Yet Untitled 160 - On listening to The Cure with my 11-year-old twins
OR - "my weekly rhythm of exploding and re-forming"
Dearest Yet Untitler,
In The Wedding Singer, Adam Sandler’s eponymous character utters a short preemptive apology before singing a song…
“I wrote it while listening to The Cure a lot.”
…and then proceed to sing this:
The other day, on a relaxed, rainy Saturday morning while lazing in bed with my daughters, I suddenly caught a song by The Cure on the radio. Something about the ease of the morning, the melancholy of the rain and the trigger of the song made me start talking to Ananya about Friday I’m in Love. I thought about the song and spoke about it simultaneously - this is something I see as my privilege as a parent: voicing my thoughts as they form with a sense of authority 😆😱.
I spoke to Ananya about the lyrics while simultaneously thinking deeper about them in my head. Was it a song about being trapped by the mundane? About how life gives one the license to forget that mundane, but only for a fleeting moment? There’s tragedy in there, but also celebration. I’m thinking all this as I’m telling Ananya that I find the lyrics cool.
Soon, I put on another Cure song. Then another.
Ananya shakes her shoulders. No complaints so far. Shes into it and I’m pleasantly surprised. Interesting, because my kids are more used to songs punctuated with the Millennial Whoop rather than the colourful acoustic guitar rhythms of ‘The Cure’. I push my luck. Lullaby comes on. I’m thinking that that the song’s melodic hook will entice them into listening some more, simultaneously thinking about its darker themes al la “Spider Man’s having me for dinner tonight”, wondering - if we get there - how am I gonna explain that one??
Fortunately or unfortunately, Aahana was creeped out by ‘Lullaby’ and that conversation got (hopefully, because I’d love to have it) pushed to a later date; and we found our way back to the soundtrack of K-pop Demon Hunters :)
But even as the soundscape changed, I lingered in the sensorium of memory and feelings brought on by ‘The Cure’. I relived my life when I used to listen to them a lot. I was living by myself in Mumbai, away from my family. Not yet a parent. Not even married. Back then, I must have identified with the melancholy in ‘The Cure’s music, learning how to celebrate it with the band. Even then, I think my instinct already told me that ‘The Cure’ were more than merely masocistic or pathetic. I think I detected it in their tone: the colours, the upbeat rhythms (just listen to ‘Friday’ and you’ll see what I mean). The way I heard them, I think I knew - even though ‘The Cure’ may not have the word ‘hope’ in their lyrical dictionary, they certainly knew how to render it musically.
Ach. I never realised that I’d thought so much about ‘The Cure’! Perhaps I hadn’t thought it till now, but just felt.
That’s it, isn’t it? Hidden, forgotten feelings wait like land mines to be tread on.
As I was lying in bed listening to ‘The Cure’ with Ananya and Aahana, the ease of the morning was offset by the very palpable awareness that it was Saturday and YU was still not written. I scribbled some notes, took an inventory of possible things that I may write about. Until then, nothing had really screamed “Choose me”. When this happens on Saturday and the morning wears on without an answer, it makes me more than a little nervous.
Then ‘The Cure’ came on the radio and I responded by talking to A and A about how it made me feel; simultaneously stepping on a landmine of feelings inside my head. I was hit by shrapnel of insight - about myself, about my relationship with music, about my relationship with my children.
And all the while, another part of me started gathering these insights - these artefacts that in my imagination resembled those glowing stars from the Pixar short ‘La Luna’. That part of me was piecing these stars of insight together into what you’re reading now.
This is how it happens each week.
A trigger 🔫
A landmine of feeling🪽
A death-wish to step on it💀
Boom 💣
A writer disembodied by the shrapnel of insight works to piece himself together by writing himself whole again 👻
Thanks for listening!
Lots of love
V
PS. Send me your bombs. Send me your shrapnel.
And…
Also…
I saw The Cure in 1986 in Philadelphia. It was towards the end of my study abroad year in America. I was disappointed that they didn't play Love Cats
FABULOUS here:
• “ the sensorium of memory and feelings”
• the poem!! 🤩