In 2012, I was in Seattle and visited the EMP Museum, catching the exhibit Nirvana: Taking Punk to the Masses. Later that year, while driving through Portland, OR in a rental car, the song "Lithium" started playing on the radio. It seemed very appropriate. And of course, this past year has been awash in 90's nostalgia of the most acute kind. It's all gotten me to revisiting the framework of my existence in the context of the era...
I was just a little too young to be on board for the first "Grunge" wave of the early 90's. I started getting into music in the latter half of the decade, and only really became acquainted with Seattle bands like Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Nirvana by reading about them and then reaching backwards in time. By the time I graduated from high school, I owned three Pearl Jam albums and Soundgarden's Superunknown. But to this day, I have never owned a Nirvana album.
One of my friends in high school, not coincidentally the one who sold me my favorite electric guitar, was very much a Nirvana fan. He let me borrow Nevermind and MTV Unplugged in New York, both of which I listened to. He also had a t-shirt with a picture of Kurt Cobain performing with angelic wings behind him, similar to this:
At the time, I found the image inappropriate, or at least conceptually dissonant. Perhaps because I was going through a very religious phase in my own life and trying to be very focused on things positive, I did not see the validity in portraying a rock star, and one who had allegedly killed him self, in that light.
More broadly, I didn't relate strongly to the music of Nirvana at that point in my life. I could appreciate the technical quality and energy of their recordings and performances. But thematically, I found Kurt's songs to be angry and negative. And so many of them are. In fact, the whole Nirvana experience is tinged with something less than uplift, if you look at it from a distance. Why does it, and did it, appeal to people?
The short answer is, in a word: catharsis. It taps into something identifiable and real and calls it for what it is, and more than that is a bridge to release tension. I remember reading a comment somewhere online, a couple of years ago, in which the commentor basically said, "When I heard 'Smells Like Teen Spirit,' it was the first time that I recall ever feeling like a song connected to me and my actual life and what I was going through." It's a safe bet that that person, like most of us, couldn't make out most of the exact lyrics at first, but the power of the track is such that it really doesn't matter.
For whatever it's worth, the lyrics are more intelligible in Tori Amos' evocative cover of the song:
Anyway, fast forwarding slightly through the space time continuum, if it's not too ridiculous a thing to say, I've come to a place where I "get it." (Generally speaking with regard to Kurt Cobain/Nirvana.) The last few years of my existence have not been the easiest, to say the least. It helps to encounter something that makes you feel like you're not alone. That doesn't mean embracing the downward spiral, but feeling empowered to talk about it, to share your feelings. To be real about things.
Kurt Cobain was clearly an unhappy person, suffering on multiple levels and as the saying goes, fighting plenty of his own demons. And it seems that he lost that fight. He's not a role model; it's dangerous to put celebrities on pedestals, especially those who take their own lives, as the gears of the fame machine perversely are wont to do.
But at the same time, it's shortsighted to disregard the positives that can be derived from the experience. It's beyond cliche, having been evoked ad nauseam, to point out that Nirvana is arguably the last American rock band to have made a truly singular, lasting impact on the cultural consciousness. That's the sort of thing that nostalgists and list-makers (of which I am admittedly one) tend to bring up again and again.
More important, though, is that Nirvana helped -- along with many of their peers -- to restore faith in the ability of rock music to be meaningful on a human level. To get below the surface, to the human core of the equation. That necessarily involves painting pictures of things that aren't pretty.
I like pretty things. I like trying to twist words in elegant ways and frankly I often prefer to use euphemisms and metaphors instead of bluntly expressing ragged thoughts. That's just my vocabulary. But pretty lies can be the most ugly thing of all, because they are are fundamental trafficking in falsity. And in a way, the flip side of that rings true -- that there is a beauty in honesty, even if it is jagged or jarring.
While on that thought, here is a video performance that I recently came across of Kawehi performing a solo cover of "Heart Shaped Box" using looped vocals and keyboards. It's very cool:
That song itself is rather...abrasive, one might say, in its lyrical content. But it's also very powerfully expressive, not to mention a very good melodic composition, as Kawehi demonstrates through her arrangement and performance.
I feel like my focus is drifting a little bit. So, to wind myself down before I trail off onto some other tangent...
This week does have meaning to me, in ways that it would not have had in the past. I'm used to that sort of thing, in general. I often find myself liking or appreciating various things either before everyone else, or after everyone else. I'm sort of out-of-phase with mainstream humanity, or something like that. (Did I mention that I might be an alien?) It all kind of speaks to the circular nature of things, I guess.
When I think of Kurt Cobain, the first thing that comes to mind is sympathy. Was he selfish or delusional? Maybe, probably, I guess. But I've experienced enough myself to know/feel that none of us are as far from the edge as we might like to think that we are. I don't view it with cynicism. Tragedy is tragedy. And we can never know what another person is really going through. It's all very sad, in this case.
The positive takeway, and the better note to end on, is that it mattered to people's lives. And improbable though it might be, it inspired people. Not how it ended. (That should not be any sort of anything except a downbeat and a cautionary tale.) But the reason that April 1994 still resonates today is not really about a death, but about the life that preceded it. It wasn't pretty, but it mattered. It did then, and it does now.
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