"I'm Pushing an Elephant Up the Stairs" Personal Saturdays (P.S.)
When I was a young kid, my family didn't have cable. As someone that young who had never had it before, I didn't think anything of it or that I was missing out on anything. That is, until my uncle who was living in Florida at the time (and enjoying the good life with a Comcast connection) started taping shows with his trusty VCR and sending them to me. With these tapes, I was introduced to everything from the 90’s that I hold near and dear to my heart. There were episodes of GUTS and Legends of the Hidden Temple that made both eager and petrified to play for myself (have you seen those temple guards?). Countless hours of Nickelodeon programming left me well versed in the shows of that time. However, out of all the tapes that my uncle sent to me, the ones he in which he taped musical shows were the ones that I watched on repeat all day long.
Back when music channels were actually all about the music, there was the VH1 Top 20 Countdown that would come on Saturday and sometimes Sunday morning. Sometimes celebrities would guest host; on the particular tapes that I have, I clearly remember Laura San Giacomo from Just Shoot Me hosting one day, as well as the cast of the movie The Boiler Room counting down videos too (and letting Vin Diesel do all the talking). I can’t quite remember who was hosting when I saw it, but one of the first music videos I remember seeing from those tapes was for the song “The Great Beyond” by REM. With Michael Stipe being the only bald headed singer that I could recall at the time, he and his band’s music left an impression on me that still affects me today.
I was eight years old when this song came out, and I didn’t care that Jim Carey was playing Andy Kaufman in Man on the Moon (aptly named after another one of REM’s songs that I also didn’t care about until much later). I also didn’t care that I had the volume turned up to 11 after repeated being “asked” to turn it down. What I did care about, however, was this strange combination of guitar strumming, orchestral sound, and vocals that I had no recollection of ever encountering before. Prior to these tapes, I mainly listened to whatever my mom and grandmother listened to. That music was a great foundation to set me up for future listening, but it was far different from what I was experiencing through this video.
The song had evoked an emotional awakening within me, as any good song should do. There are few songs that hold such a deep connection with me, and this song was one of the first ones to spawn that feeling (one of the other firsts being "Learn to Fly" by the Foo Fighters. That’s another long, involved post for another day). This is just a great song; it made me feel something at eight, and that feeling still affects me today. Personally, I feel like this song is one that you could have a good cry to. When I talk about crying here, leave out any feelings of sadness, because I have never believed that this is what the song was trying to convey. When I think about this song, I imagine the opposite. I imagine someone who has overcome a great feat in their life and, especially towards the end of the song, the release of tears comes more from the intoxication of conquering said trial. Perhaps it is the orchestral sound and its lightness that project the feeling that “everything is going to be okay”. Maybe it’s the lyrics themselves:
“I'm pushing an elephant up the stairs I'm tossing up punch lines that were never there Over my shoulder a piano falls Crashing to the ground
I'm breaking through I'm bending spoons I'm keeping flowers in full bloom I'm looking for answers from the great beyond”
I believe that Michael Stipe himself said that this song was about trying to do the impossible; this song was specifically written for the movie Man on the Moon so there is no wonder about the correlation between the lyrics and their attribution to Andy Kaufman’s career.
The concept of the video itself is pretty great. I won’t go into too much detail since I’ll link the video below, but as a kid I always thought it was so cool that the band was stuck inside a television, pushing it all over the city until the very end where they are finally able to break through. The video is cut with scenes of this, as well as scenes of the band playing and scenes from this film. It is a beautifully shot video, and it has inspired my creative side in the years that followed my first viewing. I have also never been able to get over the hip shaking that occurs at around the two minute mark.
In my senior year of high school, I finally scrapped up a couple dollars to buy the most recent REM greatest hits album. I don’t know why it took me so long to obtain it- a full 11 years after I had first heard the song. The album was my introduction to a number of great REM songs like “Orange Crush”, “E-bow the Letter”, and my re-introduction to a former favorite song, “Bad Day”. When I got to the track for this song, it felt brand new again. It was like, with the aid of my greatly capable car speakers, I was reliving those first feelings I associated with the song and trying to pull back any memories from the video that I could grasp. Driving to school was on a rainy morning was never as great as when this disk was in the player. This song has an unusual beauty to it, and its surreal lyrics captivate its listeners.
This song just makes me so happy. Here’s to a band that started great, stayed great, and ended great and right when they should have. Let me know what you think! CP.
