Matt Haig

Me and my cousin James. The day we first saw The Cure. 23rd July 1989. He was the handsome one on the right. I was the one who looked like the character in a John Hughes movie who had an unrequited crush on Molly Ringwald while she yearned for a future yuppie in a Ferrari blasting OMD. 14 going on 33. I remember the day well. I had travelled to Sussex from Newark-on-Trent and met James and his friends. They were very cool. All eyeliner and bouffant hair. One was openly gay. A big deal for an 80s teenager. We went to London. Carnaby Street. I bought some John Lennon glasses, for some reason. And wore a paisley shirt I had made in Textiles. Then to Wembley for my first ever concert and the closest thing to a spiritual experience I had as a teen. 10,000 boys in eyeliner and one in a paisley shirt. I remember the setlist. Charlotte Sometimes, A Forest, Lullaby, Inbetween Days… as I said earlier this week The Cure are a band you live inside. I was a troubled kid. Mildly criminal. Special needs. Misunderstood. Misfit. But the Cure provided a world for us to live inside. They gave us a place inside our minds for us to exist in the safe gothic shade of the imagination.

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Last week Simon Gallup, legendary bassist of The Cure, sent me a lovely email asking if I wanted to come and see his band play on their current tour. So last night we went to Cardiff. But I cannot fully explain to you the magnitude of what I experienced. The concert itself was incredible. The Cure were the first band I ever saw live and, as you may know from my books, are my absolute favourite band of all time. They don’t just write songs. They create a world to live inside. Gloomy and mysterious, yes, but safe and free. Anyway, afterwards we were invited backstage. I half thought he wouldn’t know who I was, or that it had just been some PR thing and he was inviting me because I mention The Cure in my books. But no. I had one of the most emotional conversations I have ever had with anyone who has read my books. I won’t give details but he and his daughter read The Midnight Library and Reasons to Stay Alive and all the others during their most difficult time. I was told I am a big bond between him and his daughter. He told me they got him through, pulled him off the floor. We cried together. I told him how The Cure had got me through too. He is the loveliest man. He said he had worried about sending the email and thought I wouldn’t respond! His daughters are great too. The whole band is lovely. I sometimes doubt myself. My work. I sometimes wonder why musicians like it more than writers. I still have self esteem issues and have cultivated a flippancy about my writing. But speaking to people recently who it has helped - especially people whose work has helped me - is truly making me see a purpose to it all. Oh and - maybe most ridiculously- The Cure have The Last Day of Summer in their current setlist because it features prominently in The Life Impossible. ‘I’m sorry,’ he told me, ‘I really fucked it tonight as I knew you were watching.’ I told him it sounded perfect. Because it was. As was the whole night. Which my 14 year old self, watching The Cure in 1989, would never have believed. Life is circular. Dark but shining.

ChatGPT tells me ChatGPT is causing the end of the ecosystem

This is the first edition of The Midnight Library graphic novel, lavishly illustrated by Fred Fordham. One follower who comments below will get it months before its launch in October.