Elevation and Beyond: A U2 Fan’s Travels to Meet the Band, the Crowd, Herself

Elevation and Beyond is the true story of the birth of unreasonable devotion to a rock band. It is one fan’s voyage through life within the context of that devotion. The narrative follows an arcing, sometimes looping, process from self-centered isolation to connection and integration.

The process begins within the context of an Irish Catholic family upbringing in the eighties, where the author as a child is exposed to and impressed upon by the music of U2 through the vinyl records of her older siblings. Upon arrival into adolescence, she sustains a traumatic brain injury; the subsequent blanket of post-concussive depression and isolated misery is infiltrated only by the lighted images of Bono singing and smoking alone at a darkened bar in the video for One in 1992.

From there, the chase begins. Movement out of fear and alienation is spurred by the fire of her passion for U2 and U2 music. From a lonely teenage bedroom wall-papered with pictures of Bono and U2, she makes her debut at college with a drive to see U2 live in concert again, and again, and again.