I can hear you, can you hear me?—R.E.M., Sitting Still
R.E.M. is the absolute seminal band for me; their albums are the soundtrack of my life. I was a thriteen year-old heavy metal-loving dork living in working class Michigan in 1984 when, on Easter vacation in Toronto, I stumbled upon Chronic Town in a cutout bin at Sam The Record Man on Yonge St. From the moment the needle hit the vinyl on my shitty, department store turntable, I was literally tranformed into another person. It is hard to remember the fabric of a pre-internet, pre-iPod, pre-video on demand world, but I clearly had a sentimental attachment to the sensation of having a secret, of loving something and finding almost no connection among members of my community, my friends, my peers; is that even possible anymore? I have a very young son, and I often wonder if he will ever feel what it is like to not know a single person who shares his passion for an artist, an idea, a song. Today, we connect online, we find a universe of articles and fans sites and links and history and community among like-minded people around the world. For me, cracking open Chronic Town in Flint, Michigan as a thirteen year-old kid felt like a secret, private revolt. I would literally spend days listening to R.E.M. records, singing along in jibberish, blissfully alone, disconnected, changing into what I now consider “me.” Is that possible anymore?
Smitten with Chronic Town, I immediately dove into the R.E.M. catalogue, picking up Murmur, already a year old, and Reckoning, which had just come out. I was inseparable from those records during Middle School, literally wearing out my vinyl copy of Murmur within a few months. The following spring, 1985, I picked up Fables of The Reconstruction and my step-dad took me to see the band in concert at the Fox Theater in Detroit, which blew my 14 year old mind. I can remember almost every detail of that show to this day, from the expressionistic lighting to the huge sound to the cover of Aerosmith’s Toys In The Attic that came out of nowhere. The band was always mysterious; who wrote which song? What was Michael Stipe hiding from behind his curly hair? What was he singing about? Every once in a while, an interview would appear in a magazine, a clip on MTV, and I would gobble all of it up, trying to understand the band and the reasons I felt so connected to their music. It was and is a mystery to me; Stipe’s voice is in my own vocal range, so I could sing along, the abstract imagery of the songs hit me, the jangly guitar connected to classic songs that I loved, there was an outsider’s perspective that the band conveyed that felt true, a million reasons.
But most of all, they were singing songs that felt like being young and feeling eternal, about the impossibile reality of death and growing old, mixed with a deeply curious attachment to passing ways of life, regional, local experience, to just living and not giving a fuck. I felt like I could live a million years, secluded and all along the ruins and on and on.
Most of all, though, R.E.M. felt like something in stark opposition to the conservative literalism of Regan’s America, something much smarter and bigger than Middle and High School, connected to an almost impossibly vibrant scene (Athens GA, a place I dreamt of for years), an ideal of creative work, of personal possibility for me. There are infinite numbers of stories of kids claiming that bands saved their lives; my life didn’t need saving, I was a happy, confident kid. R.E.M. didn’t save my life or give it purpose, they simply offered me a portal into the possibilities of living, of a larger world. I listen to those records today and more than the music and the words, they convey the texture of memory and experience for me; they make me feel the same feelings, but through a new, changing perspective about who I am.
For no reason other than my own inability to appreciate the grand scale of the stadium concert, I stopped going to R.E.M. shows after the Green tour. And in truth, after Bill Berry left in 1997 to recover from a brain aneurysm, I felt like the band and I both had changed, which, fucking right and fair play. There was nothing revoked between the music and me, but all of doors that R.E.M. had opened for me had been populated by a million other moments, experiences, songs, shows, loves. I grew up, got older, and they did the same. I haven’t felt a deep connection to the band’s new work in the same way I did their 1980’s work, but who feels the same deep connection as a thirty something that they did as a teenager?
I am going to die someday. I have a son to whom I want to give the entirety of the world and all of myself. I have a wife that I love in ways I thought impossible. So many things I dreamed of doing will never get done. And I feel completely content.
That said, whatever connected inside of me, it is still very much alive. Today, I picked up a copy of R.E.M.‘s new album, Live At The Olympia which has essentailly forced me curl up in a ball in my bedroom with my headphones on, a irrevocable grin plastered on my face, emotions and feelings I haven’t had in years flooding through me. It is an absolutely amazing retrospective of everything that made the band vital, crucial, meaningful to me. The song selection is unreal (they play so many of my favorites) but it is the muscular, urgent sound of the performances on this record that prove just how important and powerful a band R.E.M. are. All of that is well and good and yes yes yes, but the real gift here is the way Michael Stipe just CRUSHES these songs—I just can’t believe how good and clear he sounds on this record; the performances of Sitting Still, Carnival Of Sorts and especially 1,000,000 as they are performed here are achingly, jawdroppingly great. I had forgotten what they mean to me and this album feels like a reclamation of everything I loved about discovering their music, everything I was and wanted to be. I can’t believe it. It’s still there and I forgot how much I missed it.
This year, in celebration of the Labor Day weekend, we take a break from our regularly scheduled film writing to discuss sports. Thanks for your understanding.
I know suffering.
In the early winter of 1989, I accepted an offer to attend The University of Michigan the following autumn. I was excited to be joining several of my friends at the school, excited to get out of my parent’s house and live like there was no tomorrow on campus. I was also a die-hard Michigan sports fan, a feeling that was instantly deepened by my admission to the school. In the spring of 1989, as I wrapped up my senior year of high school, things were looking up; The Michigan men’s basketball team, lead by the record-breaking shooting of fellow Flintstone Glen Rice, made it to the NCAA basketball final, where, well, magic happened; Michigan won the 1989 NCAA Tournament on a pair of last second free-throws by Rumeal Robinson. I couldn’t wait to get on campus and be a part of it.
My freshman year started off full of optimism; Michigan’s football team, coached by the legendary Bo Schembechler, was ranked #2 in the nation, and on a cold, rainy day in mid-September, we were opening the season by hosting #1 Notre Dame. Under Coach Schembechler, Michigan, despite being located in Ann Arbor, one of the most liberal, easy-going towns in the country, was one of the most conservative teams in the history of college football. My friends and I used to play a game throughout the Schembechler era (which ended in January of 2008 when Coach Carr retired), where we would look at the down and distance Michigan faced and then call the next play on offense. Just look at the situation, add in the fact that it’s Michigan we’re talking about and voila— 9.5 times out of 10, we would be right. So would the defensive coordinator of the other team. 1st and 10? Run up the middle. Second and 7? Run up the middle. Third and goal? Run up the middle (with an occasional play-action pass to the Tight End). I was excited, though; this was my first game as a student I was and dead certain that Michigan could win at home despite the weather, despite history, despite, well, everything I knew; Michigan hadn’t won a National Football championship since 1948. 41 years; two lifetimes to an 18-year old. We had always struggled in big games, sometimes despite being the more talented team, so while we were (and remain) the team with the most wins in the history of college football, we also were (and remain) one of the most frustrating teams to love. What made that love possible was that sometimes, without warning, the team could take your breath away; despite being able to see into the future and hoping it wouldn’t come true, we would suddenly have those brilliant moments where we changed something up, we took a chance, and—bang!— Michigan pulled it out of the hat. We lived on the dull edge of an otherwise beautiful, dangerous razor.
1989 was the end of the Schembechler era; Bo would retire after the season, but it was the beginning for me. I had season tickets for the first time ever and as we packed our way into the student section alongside 110,000+ other fans, I just felt special being there, being a part of the stadium, The Big House, the largest college football stadium in the country. Imagine stepping foot into the long chain of history, being a part of something that was much, much bigger than you, but something that, without you, might have been something else entirely. Every fan of every college football team feels that, the warm embrace of a huge community of fellow fans, the sense of what has come before and that what may happen on the very next play, or the next season or in the hands of the next recruit, might literally change your life.
That’s how it was for me on Opening Day, September 14, 1989. Bo was in his final hours as coach of the Michigan Wolverines and times were changing; the game was dragging him kicking and screaming out of the “three yards and a cloud of dust” era and into the modern era of football, but he was still a stubborn man, which we learned the hard way; my first game as a student at Michigan was the game when Notre Dame’s Rocket Ismail returned two kickoffs for a touchdown in the second half and #1 Notre Dame beat #2 Michigan 24-19. It still hurts to watch…
One I understand. But how could you kick it to him again? Like I said, stubborn.
Before that day, my passion was tempered by youthful nonchalance, but from that moment on, my heart has constantly been torn in half by Michigan Football, a program that could play like a world beater one week and inexplicably lose the next. Being a student there only made the roots grow deeper; you knew the players, saw them in class, hung out with them after work. The team and school become a part of you, your history, everything intertwined and indistinguishable. In the last two decades of Michigan Football, four moments really stand out for me, moments when my heart raced in my chest, where I couldn’t believe I was watching Michigan, where—OMG!!—we did it!. In order:
1991 Desmond Howard: The Catch
Two years after the humiliation handed out by Rocket Ismail, we had a speedster of our own and I was there to see him play. Desmond Howard, a man who I will love forever, launched his Heisman campaign with the greatest, most unexpected play in the history of Michigan football. “4th and a foot” and we throw a fade to the corner and, holyshit, Howard catches it. Redemption is possible.
1991 Desmond Howard: Hello, Heisman!
When Desmond struck that pose, I was at the other end of the stadium and missed it, but the return will be forever etched in my brain.
1997: The Woodson Game
On the way to the team’s first National Championship in 49 years, the first and only undefeated season of my entire life (capped off by a relatively unspectacular win against Washington St. in the Rose Bowl which I could hardly bear to watch through my fingers because I knew, just knew, we would lose the game… we didn’t), Michigan beat Ohio State behind one of the greatest individual performances in the history of college football. Heisman winner Charles Woodson is, in my opinion, the greatest player ever to wear a Michigan uniform. He brought home the title and gave me a lifetime of happiness. No one can ever take that away from me.
He also did this…
… which, you know… holy shit!
2008: Beat Tebow
Michigan was on the final day of the Coach Carr era and were heavy underdogs against defending national champion Florida and Football Jesus Heisman winner and “greatest college football player of all time” Tim Tebow. I was working in Sarasota, so the Mrs. and I made the drive up to Orlando and sat among the few Michigan fans to watch us somehow, someway beat Florida 41-35. It was, to use a popular phrase, fucking awesome.
And then, all hell broke loose.
—
Last year, in the wake of Coach Carr’s departure, the last of the Bo Schembechler-era coaches and a great man himself, Michigan hired Coach Rich Rodriguez away from West Virginia University, and I, we, the University of Michigan suffered one of the most painful years in the history of Michigan football. An entirely new system meant losses to Ohio State for the fifth consecutive year*, Michigan State, Notre Dame and, one year removed from the worst loss in the history of the program, we endured the 2nd worst loss in the history of the program when The University of Toledo beat us at home. I’m not sure I can adequately describe the feeling I had watching my team last year, but it was something akin, I imagine, to watching your house burn down with a lifetime of memories tucked neatly away inside the inferno. Absolutely traumatic.
The effect of all of it, the losses, the controversies, the changes in our football system and culture, has been galvanizing, putting the fans and aumni squarely behind the team. I like Coach Rodriguez; I think he is an honest, from-the-heart type of guy who handles people, players and the press without guile or manipulation; he is who he is and, if he starts winning with the same consistency he brought ot his past jobs, I think we’ll be an exciting, powerful football program for years to come. The whole experience of this last year has the feeling of the entire world piling on, creating an “us against them” attitude that, I think, can create a new passion and love for Michigan Football among the loyal. I think Coach Rodriguez could, maybe, just maybe, make us great.
After weeks now of off the field torment (all of which combined feels not 1% as bad as losing five years in a row to Ohio St.,) Michigan straps on their helmets on Saturday and kicks off the 2009 football season at 3:30 PM against Western Michigan. And despite all of the suffering and anger, despite the decades of identifying too closely with the ups and downs of the program, here I am again, the day before we open the season, and I am, well, excited. Hopeful, even. Why, you ask? What great strides have we made? Well, let me introduce you to our new starting quarterback, Tate Forcier, seen here in the Michigan Spring game destroying our defense (which may say more about our defense than about Forcier, but hear me out)…
Some things to note in that video: The people catching balls are on offense. The ball is thrown below the heads of the intended receivers instead of over them. Despite Forcier being one of only three freshman to start at Quarterback in modern Michigan history (only Rick Leach and Chad Henne share that honor which, if Forcier keeps that company, I have no complaints at all), I watch him play and I think “hey, he looks… competent!” which is a far cry from the previous year’s torment.
The other piece of great news is that Michigan Stadium, The Big House, has been upgraded and improved, with a new façade and glassed-in luxury suites. Take a look:
The stadium, despite holding more people than any other stadium in the country, was never very loud because of its bowl-like structure, which pushed a lot of the sound up and out instead of focusing it inside the playing area. That will change now; the glass luxury boxes promise to bounce a lot of the sound back into the stadium and, here’s hoping, create a more vocal, intimidating environment for our home games. Either way, the stadium looks beautiful and I can’t wait to get back there again soon.
I don’t expect Michigan to shock the world this year. I don’t expect greatness. But I do think we’re on that road and someday soon, the team is going to bring the hint of a smile to my face again. This is why I love college football; I can believe. I can believe that one day, Michigan will make me proud again. It’s coming, I just need to hang on a little longer. Maybe it’s tomorrow? Next year? Doesn’t matter, because I’ll be there when we’re down and I’ll be there when we’re great again. Until then, we must rebuild our house and restore the meaning to our memories.
Go Blue.
* A quick note about Ohio State: 0-5 in the last five years is a relatively painful streak in the greatest rivalry in American sports, but I am bouyoed by the fact that Michigan remains 57-42-6 all-time against Ohio St. and 19-18-2 in my lifetime. However, Michigan has not won a game since I met and married the Mrs. She was born and raised in Ohio and while she could give a shit about football, her entire family are all Buckeye fans, so you can imagine how that 0-5 has gone for me. The holidays? Unbearable. So, in the name of all that is sacred, I need a win for Michigan. Just to get me through the year. Please?
Home at last, and while I have been busy getting my personal and professional shit together (and not achieving very much on either front), I haven’t been able to sneak away for a moment of cinematic respite from the real world. Clearly, I need a break; when not throwing up in my own mouth while tracking the “health-care debate”, I’ve been ticking the days off of my calendar until one of those yahoos carrying loaded firearms to a Presidential appearance decides to go all Charles Guiteau and send this country into another horrific domestic spiral. You can feel the violence coming in the air, can’t you? Seeing those guns and then watching the remembrances of Ted Kennedy in the wake of his death this past week, it all feels incredibly eerie, as if real time was stretching into its cinematic form, everything slowing down, rhyming, as we see the collision coming and are helpless to stop it.
The nation seems exhausted and broken this summer.
I can’t bear to look anymore. I literally pains me to watch this country turn into an ironic punchline, a place where the opperessors use the tropes of the victimization they created to sell themselves as the oppressed. Watching thousands of middle-class suckers align themselves against their own best interests, using the issue of universal healthcare to draw comparisons between Obama and Adolff Hitler (mindboggling) would be tragic if it wasn’t so empty and cruel, obvious and shrill. Only in America could we use the issue of giving health insurance to the lower middle class, an action being implemented by a democratically elected President and Congress and draw comparisons to the Reichstag Fire Decree (not that these people even know enough about history to be specific).
As the lies about “death panels” and “mandatory abortion” spread like swine flu (or at least spread like the rumors of mass graves being prepard for the impending swine flu epidemic), I am still reeling in the wake of the assassination of Dr. George Tiller, a women’s reproductive healthcare provider in Wichita, KS. That such a horrific act simply cycled through the news without much analysis is the type of blindness that kicked this summer off, and so we come full circle to this weekend’s protests in Bellevue, NE against Dr. LeRoy Carhart . In the linked article, which CNN had the balls to title “Protests to focus on 60,000 abortion doctor”, my favorite quote comes from Operation Rescue President Troy Newman, who downplays Dr. Tiller’s death and discourages violence against Dr. Carhart by saying “I vehemently disagreed with what Mr. Tiller did, as well as all abortionists for what they do. But they’re still human beings, and they deserve due process.” As if what these doctors do was illegal, as if a trial were required. Due process.
I can’t anymore. I just can’t.
I spent the last two plus weeks with family, celebrating a wedding in between stays on Lake Michigan. The entire time, I felt a little beseiged by my own thoughts, completely unable to relax, to, well, vacate. I remain completely wound up in knots, anxious and full of dread. Usually, a trip home signals a bit of nostalgia, a desire to think back on happier, more innocent times and remember who I was when summers felt carefree, when I didn’t worry so much. Strangely, while that didn’t happen when I was home, it came rushing back this week as I took in Matt Zoller Seitz and Aaron Aradillas’ terrific 5-part video essay The Evolution Of The Modern Blockbuster over at The L Magazine.
The piece focuses on two summers that have particular resonance for me; 1984, which was the summer between my 7th and 8th grade years (aka “the summer of Purple Rain” in my neck of the woods), and 1989, the summer just after I graduated from high school. After watching all five episodes, I’m still not sure how the modern blockbuster evolved from the Aradillas’ thesis; I’m not even sure what his thesis is, other than to use the films of the day to capture the mood of those particular times (I much prefer the title in the film itself, A Tale Of Two Summers). But after bearing the news that John Hughes had died on the first day of my summer vacation, it was profoundly moving to remember the summer of Sixteen Candles like that, and even more so to think about the cultural shift from Sixteen Candles to Heathers, and from Heathers to today. Looking back at these movies hurts a little bit now, especially in such a hot and hostile summer, especially with the certainty of my teenage years nothing more than an embarassing memory. But the films, more specifically the language of these films, stay with me as a sort of formative text running through my head, never constant but always there.
I remember thinking about Heathers when Matthew Shepard was killed , about that line “I love my dead gay son,” which had always made me laugh not because of the juvenile prejudice it implied on the surface but because, in Jessie Helms and Ronald Regan’s America, those words were the precise articulation of everything the conservative, grown-up world didn’t understand about compassion. For me, the death of Matthew Shepard was the perfect culmination of what that line implied, that false understanding and permissive hostility. Or the argument between Neil and his father in Dead Poet’s Society, when Neil has been caught performing as Puck in the school production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and his father turns and hisses “You made a liar out of me, Neil!,” which is a phrase I still unconsciously use in an ironic way when I recognize my own self-centeredness in a given situation. And there’s Say Anything, a movie that I always found slightly off-kilter, mostly because of Ione Skye and John Mahoney’s performances, which lacked the realistic, lived-in quality of John Cusack’s Lloyd Dobler and his moments in the film; Lloyd felt very real and true when set against the sterility of the Court’s world. Aside from Diane being pretty and nice, why would he want into that boring family? Why would she have a moment’s hesitation about leaving it? Joe lies, Diane…
Of course, the two movies that stand out, up and beyond all of the films in this essay, are Spike Lee’s amazing Do The Right Thing, and Steven Soderbergh’s sex, lies and videotape, which make up the heart of 1989: Part I (embedded below), which I saw a couple of weeks apart at the end of the August, just before my first year of college began. Both films were crucial for me in laying out the concerns of a punishing culture, from racial tensions undercutting class solidarity to sexual dysfunction based on voyeuristic, detached consumption. Interesting to think of both directors, each of them passionate amateurs at the time, and how much of each of these films captures the feeling of the D.I.Y. ethos of that time (and what their work has been since); it was the era of scene-based alternative rock and hip-hop and both were political, meaningful and engaged in a struggle against the good times greed holding sway. But these films are also great movies; there is a formal ambition in Do The Right Thing (one that Aradillas properly defines as “theatrical”) and in sex, lies and videotape that seems absent from most low-budget, “independent” films being made now. There are exceptions, but fewer movies seem to be drawn from that same lineage, to propose a textural, visceral sensation of craft and meaning. I miss that desperately in current film, that sense of voice that arrives when a script, visual strategy (those low-angles shots in Do The Right Thing still pop, don’t they?) and performances work in concert to deliver thrills.
These films, alongside the work of Jim Jarmusch and others, stood as a testament to the collaborative blossoming of popular forms (film/music/literature) that defined my generation. When I think about the American D.I.Y ethos of that time, I clearly get sentimental. This brand of filmmaking would flourish for the next seven years and give us films like Slacker and Metropolitan before reaching its apotheosis in Todd Haynes’ 1995 Safe. The year before Haynes unleashed his masterpiece, the film culture I knew and loved was already collapsing under the weight of Pulp Fiction; Quentin Tarantino single-handedly changed the culture of independent film (through no fault of his own), launching the mini-major, star-driven, stylized, quirk-riddled, obscure pop culture referencing, money and marketing film business that exists today, one that may soon collapse itself as everyone goes smaller, viral and video. Cinema transformed into canapé, audiences into isolated lists of unique vistors, preferences stored, y’know, in case you might want to buy something in the future.
Ah, memories. Simpler times always seem less so when you’re living them.
I’m off to my home state of Michigan for two weeks of lakeside R&R with the family. I won’t clutter the blog feed during the trip; I’m hunkering down with a book and some much-needed respite from the internet. Back at the end of August, in time to get ready for the annual trip to Toronto and the NYFF. Enjoy the intervening weeks and I’ll see you on the other side of the journey.
Today is my second wedding anniversary… in celebration of finding someone who could tolerate me for that period of time, I present a lovely little video for a lovely little song that has been dominating my headphones this season. Enjoy!
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