I am going to start with a very Wikipedia like description of Kurt Cobain. "Kurt Donald Cobain (February 20, 1967 – April 5, 1994) was an American musician and artist, best known as the lead singer, guitarist and primary songwriter of the grunge band Nirvana. Cobain formed Nirvana with Krist Novoselic in Aberdeen, Washington in 1985 and established it as part of the Seattle music scene, having its debut album Bleach released on the independent record label Sub Pop in 1989." *
The article goes on to describe his birth and personal life and death and musical career and all the fucking acts that he put upon to a hypocritical world that greedily fed on his every move and gave him a demi God status that he strangely despised (or not so strangely considering the screwed up unworthy-in-his-own-mind narcissistic baby that he was). Ok, deep breath. Yes, I have to get every word to convey exactly what I want it to. I see a raging ramble coming up, so brace yourself.
I remember listening to All Apologies one day. It was Nirvana's first song that I listened to. I remember loving the melodic trance that Kurt's voice and music created. I didn't particularly pay attention to the drums or the lyrics. I think all I knew at that time was that he was this famous singer who committed suicide after a long heroin addiction and probably depression. After hearing 'Come as you are' I looked at the band in a very different light. I noticed the lyrics and was fascinated by the relatively slow vocals and the energetic chorus. I can take a minute now and wonder how anti-prophetic it was when he swore that he didn't have a gun. That is if I had forgotten his words "Why in the hell do journalists insist on coming up with a second-rate Freudian evaluation of my lyrics, when 90 percent of the time they've transcribed them incorrectly?"
I, like every teenager who listened to Nirvana in early 90's, fell in love with him. I listened to more of his songs and was impressed by the intensity of his lyrics. I would later come to know of the story behind lithium. I would later read his biography 'Heavier than Heaven' talking about how his music was driven by self hatred, contradictions and loneliness. I would read his suicide note and would try to imagine how devastated he must have been to take his life like that. I would wonder how life would be when there is literally nothing that gives you joy. I would blame him for getting into heroin thinking, rather wrongly, it led him to death.
I'm now reading about his mother Wendy's reaction after his death. She cries about how she can never hold her son again. Fuck you woman. You got divorced, dated a man just a few years older than your son, made out with his friends, were a raging alcoholic and abandoned him physically and emotionally. As a young boy with ultra high sensitivity these gave him many scars that he could never erase. Nothing helped him in the end. Music, fame, a loving wife and a baby daughter, heroin - nothing did. And now all you and his father do is lament. Fuck you all.
I tell myself to cut her some slack. People go through difficult times. People screw up their lives. People screw up others' lives. I remind myself of Rachel Greene's words - No uterus, no opinion. I have learnt not to judge people whose lives I can barely comprehend. I try hard to stop analyzing and blaming and justifying things that happened to some random man in some corner of the world a long time ago. I would just walk away if his music doesn't tell me such tales. As I read the final chapters of the book and cry in a wretched corner of the restroom, I take a deep breath. I get myself hot chocolate. The coffee machine calls it an indulgence. I try to walk away.
* Source: wikipedia. A knowingly pathetic attempt at non-humour.
