The Cure’s “In Between Days” is my anthem of youth, late summer nights, teenage love, and dreams of escaping the doldrums of teen malaise, while “Pictures of You” is the sound of lost memories. “Living The Cure” is a weekly column by Atwood Magazine’s David Buyze.
•• •• •• ••
Part Two
“In Between Days”
Yesterday I got so old
I felt like I could die
Yesterday I got so old
It made me want to cry
Go on, go on, just walk away
Go on, go on, your choice is made
Go on, go on, and disappear
Go on, go on away from here
And I know I was wrong
When I said it was true
That it couldn’t be me and be her
In between without you
Without you
Yesterday I got so scared
I shivered like a child
Yesterday away from you
It froze me deep inside
– “In Between Days,” The Cure
The Cure’s “In Between Days” is my anthem of youth, late summer nights, teenage love, and dreams of escaping the doldrums of teen malaise. The shock and fragility of young love during the teenage life hurts one beyond the years as one tries to find footing in the world. This particular song by The Cure has been a mainstay throughout my life in illustrating the wonderful freedom of finding drunkenness with childhood friends, the tender first kiss of new love, the feeling of possible immortality, the brutality of the loss of love, and the creeping realization that one day I will get old in facing mortality. As Robert Smith reflects, that moment from youth to old age appears as if the next day already happened and that I am already without you.
Most days feel like they are in between as that is the predicament of being human. The feeling of forlornness in the world is always at one’s elbow. Yet, this song by The Cure always inspires to reach new days that might be greater than we can imagine. Maybe scared, possibly frozen, but always willing to live a day like no other.
That it couldn’t be me and be her
In between without you
Without you
Yesterday I got so scared
I shivered like a child
Yesterday away from you
It froze me deep inside
Stream: “In Between Days” – The Cure
Part Three
“Pictures of You”
I’ve been looking so long at these pictures of you
That I almost believe that they’re real
I’ve been living so long with my pictures of you
That I almost believe that the pictures
Are all I can feel
Remembering you fallen into my arms
Crying for the death of your heart
You were stone white
So delicate
Lost in the cold
You were always so lost in the dark
Remembering you how you used to be
Slow drowned
You were angels
So much more than everything
Hold for the last time then slip away quietly
Open my eyes
But I never see anything
– “Pictures of You,” The Cure
Many years ago, it was a very hot and humid summer night in Toronto and in the space of contemplating what my night would look like, I was led to a dinner party through an invite where I met one of the most beguiling women of my life — Jessica. One night with Jessica, which was probably only ten hours with Jessica. I have never felt such an intense sense of connection with someone over the course of ten hours in my life. During the dinner we inhabited different spaces, but through glimmering eye contact we somehow established a sense of connection which led us to drift to one another during the course of the evening.
She was an immensely striking tall woman with gorgeous voluminous dark red hair, and what really appealed to me was her warmth and openness. After the formality of the dinner, we quite immediately wound up drifting to each other again, and from that moment on we were entirely inseparable throughout the evening and into 4 AM in the breaking dawn. During the course of those ten hours it seemed like we traversed lifetimes and even centuries in the utterly remarkable sense of connection that we built in those hours. To me, it seemed that the only outcome would be a life to be lived together like no other that had walked the earth. She was beyond my soulmate – she was my inner skin and breath. Within ten hours, I only wanted to inhabit her as she became my entire world. I cascaded within her — she was and is so sublime — of incarnate beauty.
I miss you terribly, and as the years pass and I have no news of you and your life, I mourn the loss of that moment where we could have been together in an entirely remarkable experience of all that is. You are my one of my true loves, and the immense sadness is that it only lasted ten short hours, when all I could dream of would be countless hours beside your side. At that time, you were my only everything, and I am haunted by your memory. I remain transfixed on the passage of the utter preciousness of those hours as I recount in my mind the beauty of your voice, your cadence, your gestures, your embrace and kiss, the warmth of your sex, your smile and laugh.
Within hours we created such a vibrant and comforting sense of being with each other, as if we already had known each other for a lifetime. And often, in every waking and dreaming hour, I only long to be back by your side, to explore you, and to utterly melt with you. I have spent a lifetime of longing for you and all that we could have been. My pictures of you are fragments in my mind, my pictures of you are my only meaning, my pictures of you sustain me, and my pictures of you leave me helpless. I only miss you forever within the haunting pictures of you, that leave me bereft unto myself.
*****
My experience with Jessica was not the only sense of disintegrated meaning and love as this was more profoundly shaped and impacted through the death of my parents and the dissolution of my first real love in my life. Indeed, all of their pictures remain on the wall of my mind as a bittersweet reminder of all that one is left with, which is often only memory and a song. The Cure’s “Pictures of You” is the soundtrack of my memory.
*****
The last time I saw my mother alive, she was continually immersed in talking about two pictures on her wall, one of her grandfather on the left, and her own father on the right.
Before and after my visit she would often talk to me about these two pictures on the phone, and when I was there in person she kept insisting that I take those pictures with me, but there was no way on earth that I would leave her bereft of those two pictures which held such significance and accompanied her to those last moments on planet earth. Those pictures embodied her childhood, her memory, and her history in representing the world in her mind. When I did see her that last time before her death, she made me promise to always keep those very pictures on my wall, and that is where they are now as I peer through the generations.
*****
I also reflect on the black and white pictures of the first real love of my life — Sabina. That day, we took black and whites as it was the late ’80s and you had to decide what type of film to use with an actual physical camera. Those photos were taken on a late overcast afternoon as we sauntered around the center of a rather forlorn downtown Syracuse and struck various poses amidst our innocent yet tremendous love that would change and permeate throughout the decades.
The downtown was forsaken, but to us in our love it seemed magical and like paradise on earth as we were two teenagers in love all those years ago which still shimmer in my mind as I feel that I still literally inhabit that space and moment with her. Those pictures of her, of us, embody a precious and vital sense of life that haunts my mind in thinking about the lament of demise that will occur to all of us when the meaning and significance of those invaluable pictures will dissipate. Meanwhile, those exact pictures remain as a memory in a misplaced and lost folio.
As I retrace those images in my own mind in that particular passage of time, I feel that I am almost left within my own sphere of dissolution as I disappear before myself. The Cure’s “Pictures of You” is the sound of those lost memories.
I’ve been looking so long at these pictures of you
That I almost believe that they’re real
I’ve been living so long with my pictures of you
That I almost believe that the pictures
Are all I can feel
— —
:: stream/purchase The Cure here ::
Stream: “Pictures of You” – The Cure
— — — —
Connect to The Cure on
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram
Discover new music on Atwood Magazine
? © Jan-Erik Eriksen
:: Stream The Cure ::
