(NY Times) Michael Stipe Is Writing His Next Act. Slowly.

By Jon Mooallem

When Michael Stipe was little, his parents called him Mr. Mouse. He was a scurrier. As soon as he could stand, he ran, and when he ran, he ran until he face-planted. His mother would deposit him in a baby walker, but if Stipe scrambled as fast as he could and hit the threshold of a doorway with a running start, he could topple the walker and eject himself onto the floor. Then he’d spring to his feet and run away.

When he wasn’t racing in circles, he was daydreaming. All his life, thoughts, feelings and sensory information have coursed through him at gale force. His attention is perpetually whipsawing elsewhere or vaporizing entirely. He will say, over dinner, “I’m sorry, but the clavinet took me completely out of the conversation,” when a clavinet suddenly enters the restaurant’s background music. He will say — laughing at himself, after you ask about his difficulty concentrating — “You’re not going to believe this, but ask me again because my mind wandered in the middle of the question.”

Sometimes, when Stipe’s mind scampers away, it returns, like an outdoor cat, bearing relics from wherever it went. A mention of “Calaveras County” sends him back to 1984, when his former band, R.E.M., played a quintuple bill at a fairground there. (“I was on crutches, and I remember Huey Lewis carried my watermelon for me, and I thought that was really sweet.”) The word “podcast,” enunciated a particular way, reminds him of how Quincy Jones’s teenage daughter repeatedly pronounced the name “Todd” as she waited impatiently for L.L. Cool J., a.k.a. “Todd,” to arrive at their house. Nastassja Kinski was there, too. She was pregnant, radiant. “Like a night light,” Stipe said.