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  1980s
 
 

Disintegration, The Cure

Elektra, May 1, 1989

Track Listing: 1.  Plainsong, 2. Pictures of You, 3. Closedown, 4. Lovesong, 5. Last Dance, 6. Lullaby, 7. Fascination Street, 8. Prayers for Rain, 9. The Same Deep Water as You, 10. Disintegration, 11. Homesick, 12. Untitled


“But I don’t see
And I don’t feel
But tightly hold up silently
My hands before my fading eyes
And in my eyes
Your smile
The very last thing before I go

-from “The Same Deep Water As You”

Where she has not lost her teeth completely, there is an expanse of black decay that spreads like cancer over her meth mouth. You can only guess what she is thinking as she sits in her twitching, tweaked-out silence.

“Hopelessly fighting the devil
Futility
Feeling the monster
Climb deeper inside of me
Feeling him gnawing my heart away
Hungrily

-from “Untitled”

If her rotting brain is capable of pulling back the curtains on anything at all, she may be remembering happier times.

“And I forget how to move
When my mouth is this dry
And my eyes are bursting hearts
In a blood-stained sky

-from “Homesick”

At the day’s end, the sun can no longer do its thing when the edge of world is missing. You look out to the west and see nothing at all. What once was so beautiful and delicate has now vanished, having dissolved into a poisonous rush of eternal emptiness.

“And mouth and eyes and heart all bleed
And run in thickening streams of greed
As bit by bit it starts the need
To just let go
My party piece

-from the song, “Disintegration”

Despite new hope ushered in by the temporary high of another false promise, it ends the same. It always ends the same. It is neither glorious nor grand nor epic. It sure as hell wasn’t destined. It is just another life evaporating into the disintegrating shadows of what could have been.

“If only I could
Fill my heart with love

-from “Closedown”

The visual isn’t pretty when you see someone slowly breaking apart piece by piece. You loved them—probably still do—even though they are now the walking dead, mere shells of their former beautiful selves. You’d swear the calendar turned twenty years since yesterday.

“A woman now standing where there was once only a girl

-from “Last Dance”

Among their afflictions is a rapid degeneration of neurons that results in the destruction of dopamine receptors. In short, they lose the ability to feel the very pleasure they were so desperately chasing in the first place.

“You shatter me
Your grip on me
A hold on me
So dull it kills

-from “Prayers For Rain”

You wonder how it came to this, a boy, a girl, once the apple of a mother’s eye. If only the euphoria they stumbled upon had been as real as the love once shared.

“The blindness of happiness

-from “Last Dance”

They will never be forgotten, the way they were, the way we need to remember them.

“I’ve been looking so long at my pictures of you
That I almost believe that they’re real

-from “Pictures of You”

Fade to. . . .

-G