In late 1979, things got more subtle regarding Robert Smith's ability to write lyrics. Especially with the ones based on relations with people. The forthcoming Seventeen Seconds album would eventually be considered as the real first Cure album, including a concept and theme (the songs on Three Imaginary Boys being rather "embryonic" according to him). Love, often in its desperate form, takes a big part on the lyrics from that time. In September 1979, half of the lyrics for Play For Today were already written. They represent a step further in the usual cynical and half serious words on older songs like I'm Cold or Boys Don't Cry. Blaming the other for the situation and unwilling to follow "rules". Around the same era, the first opening lines on M were already part of the song. "Hello image" is a line taken from a book by Camus called "A Happy Death". The main character is named Mersault (the same as the man in The Outsider which inspired Killing An Arab) and shares the love of a woman called Marthe with another man. The first versions of A Forest included a couple of lines refering to a short novel by Kafka called "At Night" ("Someone's got to watch"). In the end, the novel would inspire the words of the Cure song with the same title expressing despair and loneliness in the void of the night. The record ends with the title track and its dark symbolism (light fading, everything cold, 'feeling' gone). The whole album being the "reflection" of a very short moment realizing how long-lasting relationships can still be fragile and not necessarily safe from ending. Interestingly enough, when played live at the end of the year 1980, the song Seventeen Seconds had the line "a measure of life" replaced by "a measure of nothing". It was also on this tour that the character Fuchsia (from Peake's Gormenghast book) appeared in the extra lyrics of the same song, as well as on the first versions of The Holy Hour. Basically, Robert Smith fell in love with the character : "I fell in love with Fuchsia and when she died, I really regretted reading the page where she died because I could have kept her alive." A recurrent line in those extra lyrics, on those concerts, had him mentioning wanting to "live in a story". [thanks to LVG for giving me this page's idea]