“Fables of the Reconstruction of the Fables of the Reconstruction of the Fables of the Reconstruction.”

This week is the 35th anniversary of my first hearing R.E.M’s third album, “Fables of the Reconstruction.”

I was aboard the R.E.M. train the moment that I first heard the album’s single, “Driver 8” played on 102.7 WNEW-FM in New York. I got the 45 at Sam Goody Records in the local downtown mall. It was the first record I played on the stereo that I had just bought with every last dime from my camp counselor summer job. I played the 7” record constantly, along with the non-LP B-side, “Crazy.” I’d stare at the cover art on the slick paper sleeve as the record spun and then re-read the credits on the back. If I was very lucky, MTV would play the video.

In December 1985, I got the cassette of “Fables” as a Christmas gift during holiday break in 10th grade. That week, I had a fierce cold and was sick with a very high fever. “Fables” was not a ‘sunny day record.’ It was a dreamy and moody folkadelic southern gothic masterpiece. It was mysterious, and melancholy and more so as I’d been hallucinating, delirious, elsewhere and off-world. I was told that I yelled about being chased.

I loved this album, all of it from the opening note. I loved the small artwork on the cassette, the hand lettering, colorful shapes and Victorian clip art. Each song had its own font. I loved the way the title seemed to wrap around itself to read, “Fables of the Reconstruction of the Fables of the Reconstruction of the Fables of the Reconstruction.” An endless loop that mirrored my fever dreams.

I lay in bed, sweating, alone and disoriented as I played the cassette on my Walkman over and over and over as I dissolved into the soundscape. It was as if the small, foam headphones had tractor-beamed me gently me into the songs themselves. My unbroken fever and the dreamy vocal mix made the singing seem like a transmission from yet somewhere else entirely. A soundtrack from hidden speakers, camouflaged and unseen. I wandered through each song as if it was a new location every 3–4 minutes.

Had I grown heavier during “Feeling Gravity’s Pull? Who WERE these guys? What did they want with me? Would anyone believe me if I ever got back? Can I get there from here? Will this old man, this Kensey have advice? I almost didn’t want to get better. I wanted to stay in this land of comets and trains and maps and legends.

To this day I still automatically hum “Driver 8” when I see power lines with floaters or an old train napping in a train yard. The headphones have changed but ‘Fables’ is still my go to soundtrack for overcast train journeys in unfamiliar places.