To this day.. I have no idea what Michael Stipe is signing about.. I like to think, that he was singing about something, so Beautiful, it couldn't be expressed in words...
+Gravitating
he'd long grown out of mumbling at this point. and, in general, i don't think he's as hard to decipher as a lot of people claim. but, i think the general theme of this record is exasperation. there's a kind of process of accepting the futility of struggle that, in places, comes off as sort of absurdist.
i think this is the most important line on the record:
i know that this is vitriol. no solution, spleen-venting,
but I feel better having screamed. don't you?
the record exists in that space where you're done screaming. or, at least are for the day, anyways.
Peter Gray
+deathtokoalas ..true to the exasperation in point - but maybe it's a kind of maturity.. almost like Ghandi's non violence ethos .. accepting a higher (not particularly religious) plane, and way of thinking .. complete absurdity (?) - yet sublime (?) ..after the storm is always peace.
deathtokoalas
+Peter Gray
but, i think there's a difference between this kind of philosophical perspective that change is impossible in general and concluding, through observation, that change is impossible right now.
i didn't really understand stipe well until i read up a little on the beat poets. i mean, i got the themes, sort of, but i didn't really grasp it. i think there was a big buddhist slant in their writing, but i also think there was a big existentialist slant in it. stipe draws from both traditions, but i think he tends to lean more towards an existentialist concept of futility than a buddhist concept of release.