Meeting the Cure

I've been a Cure fan since discovering "Lovecats" on a mixtape in 1984. Records, tapes and information were pretty scarce in southeastern Washington state, and even scarcer in rural Utah, where we moved when I was 16. My main source of information about the Cure came from dodgy teenage magazines which I devoured if they contained even the merest hint of the Cure. I decorated my locker with posters of Robert and the lads from publications like Star Hits, and suffered the ridicule of the uninformed hillbillies that populated my area of residence.

I was a Cure fan before anything else in my life. They were my first love, my first religion, my first philosophy and first true joy. Through their music, I first felt that connection to something larger and more beautiful than I could ever imagine, and any time I need to feel that connection again, all I have to do is listen. It's hard to describe to non-fans how central this band and the soaring poetry of their music has been in my life, how much it's always there, always present, it always has been, and most likely, always will be. I can't imagine not being a fan, not listening to the music or not caring about what they are doing.

And now, something I never thought would happen, came true, and I got to meet these people whose hearts, minds and souls have been with me my whole life. I don't even have the words to say how important and incredible this moment was, so I'll leave you with something Robert wrote recently, and which I was lucky enough to hear in person and record at the Red Rocks show in Colorado:

Floating here, like this with you
Underneath the stars above
For 13 billion years a view
It's beautiful and ours alone tonight
Underneath The Stars