Its echoes crept back into my consciousness as I emerged from an unplanned nap.
A suburban cricket triggered memories of its pastoral intro. It unearthed in my memory in vague waves. Of course it was R.E.M., but the title and most of the lyrics escaped me. More certain was the murky mishmosh of emotion and sound: the plucky rhythm of the mandolin; the unrelenting whole notes of an accordion; Stipe at his intense-and-pensive Stipiest, admitting he was "very scared" about ... something — a sentiment backed up vocally and philosophically by Peter Buck.
When I originally discovered this song, it was 1988, and I was 9. I'd borrowed the orange-covered cassette called "Green" from my sister Tara, a mostly tolerant teenage music curator for her two younger brothers. Yet the song that would seep back into my being, almost three decades later, had been the one I'd almost always fast-forwarded on a silver boom box to get to "Stand."
Back in the present, I'm consumed by that feeling masking itself as a song, "You are the Everything." Lyrical images of youth and aging; of beauty and innocence; of travel and stillness; of back seats and kitchens; of lust and apprehension. And, Good God, that refrain: "You are here with me / You have been here and you are everything."
Often we're struck by songs because they remind us of exactly who we are or people we know. But this time, I'm moved by the unknown. Who is the "You," if there is no clear "You" to play the daunting role of "Everything" with a literal capital E? And while we're at it, where the hell have I been, assuming "You have been here," perhaps all along?
I have no clear directive. I'm still clicking replay, immersing myself in the swath, and seeing where it takes me, other than on a transcendental nostalgia trip launched by a single cricket.
