LETTERS TO DAVE GAHAN
(The Real Story of
the 1990s)
By Alexander Laurence
1.
Destiny. I have never believed in you. If you existed, maybe
I would be driving a garbage truck or working at a record store. Instead I am
here now writing letters to you years after the fact. Looking back and looking
forward. I am watching youtube videos of your band almost every day. People
send me them all the time. Some concert you performed to thousands in some mega
stadium in Istanbul . They come
looking for some spectacle, some chink in the armor, some ritual, some blood.
They are vampires and have vampire-like eyes. Sometimes I look at people at
concerts: their faces, their gestures, their reactions, and their eyes. They
seem to be revived by your performances. The songs are like little coffins.
They take their money, habits, dreams back home, and the memories add to the
fabric of their lives. I once worked at the Coroner’s office. I was able to see
hundreds of dead bodies. All sorts of deaths: car accidents, murders, suicides,
natural deaths. I watched autopsies being performed. I watched blood being
taken away for tests. I looked at real organs, hearts, bones, and cysts. The
worst thing about the place was not death, or tragedies, or crimes committed.
The worst thing was the smell of formaldehyde. It would burn your skin and
eyes. After a week, you become numb to death. You attain medical distance. I
would eat sandwiches next to dead bodies. Mostly peanut butter and banana
sandwiches made by a detective. It was a short lived summer job. I wasn’t a
goth. I never dressed up as vampires for Halloween. I was more into super
heroes and rock stars. I think that I dressed up as Kiss one year. I talked my
friend Sharron into going into forensic school. She was a beautician. Now she
works at the same Coroner’s office. I had a whiff of death, and was interested
more in the complexities of life. I wanted to live. Life meant going back to
college and trying to finish getting my degree. I still had my guitar, my
books, and my fender twin. I goofed around playing with some bands. It wasn’t
serious at the time. Depeche Mode had just released Black Celebration which was
one of the greatest albums of the 1980s. For some reason Martin Gore sang most
of the songs on this album. I thought it was cool that Gore wrote most of the
songs in Depeche Mode, but you sang them. Or you would sing the main part, and
Gore would sing the chorus or the soft part. It was a one two punch. It was
like Gore singing through a mask of you. Around this time you started drinking
a lot. You were taking pills. You were doing heroin. You did whatever it takes
to exist. There were some long tours. You always played Europe .
You played the Forum that year. You played two shows in Irvine ,
California Southern California in the summer of 1986. What
other band could pull this off? I went to none of these shows. I had just
broken up with a girlfriend, and was writing lame poetry. I was drinking wine
and saying offensive things to anyone who would listen. I had no friends left. An
old high school buddy, Mark, had come back from college in San
Luis Obispo . We made a super 8 film called “Rebellious
Lemming.” I wanted to jump off a cliff. I wanted to fly. I wanted to leave my
body. I watched football games. Summer ended and it was entirely loveless. But
a new semester at college was staring back at me. I felt the eyes of millions. My
own Black Celebration started in March, and ended in Fall. My story didn’t end
in drugs and suicide like all the French poets I admired. It was focused on
life and love. I was soon engaged in the first big love affair of my life. We
had met and we had connected in a very deep way. Before that time I was just a
brain and a body, always at odds with each other. Soon I felt more connected to
my own body. Our relationship was a deep body connection. We soon moved in
together. I had doubts my whole life. Most people only experience lust; it’s a
quick fix, going from body to body. Love is something else. It takes over your
life entirely. Problems and details are forgotten about. Lust can be controlled
somewhat. Like how people do with addiction. I lived by the beach for almost a
year. I hated the beach and I hated surfing, and couldn’t really swim. Memories
of deep love include the scent of the nearby ocean, and expensive perfumes,
alcohol, and bodies. I hated walking on the sand. Love couldn’t grow there. It
needs some real soil and plant life to breathe. Flowers are actors. We need to
dig a grave because they are dying. Flowers are actors. They adjust to whatever
the scene depends on. They are part of the Black Celebration. I hate guns. I
hate addiction. Those are all in the past and the future. I tried to avoid
things and came back to them anyway. I thought that I left the music world and
entered the world of true love, but I live in both those worlds more than ever
now.
(This is part of a new book which will be published later this year 2014).
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