My Gen X Playlist: A Forest – The Cure

Daily writing prompt

What positive events have taken place in your life over the past year?

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I once was lost in a bamboo forest. I left the trail and had a difficult time finding my way back. It was getting dark and I wandered aimlessly. It all looked the same. I had no idea how I got so lost, but getting lost is easy to do. It sometimes sneaks up on you like that. I ended up finding a random road and followed it instead of searching for the original trail. I was relieved I found a road back.

That’s how I felt for a few years during burnout – lost in the forest, darkness approaching, searching for a road out. The decision to take time off was difficult but necessary. These past six months have been life changing for both my physical and mental health. I wake up without the weight of darkness and I can breath again. I never knew my lungs were so empty until I made it out of the forest. All it took was for me to say no longer and put myself first for a change. I like this new road that I’ve found. It’s so much better than the trail I was once on. I just have to remind myself not to wander off into the trees again.

The Cure released A Forest in 1980. It’s interesting that Robert Smith wrote the lyrics to most of the album in one night.

Smith wrote the majority of the album’s lyrics in one night after a show with Siouxsie and the Banshees at a Newcastle hotel in 1979. After finding himself on the losing end of a brawl with a trio of businessmen in the hotel elevator, Smith was rescued by his bandmates. Despite being banged up, his emotional wounds were worse than his physical ones, and he poured his feelings out into the songs that formed Seventeen Seconds.

– songfacts

My few years of burnout felt like being on the losing end of a brawl, just without the visible cuts and bruises to show for it. Too bad I didn’t have Smith’s musical genius. I might have created a work of art just like him.

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For a complete playlist, please click here.

For the Spotify playlist, please click here.

Come closer and see
See into the trees
Find the girl
While you can
Come closer and see
See into the dark
Just follow your eyes
Just follow your eyes

I hear her voice
Calling my name
The sound is deep
In the dark
I hear her voice
And start to run
Into the trees
Into the trees

Into the trees

Suddenly I stop
But I know it's too late
I'm lost in a forest
All alone
The girl was never there
It's always the same
I'm running towards nothing
Again and again and again and again