I never really started listening to The Cure all that much, only really being familiar with the songs that would get any airplay on the radio like Just Like Heaven, Love Song, and Friday, I'm In Love, at least until around my senior year in high school when I started watching South Park again and was taking AP English. Of course I watched the Mecha-Streisand episode which did feature Robert Smith in somewhat a significant role and at the end, as he is walking away into the sunrise (or sunset, I'm not sure), Kyle shouts to him that Disintegration was the best album ever. Looking it up, Smith himself said that it was one of the proudest moments because all of the younger people in his family thought he was a pretty cool person. And with that, I ended up buying the album from a local electronics store and started listening to it. It felt like one of those moments where something that you didn't know was missing in your life until you found it. Each song felt like a breath of fresh air compared to what I was listening to at the time, which was mostly metal and rock music, and each song seemed to flow into one another at a perfect pace. The orchestration of each instrument felt so wonderful that even to this day, I still find something new in songs that I can give another reason to fall in love with it all over again. As to where the AP English coming into play, it was where I was introduced to The Stranger by Albert Camus, which was the inspiration for Killing an Arab. Up to this point, I really did not like English class at all and really did not care much for working at it at all. Although I'n not saying that I got the book when I read it, because I didn't understand it for a while but it ended up getting me more involved in trying to understand writing and made me want to learn more about different works like movies, books and especially music.
I probably listened to Disintegration as a whole maybe at least once a week during my lone year at college, studying things that I ended up realizing that I was wasting my time on. And during that time, I got really depressed, probably severe depression at times to the point where I thought about killing myself on a regular basis, feeling as if I was failing myself and everyone I knew due to me not having any clue what I was doing, that maybe I went to the wrong school, that I was never going to find out what I was meant to do with my life. And for lack of a better phrase, The Cure saved my life. Sure there was Disintegration still being blared on the sound system continuously and the songs began to echo my feelings, especially Prayers For Rain and Homesick, but I was also getting into Seventeen Seconds and The Head on the Door albums, the former feeling more like a more sparse, stripped down experiment of what they would end up perfecting years later. The most obvious song I could talk about with that album would be A Forest, which seemed to me to be about being trapped in a loop with no means of escape in the foreseeable future. That too was also a song that I played frequently due to it having some sort of similarity to what I was going through as I was not only struggling through school, there was also a breakup there, all my new friends kind of just ignoring me for the most part, and other personal things that I would probably spare you from, it just felt like my depression was never going to leave me (and to be honest, I don't think I've gotten any better).
And then there has been the past two years where I have been trying to get my life sorted out and not really doing that much of a good job at it either.It took about a year for me to finally get a job, which has ended up being a part time one where I work mainly six hours a week and don't get paid that much so I guess the situation could be a lot worse. I was in a relationship that lasted until about maybe two weeks ago and that is something that I regret all too well despite knowing that it was probably doomed to fail from the start. And for the most part, I have been alone. None of my old friends really want to hang out with me and I haven't been able to make any new ones, mainly due to me having trouble being social. I lost interest in a lot of things, where I couldn't really get a reaction out of anything and all my feelings just seemed to be gone. And just looking up things that I really wish I hadn't still some days and struggle with he thoughts of my own mortality and stuff like that. Almost nothing I learned on subjects that coincide with that could console me at all, to where I felt like I was having anxiety attacks on a normal basis. The problems have gotten lesser but I still suffer from them. Sorry about the tangent but there were some things that have helped me at least find some sort of happiness in my life.
And here comes for the most part the two albums that have consumed my life for the past few months, Faith and Pornography. These albums seem to me to be both echo feelings of depression, although two different kinds of it. Faith being the gray, drab, just emptiness kind of depression that usually seems to be the mood I'm in for the most part. Each song seems to build onto that feeling of dread and maybe is one of the more autobiographical albums that The Cure have done. There were moments in songs like All Cats Are Grey, Faith, and Doubt that just make you feel the pain and torment that Rob was probably going through at that period in time and maybe his views on the world are shown in the lyrics as well. And then there is Pornography, an album that could only come from a suicidal man who finds solace in LSD, where the depression has hit a more violent, aggressive stage where it's just self loathing and hatred. If you need a perfect example of what I'm talking about, just listen to Cold. And yet, they probably helped me get through my feelings better than most things I tried. Because it was about someone who was dealing with the same issues at around the same point in life.
Maybe what I have written for most of this has been nothing more than just an autobiographical tale and not really a tribute to my favorite band, but maybe that's why it should be. It's what they got me through the past few years, how their music has not only brought me salvation but is also catchy and rather insightful. It may not mean much to the band and I don't consider myself to be the biggest Cure fan in the world but I love them more that I could ever say.
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