The night the stars went out
By Karen Kunawicz

If life were a movie, I’d swear the almighty director producer would give me the part of the poor soul that suffers the pain of unrequited love, the tormented inividual pining away for what was lost, someone who tries to smile while being tortured by the pangs of heartbreak and despair. It’s a terrible role but some of us just have to play it.
 I can almost see myself in a scene that’s a combination of the one in Pretty in Pink where Ducky Dale (who is hopelessly in love with Andie) sits alone in alley while The Smith’s Please Let Me Get What I Want plays in the background and the camera pulls away, the one in The Crow where an anguish Eric Draven realizes the one he loves has taken away from him and he walks over to the window of his loft and looks at the gloomy gothic wasteland in front of him as the camera dramatically pulls out and we hear The Cure’s Barn (I wish I could look that astig when my soul suffers) and the one of Juliette Lewis in the video of Melissa Ethridge’s Come to My Window where she’s wearing a white tank top and pajama pants in a room that looks more like a cell with an old bed and one tiny window and she dances around, talks to the air, talks to herself and draws things with crayons on the wall and the floor looking like she’s on the verge of going totally going cuckoo. Yup that’s it, a mixture of pain, loneliness, anger, insanity and great art direction + cinematography.
 The world seems to really like lovers, couples and happy endings, and it seems to have a little sympathy for people (like me? Mwahahaha) who love other people who:a) don’t love me back, at least not the same way. Just check out Madonna when she does the remake of Marvin Gave’s I want You with Massive Attack – “I want you, the right way, but I want to want me, what you to want me too..” Ooooh. b) once I love them but have gone away c) love someone else or d) any lethal combination of the above. Ouch.
 But every now and then, a writer, musician or some sort of artist comes up with lots of delicious, wonderful, great stuff that’s full of heartbreak and pain and I take to it like a fish to water. On Valentine’s Day, it just so happened that I was ‘gifted’ with copies of Wasted #1-6 (I read Wasted #1 in Comics 101 and thought it was a gem). It’s a story of a guy with a broken heart, a great body, a gun, and a tortured soul.  I consumed it the day after and thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread and I  immediately wrote its creator a ‘fan letter.’ Earlier, I decided to gift myself to Chris Isaak’s Forever Blue. There are millions of songs out there on the subject but rarely do you find good albums with all its songs (in this case,13) devoted to heartbreak and lost. So why should I keep all this good stuff to myself? Let me share a bit of the wisdom of Wasted, the ‘fun’ of Forever Blue and some of the other music I happen to have been listening to last Wednesday…
 This is actually just small excerpt in a great litany that begins with I HATE – it includes things like Cupid, Mickey Mouse, Beauty and the Beast, Little Mermaid and so on. I’d love to print out the whole thing but maybe it’s better that I ask permission first and maybe you should just try to get a copy for yourself.

 “I HATE walks in the park, dates and beach outings. I HATE Michael Bolton and Whitney Houston and Ariel Rivera songs. They sing about LOVE…about sacrifice…
yet they don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.
 And I HATE YOU because you are HAPPY.
 And I am NOT.    - Eric, Wasted #4
by Gerry Alanguilan
 “DAMN IT! Don’t you know how many people have told me that? There are others,” “You’ll meet someone else,” “She’s just a girl.” “There’s someone I’d like you to meet.” SHIT!
Doesn’t anyone understand? It’s as if LOVE is something that can be transplanted. Like a plant. Like a god damn plant!”  
- Eric, Wasted #5
by Gerry Alanguilan

“Look at all you lucky people
Look at all things you do
Look at all you happy people
I wish I could be like you 
Look at you smiling faces
think of all the things you’ve done
Look at all you laughing people
And I’ve lost my only one…”
- Christ Isaak,
Go Walking Down There

 More from Forever Blue. From Don’t Leave Me on My Own: “I stay up late now ‘cause I’ve been crying / I’d say I’m OK but I’d be lying…” Forever Blue: “No reason for living / Still there’s a lot to do…,” Things Go Wrong. “Don’t be so quick to say we’re through / Things go wrong / But I still love you,” The End of Everything. This is the end of happiness / This is the end of dreams. / This is the end of everything / This is the end for you and me / I don’t know what to do / In my heart I’d still love you.
 Yeah.
 “Make this all go away. You make this all go away. I just want something. I just want something I can never have.”
- Trent Reznor
Nine Inch Nails’ Something
I Can Never Have

 “I know that you’re going with another guy. I don’t care ‘cause I love you baby that’s no lie. I love you more than I did when you were mine.”
- Prince, When You Were Mine

Do these people hit the nail on the head or what? I guess for some of us, the pain of the heart that’s been broken (sometimes it might even be your own fault) is something you have to live with and the only and the only thing left to do because you can’t really make it go away is to try to live with it as ‘gracefully’ as you can. Which means trying to seek little pockets of happiness whenever you can and not going into self destruct.
 Well. I could go on and on and on and quote more from Christ Isaak, Nine Inch Nails, The Cure, The Police, Sting, Love is Colder than Death, Joy Division, Alanis Morrisette, Sinead O’Connor, The Smiths…there’s PLENTY where that came from. I could wrote columns forever with nothing but that. I could come up with a book, a series of books even. But the buck stops here.

 Gerry is working on the next Wasted and is supposed to come up with The Dead Heart Stories – “Stories of Numbing Loneliness. Of Unrelenting Despair. Of All-Encompassing Sadness.” I can’t wait [If you really really want copies of Wasted you can scribble me a note with your whereabouts and if it’s OK with you people concerned, I’ll get you know how much it might cost (last heard P20 an issue – well worth it)].
 Most of the music is available at the nearest record bar – though I had to go four before I could find Forever Blue. As a footnote, I might add that all or most of the songs on Sugar Hiccup’s album. Oracle also contain similar themes but the music’s more ethereal and slightly gothic sounding. You might want to check it out if you’re in the mood.
 Does anything last forever? Does love? Does pain? I’ll tell you when I’m a thousand year old. In the meantime, let me leave you with this: be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.
 Mwahahahaha.