R.E.M. and Nietzsche

Nietzsche wrote that we have art so that we don’t die of reality. No, he didn’t, really; he wrote, Wir haben die Kunst, damit wir nicht an der Wahrheit zu Grunde gehen. But that’s me being an annoying German translator again. All translators are traitors. I’ve told you that before. Learn the language to get the whole meaning of the thing. That’s what the Muslims who learn Arabic do with the Quran. I’ve read at least some of the Quran in Arabic, not all of it yet, but I’m getting there. Or am I? I digress, as usual.

R.E.M. is so wonderful that I recently realized I didn’t have any of their CDs and bought one because it felt like the right thing to do. I don’t have that much money, I would try to support local artists more, but they are also deserving because they have and continue to get me through difficult times such as these when we are in stupid foreign wars again for no good reason whatsoever.

Does he sing the word “Trump?” The lyrics say “Team by team, reporters baffled, trumped, tethered, cropped.” But no matter. It works. The video is a boy going through a house after a natural disaster of some sort. I always associated the song with death. Michael Stipe is soothing us here. It’s what music does. It helps us to appreciate the beauty of the world and the potential in people to make beautiful things, in spite of everything seeming to go wrong all around us.

I’ve been alarmed when I’ve seen things going around on social media saying that co-regulation is fine and don’t shame it. But in Developmental Psych, we learned that it’s essential for emotional development to learn to regulate your own emotions, rather than just suppressing them or dissociating. Sometimes we forget to. Sometimes we forget how. Sometimes people never learn.

But music is one way that we can feel our feelings and see the beauty, and perhaps see a way out of the darkness, which is how this song feels for me right now.