I can't find myself
I can't find myself
I can't find myself
I can't find myself
In the head of this stranger in love
Holding on given up
To another under faded setting sun
And I wonder where I am...
Could she run away with him?
So happy and so young
And I stare
As I sing in the lost voice of a stranger in love
Out of time letting go
In another world that spins around for fun
And I wonder where I am...
Could he ever ask her why?
So happy
and so young...
And I stare... But...
I can't find myself
In the heart of this stranger in love
Holding on given up
To this other under faded setting sun
And I'm not sure where I am...
Would he really turn away?
So happy and so young...
And I stare...
As I play out the passion of a stranger in love
Letting go of the time
In this other world that spins around for one
And I'm not sure where I am...
Would she know it was a lie?
So happy and so young...
And I stare... But...
I can't find myself
In the soul of this stranger in love
No control over one
To the other under faded setting sun
And I don't know where I am...
Should he beg her to forgive?
So happy and so young...
And I stare...
As I live out the story of a stranger in love
Waking up going on
In the other world that spins around undone
And I don't know where I am...
Should she really say goodbye?
So happy and so young
And I stare... But...
I can't find myself
I got lost in someone else.

Robert on 'Lost'.....


"Lost was the….. there's always a song that I write and I think, if we do another Cure album this is it, this is where it starts.
Lost was a song, when I was writing stuff for my own record, I put Lost aside because I thought, this doesn't fit in with what I want to do. I thought it's a really good… it's such a simple idea.
Lyrically it was informed by a book that I read in the summer of 2002 called 'The View From Nowhere' by a modern philosopher called Thomas Nagel, which is essentially the dilemma of how to become self aware if you lack the belief that there is such a thing as self.
It was an interesting debate we had in the studio, the idea of changing as a person, developing with experience, which I think that essentially you have to believe that you can change. We were debating at what point you become fundamentally yourself, you hold the views that you have about justice, or right or wrong, truth, goodness, all the important subjects in life. Or are you able to completely evolve and change your opinions about fundamental beliefs and if so how are you still you. An endless kind of discussion, obviously something that millions and millions of people have though about, throughout all the time man has been thinking about such things. But it kind of struck a chord in me because this very slight book had a huge impact, it coalesced a lot of the feelings I was having, heading towards my mid-40's. I'd always assumed that the aspirations to know yourself are just there, you don't really question it, but I started to think, I didn't really have any idea of who I was. And I thought… its paradoxical, its one of those songs I was sitting there writing, and who's writing, but at the same time, its not me only, the philosophical conceit, like 'who cares, lets go and watch the football' sort of thing. It is a fundamental problem and you can't help from time to time think about it. And it worried me, and so I put it into song.
I thought this idea was going to start, because I actually had the intention of the album being lyrically just following a train of thought from that one moment right the way through for an hour for me to kind of develop it. I did try that, for a couple of weeks I tried, and it was so dry and so dull and so self obsessed. And I thought this is the paradox that I'm actually spending an inordinate amount of time writing about myself when I don't actually believe that I know who I am, and I thought the whole thing was becoming too darkly comic. So thankfully I left it at just the one song!
And it also hints at the idea on a number of levels about being subsumed into someone else, like in a relationship where you find that you're actually so deeply dependent on someone else that you cease to function as an individual. And also I thought just from my own point of view I was referencing how I have found at certain times I get lost in the idea of who I'm supposed to be. Particularly when the band, when we've endured (did I say endured, that's a give away isn't it!) when we've enjoyed, periods of success, I find it changes me, or the me that I think I am. I start to act differently and become almost like two people. So that was another element. It set the tone for the album in as much as I wanted the words to resonate with people and to be very kind of clear about what the subject matter was but at the same time to work on more than one level."
XFM June 2004

"It’s a song with three meanings. The most immediate one talks about how much it is difficult to recognize oneself inside a couple relationship. It’s the moment in which you have found someone, but you also “lost” yourself. Having a relationship means giving in to compromises and forgetting part of your own identity. The second issue regards me personally: sometimes I ask myself whether I lost myself because I can’t recognize what surrounds me and whether this is the right place for me and if it is, where I am. I often think that I have lost touch with what I do. And the last of the three meanings is what you said, the not feeling appropriate. It talks about asking yourself if this life made us wiser or if it just toyed with us."
Rolling Stone Sept. 2004