Cure Rant -- Skip
2003-02-08 � 2:35 p.m.

I know that all my talk about stuff that no one else knows anything about probably gets really boring. Sorry. I am actually pretty boring.

So I've been on this real Cure tear lately. I was trying to figure out what had catapulted the Cure back into heavy rotation in my CD player, and I couldn't really put my finger on it. It has something to do with my roommate working on a cover of "A Man Inside My Mouth" but not totally with that.

Whatever it is, I don't care. It's good. It's fun.

I was a manic, crazed fan in my (relative) youth. I had a goal during high school to cover all of my walls and ceiling with posters of The Cure. I did it too, without any repeats. I even had one of those big, long door posters on the inside of my bedroom door. There was something like thirty or forty posters; I don't exactly remember. Hell, I still have one over my bed to this very day, and one of the only decorations in the living room of our apartment is a gigantic (and I mean really big) poster of "Boys Don't Cry."

With this rekindled...not interest, because I've never lost that. Let's say focus. With this rekindled focus, I've been enjoying the music in ways that I don't think I previously did, most likely due to my increased musical exposure over the years.

And I've realized something. The Cure's music, and especially Robert's lyrics, are almost all kind of sickly sweet romances that then go bad and sour or ugly.

This, being as it was the music that I listened to incessantly during my formative years, is what they call "ironic."

I can't help but wonder how sub/unconsciously I patterned my expectations about a romantic relationship on these songs. I know, I know � it's crazy. But then again, I'm crazy.

Yeah, I recognized a part of that about the music at the time, but not fully. Maybe I was already messed up enough that the songs just spoke to something inside me, that dichotomy of outlook: pure, glorious hope, vs. black, never-ending despair. Love, sweetness and togetherness vs. sorrow, desperation and loneliness.

My favorite songs by the Cure are all really heavy on this stuff. I'm going to quote song lyrics now, and sometimes I hate it when people do that, so just be warned, okay?

Here's a great example of this theme of love/togetherness progressing into heart-wrenching loneliness. It's a B-side that was released on Standing on a Beach, entitled "A Few Hours After This" � this one's a nice example because it's short; there's really only two verses and then a long refrain at the end. To rub it all in, it's set to this kind of sweeping, classic-type music heavy on strings. (I reformatted and added punctuation for readability.)

The look before I go is the look for you � you only have to look and it will all come true...and we can fall outside into the fizzy night.

Or pull me down in here; you know it's all the same. I only want to see if you are happy again. Or we can roll around and find out upside down.

A few hours after this and we're apart again, like two white checks, like opposite poles in a secret game.

(Like nothing like these I suppose...)

I really should have known by the cut of your smile that the answer would be simple. It still took you a while to get it out of me. I thought you'd do it easily.

Just put your hands around my heart and squeeze me until I'm dry.

I never thought you'd ever start to ever ask me why...

I never saw you again.

Sadness!

I can't remember if I've espoused a certain Cure song as my favorite here or not. Probably. I've ranted about them enough over the course of this diary. Whatever I might have said, it's wrong. Not wrong exactly...it's just that my opinion in this kind of thing is always changing.

The song I keep coming back to though, the one that every time I hear it makes me mist up and my chest tight and makes me nod to myself as though to say, "Yes. Yeah, that's how it is." is the last track off of Disintegration (which is the best album of all time), "Untitled."

It's short, it's got an accordion (or at least a synth programmed to sound like one, which is much more likely) but it's sharp. It's a tight, tight song, and it just captures things for me.

Look out, more lyrics! (No reformatting on this one.)

Hopelessly drift
In the eyes of the ghost again
Down on my knees
And my hands in the air again
Pushing my face in the memory of you again
But I never know if it's real
Never know how I wanted to feel
Never quite said what I wanted to say to you
Never quite managed the words to explain to you
Never quite knew how to make them believable
And now the time has gone
Another time undone
Hopelessly fighting the devil
Futility
Feeling the monster
Climb deeper inside of me
Feeling him gnawing my heart away
Hungrily
I'll never lose this pain
Never dream of you again

It really says it all.

-t

Currently Aurally Inducing: Hayashibara Megumi, SLAYERS 4 "The Future"
Selection of the Lyrical Vocabulary: Beats me man...I just work here.

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