Hold On

R.E.M., Our Lucid Dreams, and Remembering Every Moment

1985

I was listening to Classic Rock radio and something strange broke through.  It had a guitar that was part Byrds jangle and part Ventures attitude.  The lyrics that I could make out had something to do with a train conductor.  But that feeling evoked earlier childhood.  It was a place where there were a few words, but most of them were garbled.  The DJ told me this weird train conductor song was called “Driver 8” and the band was called R.E.M.  R.E.M., isn’t that Rapid Eye Movement?  Dreams are the part of sleep we remember, but the part we don’t remember is what we really need.  What an idea.  I could hear a voice singing about “a way to put myself to sleep,” then saying, “A way to put myself, my children to sleep.”  This didn’t sound like 1985.  It sounded more like a mid-60s record, but it had a new kind of incoherence.  Call it post-lexical.  I taped the song the next time I heard it, and I wanted more.  I went with my mom to shop at Tom Thumb, which had a shrink wrapped cassette of R.E.M., Fables of the Reconstruction (or was it the opposite?).  It cost $4.99, and I slipped it in with the produce.  When it came up with the scanner, my mom gave me a knowing, indulgent look.  A way to put myself to sleep.  Was this train conductor asleep at the wheel?

I listened to the whole album, and none of the other songs landed like “Driver 8,” and they were even stranger.  There was no print-out for lyrics.  They were a secret.  It was addictive.  It was anesthetizing, it was the part of sleep we really needed.  What did the unconscious have to do with the conscious?  Was there some place in the middle where things got really interesting?  Was not understanding the lyrics the point?

The voice sounded Southern, but this was not Country and Western or Lynyrd Skynyrd.  This was not “Sweet Home Alabama.”  This was a guy who sang the way he talked.  Most of rock and roll was white guys affecting at least a modicum of Black dialect—a confection called Elvis Presley—but there was a third rail. Syd Barrett, Ray Davies, Nick Drake and others sang in English accents. Michael Stipe would later name his influences--Velvet Underground.  Television.  Patti Smith.  They were who they were.  R.E.M., the dream state, is also the domain of lucid dreams.  Rock on, Walter Mitty.

1987

My brother has gone to college and left behind the vinyl that didn’t matter, including the next R.E.M. albums, Life’s Rich Pageant (1986) and Document (1987).  How weird, I could suddenly understand nearly every word. “The One I Love” had such simple lyrics, you couldn’t miss them--pretty cruel, but way rocking.  I was girl crazy, and even when things inevitably didn’t work out, I identified with Dylan and Costello but not this.  “It’s The End of the World as We Know It” dropped many names I knew (Lenny Bruce and Bernstein).  I was in a science class for rejects, and the kid who sat next to me didn’t know who Leonard Bernstein was.  He thought it was “let her birds die.”

1989

I am 16 and R.E.M. is my band for at least a few months.  Everything was personal.  “I Remember California” evoked a girl and another girl and even though I had never been to California, I felt like I remembered it.  “Hairshirt”—my God, that song is so raw.  How is it possible?  “Hang your hairshirt on the lowest rung” with Peter Buck on mandolin, as if no rung could be lower.  The words still seem random, patched together, associative. It is the sound of a dream that makes sense at a certain level, then you start to wake up and it becomes incoherent.  “The Wrong Child” is a wounded child.  “Tell me what it’s like to go outside.  I’ve never been.”  Oh my God, I am falling for this band.  “I’m not supposed to be like this, but it’s ok.”   Is it? I saw them at Reunion Arena in Dallas.  My girlfriend was in a psych ward.  Everything was dark, but I was still 16, a wild child.  “I believe in what you do/ I believe in watching you.”  There’s a line that needed no explanation.  Green was their major label debut, and they even printed the lyrics to “World Leader Pretend,” but they got to a place we could never unearth, a wound that never heals.

1991

The world has fallen in love with my aural secret.  I discovered it at the supermarket, and now you can’t get away from “Losing My Religion.”  In between the hits, some new favorites, especially “Country Feedback,” a bad relationship song that stung. “It’s crazy what you could have had.” “Fretless,” an outtake, is even more raw. He had the world at his feet but called dibs on solitude. “Don’t talk to me about being alone.”

1992

Automatic for the People is R.E.M.’s most melodic, lucid effort to date, and they just keep getting bigger, even though they hadn’t toured since 1989.  John Paul Jones, of Led Zeppelin, arranges the strings.  On the ballads, it becomes clearer that Stipe is, consciously or not, a descendant of James Taylor.  A heavy rumor is going around my campus that they aren’t touring because Michael Stipe is dying of AIDS.  “Sweetness Follows” is sung to a dying person, but you don’t hear the response. 

1994

Kurt Cobain becomes friends with Michael Stipe, then kills himself.  Monster is the reaction.  Peter Buck is clearly relieved to rock hard again, more than ever. 

1998

R.E.M. renews their contract with Warner Bros. and then they suddenly start selling a lot less.  I wonder if Stipe coming out has anything to do with this.

2011

R.E.M. break up.  They have some wonderful songs at the end that only true fans know.  I carry a torch for “Leaving New York,” and I’ve done it and come back.  They were somehow everything I left.  They were my 12.  They were my 16.  I am waking up from a dream.  I know it will be visionary, but I gain consciousness and it just sounds like a jumble.  When they announced their breakup, I immediately went to the local used CD store and filled in my R.E.M. gaps.  Then, almost immediately, I listened to something else.  But I’m listening now.  Reunion Arena is packed, my girlfriend is in a psych ward, and I’m still haunted.  This is where a poem begins.  This is where it stops making sense and when the sound takes you where you need to go. 

When I first heard “Everybody Hurts,” I didn’t fully get it, but when I saw the video, I couldn’t get over it.  The traffic is stopped.  Subtitles give us the pent-up emotions of everyone. A child thinks, “Stop singing. Stop singing. Stop singing.”  They are us.  Stipe, a naturally shy man, is playing it like Buster Keaton.  The traffic is stuck, everyone is miserable, and Stipe walks out telling all these miserable people that everyone hurts sometimes, but only on audio. He’s thinking it, but not singing it.  The traffic is still stuck.  The misery continues.  Until Stipe breaks the spell: “Hold on.”  With those two words, he does not solve their problems. But he does reach them.  We all need someone to unbind us, to wake us up, reminding us of something buried, maybe a lucid dream in the R.E.M. state.  For that song, he is that someone.  Sweetness follows: we hope so, but we have no idea.  Everybody hurts: that’s undeniable.  It’s so simple.  There’s no cure.  But we can get out and take a walk and take in some air.  We are following this voice even if we can’t understand all of it.  Our indulgent mother buys us a cassette and a world opens up.  Michael Stipe’s grandmother told him R.E.M. stands for Remember Every Moment.  There is a new way to be unstuck. Get Up. It beats reality.