The End of the World as We Know It

R.E.M., my favorite band, is calling it quits after 31 years. It’s funny, because I’ve been thinking about the band a lot lately – they were mentioned in two of my last four blogs.

In the past few years, I haven’t been listening to much music that didn’t come attached to a Broadway musical, so I haven’t been hearing R.E.M. as much as I used to. But they were like an old friend who you didn’t see often, but you always knew they were there if you needed them.

I first discovered R.E.M in 1991 when their Out of Time album came out. "Losing My Religion" was a single playing on the radio during my final semester at California University of Pennsylvania, when I was writing “Rip Wakes Up,” my first column, for the campus newspaper.

Writing the column allowed me to express myself in a very public forum, and I was exposing myself (in a purely figurative sense, of course) for the first time in a very long time. Of course, readers reacted to what I wrote, especially those columns that addressed the current situation on campus, and sometimes it wasn’t all favorable. It was liberating, scary and exhilarating, all at the same time.  "Losing My Religion" really captured the experience for me:

That’s me in the corner,
That’s me in the spotlight,
Losing my religion
Trying to keep up with you
And I don’t know if I can do it
Oh, no, I’ve said too much
I haven’t said enough.


That’s how it was with R.E.M. and me. Their lyrics were poetry set to haunting music, and always seemed to reflect some of my experience back to me. The genius of their work is that the lyrics were usually not terribly literal- because they were so poetic, they were up for interpretation. What they meant to me might not be what they may have meant to you, or want the band meant when they wrote them.

So R.E.M has provided a soundtrack for my life. They were among my traveling companions when I was driving from place to place throughout the western part of the state as a part of my job, getting me through many a boring stretch of road, or literally helping me make it through the storm.

They helped me through a few emotional storms, too. I’ve never been one to shun change, but there have been a few times in my life when sudden, dramatic and unwelcome change was thrust upon me, through no fault of my own. These were times when my life and my world were altered forever, because of the decisions and actions of other people. At these times R.E.M’s uncharacteristically literal "Everybody Hurts" from their 1992 Automatic for the People album would just come to my mind:

Sometimes everything is wrong. Now it's time to sing along
When your day is night alone, (hold on, hold on)
If you feel like letting go, (hold on)
When you think you've had too much of this life, well hang on


'Cause everybody hurts. Take comfort in your friends
Everybody hurts. Don't throw your hand. Oh, no. Don't throw your hand
If you feel like you're alone, no, no, no, you are not alone….

So hold on, hold on

That song was like a musical lifesaver to me. It was a lot less expensive than therapy, and probably equally effective.

A funny thing always happens to me during the life-changing bad times. I always come out the other end not just okay, but better - in a better place. I become stronger and surer, and more loved and supported than I was before. Again, R.E.M. says it better than I can-

It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.

So now the band is calling it a day, which can’t help but make me feel just a little melancholy. But I hope they feel fine.