9.23.2011

Goodbye, R.E.M

Dear Peter Buck, Michael Stipe, Mike Mills, and Bill Berry, 


So central rain, that's how your decision to disband feels like. I'm guessing each of you must have taken the time to process this huge decision before making the announcement. I admire the courage that must be behind the decision to pursue your own projects. Still, we, your fans (no longer kids, struggling to be adults, succeeding in some parts, failing in others, winging it in most places) will miss you. We'll feel sad that the concept that you guys are actively collaborating on something are nil for now. 


Thank you for the past 31 years. Your songs have made life infinitely more meaningful. 


Thank you for producing some of the most beautiful songs I will ever know, with lines like "I count your eyelashes secretly, with every one whisper I love you, I let you sleep,(At My Most Beautiful), which my 19/ 20-something mind understood as the possibility that a great love, the kind that leaves sweet, awkward rhymes on answering machines and one that counts eyelashes, could exist, but which, in my late-20s, I finally understood as a reminder that when one loves greatly, one is at her most beautiful. 



Or how about this line, "Your light eclipsed the moon tonight, Electrolite,"(Electrolite) which is a line I don't think I'll ever tire telling my someone, just because. (Just because you always want to remind them of that great, blinding light within). 


I love the band that you guys were. Trust that your music will never be erased from the ipod and that they'll always be migrated into whatever format music players of the future evolve into, not because I'm sentimental, no, but because whenever I wish to feel better or feel safe or feel home, it's your songs I've always reached out for. I suspect I won't stop doing that. A lifetime of thank yous is not enough.


And all this talk of time, talk is fine. And I don't want to stay around. Why can't we pantomime, just close our eyes and sleep sweet dreams, me and you with wings on our feet.

- from that song of yours that always drives me to tears, "the Great Beyond."

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