and i used to feel fine

Before I listened to R.E.M and fell in love with a majority of their catalogue, it always seemed to me frontman Michael Stipe was keen on auditioning as the fourth member of the Blue Man Group. It was only after the group disbanded in 2011 when I listened to nearly everything they recorded, and with the now recent release of the band’s rarities I have one question. Why is it that artists so ‘mature’ in their youth can be so ‘immature’ in their elder years? I use quotes around those words because I don’t fully subscribe to such simple polarities, though I do often wonder — what the fuck happens? Is fame that bad?

Take for example some lines from “West of the Fields,” off R.E.M’s debut album Murmur:

Long gone, intuition to assume are gone when we try.
Dream of a living jungle in my way back home when we die.

West of the fields. West of the fields. West of the fields. West of the fields.
Long gone. Long gone. Long gone. Long gone. West of the fields.

Dreams of Elysian, to assume are gone when we try
Tell now what is dreaming
When we try to listen with your eyes oversimplify

Now that’s just stunning — the ‘ong’ alliteration, the zen-type absence and abandonment, the arcadian allusion brought by a vague vector, the intuitive resistance to grammar, etc. Now here’s an excerpt from “Leaving New York” from a more recent album Around the Sun.

you might have laughed if I told you
you might have hidden a frown.
you might have succeeded in changing me
I might have been turned around.

it’s easier to leave
than to be left behind
leaving was never my proud.
leaving new york, never easy.
I saw the light fading out

“Succeeded in changing me,” and “it’s easier to leave / than to be left behind” sound like something from a 16 year old girl’s diary. The cliche “hidden a frown” works predictably with “turned around.” Maybe he’s trying to evoke Lou Reed’s stoic irony of New York, key word being ‘trying.’ I don’t want to be an arsehole, but I just admired Michael Stipe so much when he was younger. For every cougar with a jab of botox, there’s a rock singer who thinks 20 years never happened. The problem with pop music is that it glorifies youth. Literature favors better in this matter; it starts off miserable and tries to end that way.

A fan who visited the band’s hometown Athens Georgia wrote in an Amazon review that he saw Stipe was here written on the bathroom wall in some club or something, this being a rhetorically abridged version of Stipe was here, penned by the eponymous man himself. 

I kind of feel like that kid in the abandoned house in that video. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, then why are you still reading this.) I suppose the fate of youth is written in old stars — the poetry ends when the pain does. I know that’s cliche, but thank you for your attention so far. I used to save up my weekly £5 pocket money to buy cassette tapes of Baha Men’s Who Let The Dog’s Out? I’d ride my bike for 5 miles to Woolworths because my dad wouldn’t take me. That was real punk, people. Now I’m in my boxers with a laptop on my bedroom desk waiting to be defaced. Work is tomorrow, ad infin. 

It’s time I had some time alone.