In my novel Dava Shastri’s Last Day, my character Dava says, “Music is what allowed me to dream myself into thinking I could do great things.” I wrote that sentence thinking of R.E.M. I wouldn’t have ever dreamed I could be an author without their music as a defining force throughout my life.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve had a voracious appetite for stories. I grew up in a tiny desert town in Southern California — so tiny it only had two traffic lights and one movie theater — which is what made me curious about the world beyond my reach.
Music didn’t quite have the same hold on me, although I always had the radio on, constantly turning the dial from the oldies station to adult contemporary to R&B to pop. I didn’t care about genres; I enjoyed it all equally.
It’s so odd to recall this now, but an early ‘90s VH-1 interview with Sting is what began to change my relationship with music. He was discussing his song “If I Ever Lose My Faith In You,” and said that the word “you” could refer to anything — another person, politics, religion — and was open to interpretation. I remember thinking, “What a cop-out. Why not just tell us what it means, Sting?”
Like a lot of teenagers at that time, I began listening to albums thanks to the 5 CDs for $1 deal from Columbia House. Two of the albums I purchased were Out Of Time and Automatic For The People, simply because R.E.M. was one of the biggest bands in the world.
I will never forget sitting on the edge of my bed late at night entranced by “Country Feedback.” Michael Stipe’s haunting refrain of “It’s crazy what you could have had / I need this,” escalating in regret each time he sang those words, led to my Sting-inspired epiphany:
The “this” in “I need this” could mean anything I wanted it to be. The song was intensely personal to Stipe, but based on how I interpreted it, the song also belonged to me.
It was a true lightning bolt: the first time the marriage of lyrics and music moved me in a way that was both transcendent and transformational. I was now aware that music was a form of storytelling, too, but with R.E.M.’s music, I wasn’t learning about others’ stories, but my own.
Pop culture is supposed to be a mirror, but as an Indian-American girl growing up in the ’80s and ’90s, I rarely saw myself reflected in it. And this made me feel invisible — not just to everyone around me, but to myself, too.
R.E.M.’s music is the first time I began to look inward. Rather than seeking others’ stories, I saw my own story in songs like “Find the River,” “King of Birds” and “You Are The Everything.” The future no longer seemed hazy and indistinct, but filled with possibilities — including a writing career.
A few decades later, I was at a crossroads. I was a pop culture journalist who had yet to fulfill her lifelong dream of becoming an author. Around this time, I began listening to Scott Aukerman and Adam Scott’s podcast about R.E.M. Revisiting their albums in chronological order via the podcast reminded me how much the band’s music meant to me. I had a “now or never” moment about writing a novel and decided to go for it, with the goal of writing a book that would be a love letter to the music that inspired me, especially R.E.M. (I even included a few Easter eggs that that only die-hard fans would recognize, particularly if they were in the fan club.)
Dava Shastri’s Last Day is that novel, and it changed my life. It’s crazy what I do have, and it’s all thanks to the myriad ways R.E.M. guided and inspired me to this very day.
KIRTHANA RAMISETTI is a culture writer and author of The Other Lata, Advika and the Hollywood Wives and Dava Shastri’s Last Day, a Good Morning America Book Club pick. Her novels have received acclaim from TIME, PEOPLE, Cosmopolitan, The Washington Post and more. In addition to co-founding the newsletter Ministry of Pop Culture, her writing has appeared in publications such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Elle and Salon.
KIRTHANA’S LINKS:
Dava Shastri’s Last Day
Kirthana’s books
Kirthana’s website
Kirthana’s Substacks (Ministry of Pop Culture and Free Happiness)
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