The home of the late Brev Mekis in Athens, Ga. (Photo: D. Nelson)
Rumor has it that R.E.M.’s new album, Fables of the Reconstruction, contains a song about a schizophrenic man named Brev Mekis, who actually divided his home into two separate living spaces, one for each of his dual personalities. I say this is rumor, because I don’t own a single R.E.M. record. Nor do I keep up with their career. But I’ve been told their early work is good. That knowledge has still never motivated me to seek it out and willingly hand money to a stranger in exchange for their music. Perhaps someday.
What turned me on to the story of Brev Mekis was something I saw on Friday, a link that Andrew Womack from The Morning News posted via Twitter. It was this photograph (pictured above) by Dagmar Nelson, a photographer from Athens, Ga. She took this shot of Brev Mekis’ home because it was somewhere she used to spend time:
Life And How To Live It
Athens, GA (Clarke County) Copyright 2008 D. NelsonThis house on Meigs Street once belonged to Brev Mekis, a schizophrenic. He had divided the house into two totally different apartments, each one featuring different style furniture, different clothes, books, and pets (per Michael Stipe, a cat on one side and a gerbil on the other), to suit his personalities. He would live for a while on one side until his other personality took over, and would then take off his clothes and move to the other side. After he died they discovered a closet filled floor to ceiling with copies of a book he had written called “Life And How To Live It” – since he had kept all the copies locked up nobody ever knew he had written anything. The R.E.M. song with the same title is based on this true story.
I once flipped through one of the copies, and remember it as faschist and biased, to say the least. Vic Chesnutt lived here about the time I moved to Athens, and we watched many a Wim Wenders movie here. (via Dagmar Nelson)
(h/t to Andrew Womack)
