So I participate in a fiction workshop a few years ago and there are a few young whippersnappers in the group, MFA students from Cal Arts, who write everything in the present tense. They all have a great facility for it, frequently accomplishing the difficult feat of using the syntax of the present to describe events that have taken place in the past. I become curious about how writing this way will make me feel, so I go home and try it. And I like it. I'm not nearly as good at it as the whippersnappers, but I find it freeing. It's a nice change to adopt the point of view of someone who doesn't have much time to think and reflect. I think too much about everything, so it feels good to at least pretend to be someone who *experiences* life in a more immediate way and isn't so trapped in his own head. Unmediated experience is something I rarely have, if ever. Like right now I'm listening to some more REM, trying to simply feel the music instead of intellectualizing it, and I must confess that it's quite difficult. I mean, I can describe how REM’s music makes me feel. But that's about the extent of it. Their music makes me feel romantic. It’s odd because Michael Stipe seems so asexual to me, yet the band’s best music radiates love and romance into the air. Murmur is a really evocative record for me in this respect. It always makes me think of the first girl I made out with in college. I go to this party and there’s this cute girl, by herself, wearing an REM pin on her black and white herringbone overcoat. I never approach strange women in bars or at parties because the thought of it embarrasses me so fucking much, but I approach the REM girl and we get to talking about music. I can’t remember the conversation, but I go get her a drink, and when I return Talk About the Passion is chiming out of the stereo speakers. It’s a great song for those of us who have a thing for guitars. Peter Buck even whips out a 12-stringer for the part that goes combien de temps? …I ask the REM girl if she knows what combien de temps means. You see, I know what it means because I grew up speaking French, and I’m kind of getting a little vibe from the REM girl like she’s gonna let me make out with her, and even though I’m nervous as hell because I’m not exactly Mr. Smooth with the girls, I think I might be able to impress her with my French. But she knows what the phrase means, says something like, ‘of course, it means how much time,’ and then she takes my hand and gets close enough to me that I can smell her shampoo and whatever other totally erotic scents she’s giving off. Now my heart is thumping like a Gene Krupa drum solo, my knees are knocking, and my teeth are chattering, but it doesn’t matter that I don’t know what the fuck to do next because she’s a take-charge type, leans in for a kiss, and holy shit does it feel amazing, especially when she sticks a little tongue in and nibbles on my lip. …For the rest of my years at the university, I never see the REM girl again. I can’t recall why. But every time Talk About the Passion comes up on my iPod, with it’s beautiful opening chords and folky post-punk melody, I think of her and wonder what she’s doing right now…
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