Today I pulled out R.E.M.'s Monster CD from 1994. Of course that is an instant reminder of me ten years ago. Where I stood, who I knew, and what I felt and thought. I was meeting my first boyfriend, enduring a cold winter by Georgia standards, and buried in mounds of poetry. That was a much different me than what is sitting here today typing this. I was 21 and I knew very little about the world and life. That 21 year old is a foreign person to me today.
Ten years and I've added age, a little wisdom, a better suit of experiences, torn down a few walls and thankfully given up writting poetry. I was still a big R.E.M. fan back then. What's the Frequency Kenneth was my song and I considered Michael Stipe to be a hot guy, my opinion of Stipe has since changed. This was the last good CD that R.E.M. ever released. I completely gave them up after the 2001 release of Reveal. It only revealed to me that the both two of us were going in different directions in life. R.E.M. was now reduced to collecting dust in a cabinet instead of following me from the car to home and back.
That first boyfriend of mine was gone too. He had grown facial hair, lowered his voice and gone butch. I decided asian men were to my liking and chose to permanently hop on board the Orient Express.
R.E.M. is back with a new single, Leaving New York. They've released the song to radio, appeared on Andersen Cooper's 360, and I've yet to pay attention or care. I'd rather go dig through the new releases at DanceRecords.com than hear my favorite band from long ago. Today though as Monster played along track to track I finally understood one song more now than ever. Stange Currencies took on a new meaning. It went from being a muddled, misunderstood, brooding love song to a song about failure, blind attempts at success despite the odds and resolve.
I'm in a strange place with a stranger looking back at me and I'm dealing with my own strange currencies. I've got my own failures circulating out there in the general populace today but I'm still trying because I like the game, the challenge, and I want to keep dealing in my own peculiar currency. Like it or leave it. It is strange to be me and I'm trying to build a better one.
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