What Are You Listening To Right Now?

Somehow, “Man on the Moon” seems entirely inexplicable. It’s so hard to imagine someone writing it, it just feels like something that one day came in to being, as though R.E.M. tapped into something far beyond themselves. It’s just a song — a relatively simple, straightforward song — and yet there’s this odd, ineffable feeling in the space between its chords, roughly akin to the sensation of stepping into a grand cathedral. It is mostly gentle and mid-tempo, but there’s a joyous bounce to its beat, as though every time it kicks up into the chorus, it’s a step closer to the heavens, and understanding unknowable things.

There’s a holy buzz in every moment of the tune, and it’s no mistake — “Man on the Moon” is a secular song about faith and belief that mostly swaps out religious imagery for pop cultural detritus. The lyrics are grounded in the trivia and junk of modern life, which helps to provide a context for the singer’s cynicism, but also his sense of wonder. He finds some minor magic in kitsch, and crucially, he understands that his life is just as ephemeral as any passing fad. He acknowledges that everything he knows is ultimately insignificant, but he also understands that it’s not all meaningless, and that we need to believe in something — anything! — to invest our lives with creativity and meaning. There’s obviously a conflict in there, but that’s not really the focus of the song. Instead, it’s a celebration of belief in the face of absurdity, and embracing faith even when you think you know better.

“The Great Beyond” is the closest thing to a sequel in the R.E.M. discography. The song was composed for the soundtrack of Milos Forman’s Andy Kaufman biopic Man On The Moon, and its thematic and musical continuity with the band’s hit of the same name does not seem like an accident. Whereas “Man On The Moon” grounds the spiritual quest of its agnostic protagonist in folksy chords and country affectations, the mild psychedelia of “The Great Beyond” seems to launch its character deep into the cosmos. It’s still the same journey, but “The Great Beyond” is just further along — Kaufman remains a sort of patron saint, but this time around, he’s not called out by name. Instead, by being less specific, we get to the heart of why Kaufman was invoked in the first place: Michael Stipe is essentially characterizing the artist — any artist, but he chose comedians, probably because they are seldom taken seriously — as a person whose job it is to interpret the world, and attempt to suss out its meaning. “Man On The Moon” is loose enough to be universal; it could be anyone’s search for truth and reason, but “The Great Beyond” emphasizes the notion that any sort of understanding must spring from intuition, creativity, and courage.

Words whether they are vocalized
Into sounds or remain unspoken as thoughts
Can cast an almost hypnotic spell on you
You can easily lose yourself in them
And can become hypnotized into implicitly
Believing, that when you attach a word to something
You know know what it is
The fact is you don't know
You have only covered up the mystery with a label
Everything, a bird, a tree, even a simple stone
And certainly a human being is ultimately unknowable

Becoming shallow, lifeless, deadened
To life unfolding around you, within
Grasping the awe inside, around you

When you stare at a flower or a bird let it be
Without imposing a word or label to it
A sense of awe and wonder arises within you
when you don't cover up the world with words
A sense of the miraculous returns to your life
That was lost long ago

The quicker you attach words to things, people, or situations
The more shallow and lifeless your reality becomes
And the more deadened you become to the miracle
Of life that continuously unfolds within and around you
All we can perceive and experience is the surface
Layer of reality, less than the tip of the iceberg

Listen to silence [x2]

Words reduce reality to something the
Human mind can grasp, which isn't very much