Alone

#TheCure released "Alone" as a single ahead of their first album in 16 years. I've read that they've been playing it live but this is its first album release.

I had tickets to the last Cure tour. They were playing near my house. I bought two tickets. I wasn't even planning to go with anyone. I bought two tickets so I could have a seat where you should be. I couldn't go. Not emotionally.

And now there's this song and a whole new album.

The song starts soft and dreamy. Floating guitars and jangles and chimes. The drums are hard and powerful. A heart beating a little too fast. Adding an underlying ... what ... panic? Energy? Anger? Something. It's not a happy beat. It's not a dancible beat. It's more like the feeling you get in your heart when you know you're about to get bad news. You already know what it is, but you don't want anyone to speak the truth into existence.

I teared up pretty quick because it starts like so many Cure songs do.

And then Robert Smith's voice comes in, wistful and lost, and I cried. Full on wept. Because every song ends the same.

And here is to love, to all the love Falling out of our lives Hopes and dreams are gone The end of every song

Friday the Thirteenth

Today is Friday the 13th. To celebrate, I'm listening to the "Doorways to Danger" episode of God Awful Movies. It reminded me of one of the most "supernatural" things that ever happened to me.

It was in the early 80s and I was maybe 9 or 10. I was hanging out with the kid next door (also 10) and she was telling me about a movie she saw at her sister's house (big age gap between them - sister was in her 20s and married). The Amityville Horror.

Was she too young to have seen this movie? Yes.

Was I too young to hear her interpretation? Yes.

Did we, with our degenerate, bloodthirsty 10-year-old brains overinflate everything and scare ourselves? Absolutely.

And then the walls began to bleed.

I am not even kidding you. We were sitting in her living room, in the dark, telling scary stories and we heard a strange dripping sound. She turned on the dining room light and we saw something streaming down one wall. It was dirty and rusty colored and smelled weird. A little metallic.

We absolutely freaked out. We stared at it for a while. Sniffed it. Touched it. Realized it was water mixed with rust and 70 years of dirt in the ceiling. Which, in itself, is a kind of horror story because we were a couple of 10-year-old kids in a house with an obviously broken pipe and no idea of what to do. Where were the parents? At work, of course. This was the 80s. My friend was afraid to call her mom because mom's job had a really strict policy against personal calls. "I think this counts as an emergency," I said.

I was about the only kid in the neighborhood with a stay-at-home mom, so she was sort of thrust into the role of everyone's mom. I went home and got her. She came back with me and found the shutoff valve in the basement.

So we knew it was a coincidence. The fact that we never told scary stories in her house again was also a coincidence.

#scarystories #genx #hauntedhouse #drippingwalls #satanicpanic

Strangeness & Charm

So there's Florence Welch, Hozier, and now Chappell Roan.

What do you think? One or two more show up before the Unseelie representatives start to arrive? Or are they working with the three. Should I clean up? Maybe start baking so there's plenty for everyone?

I hate being out of the loop. Always so hard to catch up.