My Gen X Playlist: A Letter to Elise – The Cure

I spent a year working in Japan before the tech boom, long before email was ever a thing. At that time, there were really only two modes of communication – mail and phone. Calling international was expensive. In the Tokyo train stations, there were some shady looking characters selling suspect international phone cards. There were a few international pay phone booths outside the train station where I lived so I thought, why not? These sketchy phone cards came in handy and I used them often until one fateful day. I must have inserted the phone card backwards or something and it jammed. I immediately fled the scene. The office I worked at overlooked the train station and I remember watching the police tape off the phone booth as if it was a crime scene. Later that day, a truck came and they hauled away the entire phone booth. All kinds of useless thoughts ran through my mind – fingerprints, deportation, jail time. Had email been invented, I could have avoided this shady behavior.

When you live in a foreign country, receiving anything in your mail box is pure gold. My family once sent a care package with taco shells I’d requested. I often thought about Tito’s Tacos, a local dive not far from my old apartment back in LA. Sure, today it just takes a few click on Amazon and you get your stuff delivered to your front door. It’s fast and simple. But before the convenience of the internet, family was my old school version of Amazon, just with longer shipping and delivery times. Sometimes it’s the small things that have the biggest impact. That was one of those times. Taco shells. A little taste of home.

I think the art of the handwritten letter has left the building. Email, text and apps have almost completely nullified this form of communication. In a world without computers, letter writing would make it’s grand return. If this were to ever happen, I’d have to work on my penmanship. Keyboards have transformed my writing into one big scribble of abstract jibberish. We would also have to relearn patience – that may take some time getting used to. Without computers, the world would definitely slow down. We may not be ready to turn back the clocks.

The Cure released A Letter to Elise in 1991. The song was a love letter to express the feelings Robert Smith could not say aloud.

According to Robert Smith, . . . the inspiration came from his childhood crush. . . Smith revealed that there was a girl named Elise who lived near his grandparents’ house. He admitted that he had a crush on her but was too shy to make a move. As he got older, he regretted never telling her how he felt.

– OldTimeMusic

I suppose if this were modern day, it would have been easier sending a text or message through WhatsApp. But where is the romance in that? I can’t imagine a decent song title. A WhatsApp to Elise? No, that would never fly.

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For a complete playlist, please click here.

For the Spotify playlist, please click here.

Oh Elise it doesn't matter what you say
I just can't stay here every yesterday
Like keep on acting out the same
The way we act out
Every way to smile
Forget
And make-believe we never needed
Any more than this
Any more than this

Oh Elise it doesn't matter what you do
I know I'll never really get inside of you
To make your eyes catch fire
The way they should
The way the blue could pull me in
If they only would
If they only would
At least I'd lose this sense of sensing something else
That hides away
From me and you
There're worlds to part
With aching looks and breaking hearts
And all the prayers your hands can make
Oh I just take as much as you can throw
And then throw it all away
Oh I throw it all away
Like throwing faces at the sky
Like throwing arms round
Yesterday
I stood and stared
Wide-eyed in front of you
And the face I saw looked back
The way I wanted to
But I just can't hold my tears away
The way you do

Elise believe I never wanted this
I thought this time I'd keep all of my promises
I thought you were the girl I always dreamed about
But I let the dream go
And the promises broke
And the make-believe ran out...

Oh Elise
It doesn't matter what you say
I just can't stay here every yesterday
Like keep on acting out the same
The way we act out
Every way to smile
Forget
And make-believe we never needed
Any more than this
Any more than this

And every time I try to pick it up
Like falling sand
As fast as I pick it up
It runs away through my clutching hands
But there's nothing else I can really do
There's nothing else
I can really do
At all...