow. It’s a terrifyingly casual acknowledgment of the end.
Herein lies the song’s hidden meaning: a meditation on the entanglement of love with self-destruction. It hints at a dangerous idea lurking beneath the surface—a notion of love that is understood and desired despite its potentially destructive nature, seducing listeners with its dark allure.
Memorable Lines Enthralled in the Vices of Love
The song doesn’t shy away from exploring the sometimes immoral or selfish aspects of love. The urging of ‘take the money, honey’ in the midst of love’s drowning is a blunt admission of exploitation or surrender to the undeniable force of love—even at ethical costs.
These memorable lines serve as a pivot, where the song swings between the realms of passion and pain, light and dark, articulating a sentiment that love, in its extreme, is a form of blindness that we not only accept but, at times, yearn for. The music cleverly cloaks this desolate acceptance, drawing listeners into a waltz with the complex nature of human affections.
