I like to believe it's moments like that who make me who I am. Sunday morning, I'm pushing a cart down the aisle of my local grocery store when LOSING MY RELIGION, by R.E.M starts playing on their home radio channel. That detail would not even register with some, especially when you're busy buying groceries. Deciding what you're going to eat for the next week or so is a critical moment of your routine. But it registers with me and I start singing along. Louder than I would've liked at first. Then it hits me in the face: why do I know the lyrics to that song? I've never really been a fan of R.E.M. There is no logical reason explaining why I know the lyrics of their songs.
LOSING MY RELIGION came out on February of 1991, I was eight years old. It was an instant and massive hit. I can't think of another song that defined their career better. For the last 23 years, it's been receiving regular airtime on commercial, corporate and independant radio channels. Everyone I know likes LOSING MY RELIGION, yet I don't know anybody who would call it his/her favourite song. The most vivid memory I have of this song is hearing it fill the air at local teenage dancing nights. Back then, I was terrified of speaking to girls, so I did two thing during these night 1) I witnessed other kids speaking with the and getting girlfriends and 2) I got in trouble. Michael Stipe unwittingly sang the soundtrack to the loserdom of my teenage years:
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
I don't know how else I could explain the strong kinship I feel to LOSING MY RELIGION. I care more about that song that most of what my favourite artists have recently released because it built a relationship with me. It was there during a weird, unpleasant time of my existence and it's still there today, now that I have matured and changed for the best. I've had the same epiphany the other day when I found myself playing air guitar and howling the words to Testament's ELECTRIC CROWN when I was cooking dinner the other night. I love Testament, I've seen them live and own several of their albums on CD and on iTunes. None of their songs rattles my cage like ELECTRIC CROWN though (released fourteen months after LOSING MY RELIGION) because it was the companion to the wordless anger and alienation of my teenagehood. It's not a song about me, it's about a guy heading to the electric chair, but I put a part of me into it.
There is a lot being said online, in magazines and academia about what is great art and what isn't. Consensus is that it's not an exact science. What transports you might leave me completely cold and vice versa. I do believe great art is art has a place for you. Art where you can recognize yourself into and that inspires you to transcend whatever life you've been living. I'm not afraid to say FIGHT CLUB, by Chuck Palahniuk changed my life. It lead me to take decisions I would've have taken if I hadn't read it feverously over and over again. It lead me to meet people I wouldn't have dared to meet. Oddly enough, it gave me a courage I didn't know I had. I live to find another book that will have such a powerful effect on me.
Bryan Callen said on the Joe Rogan Experience that you need to surrender to art, to truly feel its beauty. I agree, but great art unwittingly understands that and leaves you breathing room to exists withing its paradigm, like LOSING MY RELIGION did, like ELECTRIC CROWN and FIGHT CLUB did too, at least for me. That's how you forge a relationship to it, learn to trust it and transcend your limitations. Pushing my grocery cart on a Sunday morning, I thought that art has an intangible, yet powerful effect on human beings. Harnessing the powers of inspiration is the key to immortality and you have to let yourself be inspired first before you can inspire others.