9th
Just in case you forgot how positively sad Kurt Cobain’s untimely passing was, watch this video. In it a grown man weird a lab coat is screaming “no recess”… in this moment he’s a father, a husband and one of the most sought-after musical minds of his generation, a mere 18 months after making a full length record as a virtual unknown. Before which he was practically homeless and hooked on heroin, an addiction that would nearly kill him on the way back from this trip. Less than two years later, this lovely moppy-haired ball of energy would put a shotgun in his own mouth and believe his life to be so hopeless he couldn’t stand living it another minute. He’d done such a good job evading the few healthy people who cared for him and managed to surround himself with a lot of addicts who were far too wrapped up in their own disease that he was dead for DAYS before anyone knew it.
Every now and then, I think about how much people my age admired what he stood for and what his music did to legitimize our role in society. His message shaped our need to stand up to injustice, but to make sure we were being true to ourselves first. Ironic that we learned it from a man who probably had no idea who he REALLY was and the greatest injustice of all is that we never got to see and hear a coherent, sober, self-loving, self-realizing, mature Kurt Cobain speak his mind and share his heart. One can only imagine how beautiful THAT might’ve been.
