Freewrite #7 - Document

When I think of the term “document”, I don’t think of it in the traditional sense. It’s funny how one single word can transform me to moments of time in my childhood. For me, “Document” is the name of a quintessential R.E.M. album that was released, when I was in high school.

The reason that this resonates with me is because that album, along with many others, got me through some rough formative years and helped me “self-medicate” emotional issues that most kids had growing up. Well, most kids, where I lived, anyway.

At the time, R.E.M. were a band definitely on the rise. My teenage years were spent attending live rock shows and just getting familiar with the gloriousness of rock and roll. R.E.M. were cut from a different cloth and considered to be one of the flagbearers for a new genre of music, dubbed “alternative”.

For me, I was heavily into R.E.M., 10,000 Maniacs, Indigo Girls, The Producers, B-52s and anything that derived from Athens, Georgia. Athens was considered to be the headquarters for this new concept of free thought and music.

The previous incantation of this ideology was in the Punk movement that featured Talking Heads, Television, Blondie and others. I considered the Athens contingent to be the next wave and had sugarplum dreams of one day moving to Athens and living above the 40 Watt Club.

As I graduated from high school and eventually managed a CD Warehouse franchise, I quickly learned that this alternative way of thinking was an eastern seaboard thing that happened throughout Georgia, Florida and the Carolinas.

Document might have meaning for other people, but for me it has a special place in my heart that reminds me of why I got involved with music, in the beginning and the joy it continues to bring me to this day. This freewrite actually makes me ponder the question of why I moved away from music in the first place and what might my life be like, should I move back towards it in this digital age we live in today.

Either way, this is @mariannewest fault.