Aging Popstar?I saw R.E.M. the other night at the United Center. They’ve probably been my favorite band since I was about thirteen. I had a strange reaction though. I’m not thirteen anymore. And the three remaining members of R.E.M. aren’t exactly spring chickens themselves. My first reaction upon walking into the gigantic arena was, “Wow, they’re fan base is really old.” Failing of course to realize that I am part of that fan base and I am getting old. When they started off with “Finest Worksong” and ” Begin the Begin” I thought it was going to be a raucous night of comradery b/w the band and their fans all raging against the dying of the light. All of us remembering where we were when we heard “Life’s Rich Pageant” or when we discovered that there was more to rock music than synthesizers and hair gel. Funny thing was, no one remembered. Shira and I were giddy after the first two songs but no one else seemed to care. Their enthusiasm was saved for “Man on the Moon,” “Everybody Hurts,” even their new song “Bad Day,” (very reminiscent of “End of the World” by the way) bought more people to their feet than “Fall on Me.” But when I really realized I was an aging fan alone was when the band played “Shaking Through” and everyone headed for the restroom. I guess their early fan base has moved on to other things like Pete Yorn and John Mayer, sugary sweet songs of love and loss. I guess all of our favorite bands get old. I do admire them for...
R. CarverThere was that time that I wrote the review of your book What We Talk About When We Talk About Love for the Times, and I did not know anything I wrote. You were wild and magnificent and more worldly, and more worldly read than me. I thought you dwelled on the bad things, and the bad people feeling the bad things too much. I made it a habit to adopt the new style and I thought you had nothing to do with it. I met you that weekend in Portland, a long weekend, Labor Day, and you seemed the nicest. I could not seem to get the smear of your writing out of my brain. A bad smear I thought at the time. Like you had tainted my thoughts. The way in which love could be. Like you had precluded the possibility of anything possible. I was young, foolish and full of hope. In Portland, over that beer, I found you nothing like what you wrote. Filled with passion and a history of love, I failed to understand the way in which you could write what I felt at the time was so much heartlessness. Nothing is ever as it seems. Mt. Hood stood as a monument outside of the bar, and over the roofline, of the cold, frigid horizon of aging. I made a mistake. See, it was never your intention to be that way. There was a commitment to truth of one sort or another. The way in which a fictioner will write it and a journalist could never get. This is all second-nature to...
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