Letter Never Sent (Which includes a lot about myself)
Dear R.E.M., including all members Michael Stipe, Peter Buck and Mike Mills.
I am a fifteen-year old Norwegian girl. First of all, I would have liked to explain the reason that I love your music so much – but unfortunately, I can’t. There is something magic about it that absolutely petrifies me, but I don’t know really what it is. I’ve read about the way Michael felt when he listened to Patti Smith at my age – like the ground fell apart under his feet, and the pieces of his body got together differently during the songs. Well, I’ve never heard anything of Patti Smith, but I feel exactly the same way when I listen to some of my favorite R.E.M. songs. I have just bought a biography (Fiction by John Buckley), where I read that Michael was quite shy and antisocial. It was very familiar to me; I’m a little like that myself. I listen to music and write stories in my room after school, and because my music taste is quite different from others, it is something I consider only as my own. It’s a dream world where I alone have got the key safely hidden in my pocket. I have never been shy about my music taste. If anyone at school asks what I am listening to, I answer them honestly. Something I found out was to tell people about such things early, before they had a chance to laugh at it.
I’m probably ought to start with the beginning: In 2001 I was home alone (aged 12). I watched MTV and recorded my favorite music on a videotape, and at the time All the Way to Reno was at its most popular here in Norway. When the music video was over, I would watch all the other videos and wait desperately for Reno to come once more. Of course, I did that because I wanted to keep it on a video forever, so I could listen to it just as much as I wanted. A couple of times I missed it, because I didn’t realize I forgot to push the record-button before they had been on the screen for a long time. I got more and more angry #%?=/!” (I believe that’s what I was thinking…), and would not give up until I had got it. At last I thought it would not come again that day, and said to myself: if the next song isn’t this one, I give up. Guess what the next song was… Miracles are truly happening. Because I had waited for a long while, All the Way to Reno was at the end of the tape (still is, though, because the only real goal I wanted to reach, was that video, and I didn't record anything after that). Usually, that was the only one I watched. In retrospect (to use some of Peter’s words…!), I don’t understand why I did not buy Reveal. I don’t understand why I never even thought about that. Which means I have wasted several years in that sense, listening to bad music like everyone else does (I sort of call it teenage-pop).
Before Christmas this year (nearly six years later, when I was fourteen), your new album Best of R.E.M. in time 1988 – 2003 was announced at TV. Seriously: that changed my life into something better. Then I finally remembered my love for one of your songs, and put that CD on my Christmas list. I got it as a present from my father and his wife. It was the best present I got, with my Discman put in a good second place. That said, since December 26. I have listened only to R.E.M.. On an average, I bought one new CD each month. Now I have twelve (The Best of R.E.M., Automatic For the People, Eponymous, Up, Monster, Green, Dead Letter Office, Fables of the Reconstruction, Out of Time, Reveal, New Adventures in Hi-Fi, Around the Sun – placed in the same order as I bought them) with all the rest to come. I also have two DVD’s, Perfect Square and The Best of R.E.M. in view. I have had the last one for a little less than a week, and I don't watch it any more than at least twice each day (Sorry, guys! …Ha ha ha!). People laugh at me when they look at my CD-collection. I don’t consider that a bad thing; I sometimes even laugh at it myself…
I listen to your music as often as I can – when I wake up in the morning, on my way to school, in every break we have at school, on my way home from school, before dinner, after dinner (and don’t stop until the next meal), and at last, before I fall asleep. That’s what most of my days are like. When I don’t have those headphones on for a change, I have one – or several (at the same time) – of your songs running through my head. I neither consider that a bad thing. Cause some of my favorite songs almost make me cry, dance or just feel sentimental. They are the blood that’s running through my veins, my heartbeats, my breath. I need it to survive. I’m like nothing without it. Sometimes I feel like I am in great deficit with the faze that for instance Country Feedback gives me. It’s my entire gravity, and it keeps me up when I am down. The notes are dragging my body as if I was made of strings, and how you actually do that is far beyond my imagination. I’ll never need any thunder with the excitement your music makes me feel, it’s all mostly like a wheel that keeps me rolling through about four lovely minutes, and I will not try to deny that, not to anyone. My fascination smoulders underneath my skin, and makes me feel like I’m wearing my heart upon my sleeve. You will maybe think it sounds precocious or just really witty and comic, but in some kind of strange way, I have come to convince myself that the world becomes a much better place to live with your music ringing around my ears. Believe me, that naïveté is a perfect way to get through the ”tough adolescence” (I don’t know about everyone else, but the idea that being a teenager is the hardest period in life, seems like a lie to me. If my life keeps going on this well, I don’t see any reason for me to complain). At least that is my experience so far.
In the cover of your album Monster, there is a painting containing a t-shirt with the words ”I’m with stupid”. After a while I forgot that, and when I was on a vacation in Greece (Naxos) I went to a souvenir shop. There it was – I’m with stupid. I thought maybe I would buy it later. At the hotel room a couple of days later, I was looking at my Monster CD. I hadn’t realized until then that I had ever seen the t-shirt before. In the souvenir shop the next time, I bought it. I actually saw a pink t-shirt like that on TV earlier in June, too (on Sabrina the teenage witch).
Somehow, I want to reach out for people with the equal strength as you’ve reached out for me, but in another way however: I want to be an author. If I can’t, I consider my life to be over, with no values left behind. I have already used a little of your lyrics and expressions in some of my short stories. While I mention that: Keep playing for five more years, and I will maybe write a book about you…? I think that was a joke, actually… At least I guess I am going to mention all of you in every single book I write… I hope you look at it as a good thing. No one else is like you guys.
Now you’re maybe looking upon this admiration as extravagant and impossible. However, it’s not. Let’s just face facts, guys – every single word here is true. Or maybe you are well-known with letters like mine…? Hopefully, I am not the only one feeling like this, but I still haven’t met anyone else out there. The day I do must be my lucky day. But something even better, of course, would be to see you perform live. And I will get the chance to see that. June 22. is the day above all days. I am longing for it, so desperately I don’t know what to do. And, at the same time, it’s seems so unreal… I will not hesitate at all about going. I am not gonna let anyone bury me until I have gone to at least one R.E.M. concert. Dot com. End of discussion.
And eventually: thank you so much for reading this! I will be eternally grateful by showing as your biggest and most loyal fan for the rest of time! I am so dying to see you… Don’t stop, but keep on the way you do. You’re doing great!
Yours sincerely, ladybird (still adolescent...)
Dear R.E.M., including all members Michael Stipe, Peter Buck and Mike Mills.
I am a fifteen-year old Norwegian girl. First of all, I would have liked to explain the reason that I love your music so much – but unfortunately, I can’t. There is something magic about it that absolutely petrifies me, but I don’t know really what it is. I’ve read about the way Michael felt when he listened to Patti Smith at my age – like the ground fell apart under his feet, and the pieces of his body got together differently during the songs. Well, I’ve never heard anything of Patti Smith, but I feel exactly the same way when I listen to some of my favorite R.E.M. songs. I have just bought a biography (Fiction by John Buckley), where I read that Michael was quite shy and antisocial. It was very familiar to me; I’m a little like that myself. I listen to music and write stories in my room after school, and because my music taste is quite different from others, it is something I consider only as my own. It’s a dream world where I alone have got the key safely hidden in my pocket. I have never been shy about my music taste. If anyone at school asks what I am listening to, I answer them honestly. Something I found out was to tell people about such things early, before they had a chance to laugh at it.
I’m probably ought to start with the beginning: In 2001 I was home alone (aged 12). I watched MTV and recorded my favorite music on a videotape, and at the time All the Way to Reno was at its most popular here in Norway. When the music video was over, I would watch all the other videos and wait desperately for Reno to come once more. Of course, I did that because I wanted to keep it on a video forever, so I could listen to it just as much as I wanted. A couple of times I missed it, because I didn’t realize I forgot to push the record-button before they had been on the screen for a long time. I got more and more angry #%?=/!” (I believe that’s what I was thinking…), and would not give up until I had got it. At last I thought it would not come again that day, and said to myself: if the next song isn’t this one, I give up. Guess what the next song was… Miracles are truly happening. Because I had waited for a long while, All the Way to Reno was at the end of the tape (still is, though, because the only real goal I wanted to reach, was that video, and I didn't record anything after that). Usually, that was the only one I watched. In retrospect (to use some of Peter’s words…!), I don’t understand why I did not buy Reveal. I don’t understand why I never even thought about that. Which means I have wasted several years in that sense, listening to bad music like everyone else does (I sort of call it teenage-pop).
Before Christmas this year (nearly six years later, when I was fourteen), your new album Best of R.E.M. in time 1988 – 2003 was announced at TV. Seriously: that changed my life into something better. Then I finally remembered my love for one of your songs, and put that CD on my Christmas list. I got it as a present from my father and his wife. It was the best present I got, with my Discman put in a good second place. That said, since December 26. I have listened only to R.E.M.. On an average, I bought one new CD each month. Now I have twelve (The Best of R.E.M., Automatic For the People, Eponymous, Up, Monster, Green, Dead Letter Office, Fables of the Reconstruction, Out of Time, Reveal, New Adventures in Hi-Fi, Around the Sun – placed in the same order as I bought them) with all the rest to come. I also have two DVD’s, Perfect Square and The Best of R.E.M. in view. I have had the last one for a little less than a week, and I don't watch it any more than at least twice each day (Sorry, guys! …Ha ha ha!). People laugh at me when they look at my CD-collection. I don’t consider that a bad thing; I sometimes even laugh at it myself…
I listen to your music as often as I can – when I wake up in the morning, on my way to school, in every break we have at school, on my way home from school, before dinner, after dinner (and don’t stop until the next meal), and at last, before I fall asleep. That’s what most of my days are like. When I don’t have those headphones on for a change, I have one – or several (at the same time) – of your songs running through my head. I neither consider that a bad thing. Cause some of my favorite songs almost make me cry, dance or just feel sentimental. They are the blood that’s running through my veins, my heartbeats, my breath. I need it to survive. I’m like nothing without it. Sometimes I feel like I am in great deficit with the faze that for instance Country Feedback gives me. It’s my entire gravity, and it keeps me up when I am down. The notes are dragging my body as if I was made of strings, and how you actually do that is far beyond my imagination. I’ll never need any thunder with the excitement your music makes me feel, it’s all mostly like a wheel that keeps me rolling through about four lovely minutes, and I will not try to deny that, not to anyone. My fascination smoulders underneath my skin, and makes me feel like I’m wearing my heart upon my sleeve. You will maybe think it sounds precocious or just really witty and comic, but in some kind of strange way, I have come to convince myself that the world becomes a much better place to live with your music ringing around my ears. Believe me, that naïveté is a perfect way to get through the ”tough adolescence” (I don’t know about everyone else, but the idea that being a teenager is the hardest period in life, seems like a lie to me. If my life keeps going on this well, I don’t see any reason for me to complain). At least that is my experience so far.
In the cover of your album Monster, there is a painting containing a t-shirt with the words ”I’m with stupid”. After a while I forgot that, and when I was on a vacation in Greece (Naxos) I went to a souvenir shop. There it was – I’m with stupid. I thought maybe I would buy it later. At the hotel room a couple of days later, I was looking at my Monster CD. I hadn’t realized until then that I had ever seen the t-shirt before. In the souvenir shop the next time, I bought it. I actually saw a pink t-shirt like that on TV earlier in June, too (on Sabrina the teenage witch).
Somehow, I want to reach out for people with the equal strength as you’ve reached out for me, but in another way however: I want to be an author. If I can’t, I consider my life to be over, with no values left behind. I have already used a little of your lyrics and expressions in some of my short stories. While I mention that: Keep playing for five more years, and I will maybe write a book about you…? I think that was a joke, actually… At least I guess I am going to mention all of you in every single book I write… I hope you look at it as a good thing. No one else is like you guys.
Now you’re maybe looking upon this admiration as extravagant and impossible. However, it’s not. Let’s just face facts, guys – every single word here is true. Or maybe you are well-known with letters like mine…? Hopefully, I am not the only one feeling like this, but I still haven’t met anyone else out there. The day I do must be my lucky day. But something even better, of course, would be to see you perform live. And I will get the chance to see that. June 22. is the day above all days. I am longing for it, so desperately I don’t know what to do. And, at the same time, it’s seems so unreal… I will not hesitate at all about going. I am not gonna let anyone bury me until I have gone to at least one R.E.M. concert. Dot com. End of discussion.
And eventually: thank you so much for reading this! I will be eternally grateful by showing as your biggest and most loyal fan for the rest of time! I am so dying to see you… Don’t stop, but keep on the way you do. You’re doing great!
Yours sincerely, ladybird (still adolescent...)