“All is quiet on New Year’s Day!
…
We can break through!
Though torn in two,
We can be one!”

– U2, “New Year’s Day” (Island Records, January 1, 1983).

Happy new year!

I have a memory of leaving a friend’s New Year’s Eve party shortly after midnight on January 1, 1997. At that time, I lived in Austin and attended The University of Texas. I left the South Austin apartment where the party had been held, and I made my way to my gold 1995 Saturn SL1 in the parking lot. After finding my way to the highway, I drove north on I-35 to my apartment in Northwest Austin. I remember U2’s “New Year’s Day” then coming on the radio (as it often does in the wee hours of January 1 each year).

It was a nice moment on a leisurely drive that took place two decades ago. Later that year, on November 23, 1997, I saw U2 perform in San Antonio on its PopMart Tour. The show, which was the first time I’d seen the band perform live, took place the day after INXS lead singer Michael Hutchence died. (You can find the setlist for that show here.). In the years since 1997, the Saturn Corporation dissolved, consigning the SL1 and its ilk to the dustbin of history. Today, on January 1, 2017, I will listen once again to “New Year’s Day.”

Farewell to 2016, the cruelest of recent years. Let us brace ourselves for 2017.