“I’m not sure all these people understand. It’s not like years ago, the fear of getting caught; of recklessness and water. These things, they go away, replaced by everyday.”
–R.E.M. (“Nightswimming”)

MANILA, Philippines—It could have been a case of LSS (Lost Song Syndrome)—that long-forgotten track, swallowed by the gaping whirlpools of the 7-gigabyte Seas, that pops up on your iPod’s LCD like an old familiar face—or it may have just been the lunar effects of last Sunday’s full moon.

Teenage werewolves, batty behavior, and magical phenomena aside, the fairest orb within our planetary neighborhood represents—albeit a little astro-illogically—the unexpressed desires of our unconscious; ruling over our muted sorrows, speechless pleasures, or secret dreams.

If the sun reflects the “here and now,” then the moon brings us squarely back to the past—be it through the subtle nudge of a Bennifer-Brangelina blockbuster, a bloody-curling passage in the latest Stephen King novel, or—in this particular case—the nostalgia-laced lyrics of a 1992 R.E.M. song.

The alternative rock band never created a more evocative song than “Nightswimming,” the wistful ballad that closed their eighth album, “Automatic for the People,” summing up its soulful intensity with defocused images of summer’s end: cruising down an endless highway, windows down, wind whipping your sun-baked face, the stale taste of beer still in your mouth.

“It describes the summer as an eternity, and kind of an innocence that’s either desperately clung onto or obviously lost,” frontman Michael Stipes disclosed in Johnny Black’s “Reveal: The Story of R.E.M.”

Stipes’ fellow bandmates were far less economical in their revelations, referring to the skinny-dipping pool parties of their early years, where they built bonfires, got naked, and jumped blindly into black waters.

Of course, diehard fans with way too much time on their hands have read too much between the (refrain) lines, citing geekish references to the Greek Tragedy of Orion the Hunter and, strangely enough, the homoerotic subtext of the Hardy Boys—complete with dissertation-like footnotes.

Yet most interpretations of the song are consistent, alluding to the interior world of memory, lost youth, and the yearning to revisit the frozen scene in the “photograph on the dashboard, taken years ago.”

As for myself, on that full-mooned Sunday when “Nightswimming” came crackling through the car speakers, the song became a lyrical ode to the Ghost of College Past: the beat-up four-wheel pickup, the beer-soaked Saturdays, the bedraggled brown bench that bore witness to the twisted ambitions of 20 or so teenagers who, in between cigarette puffs and Pusoy Dos, wondered if the year’s radio-friendly hit would one day reel them back.