T hinking about Kurt Cobain makes my heart hurt. Nirvana has been, for quite some time, one of my favorite bands.
Musicianship aside, Nirvana represents everything real about youth culture: emotional transparency, dissatisfaction with impending adulthood and constant questioning of self-identity.
The first Nirvana song I heard, really listened and absorbed, was “Come As You Are.” Cobain is such a huge cultural figure, we often discuss him apart from his music as an addict and “haunted spirit.”
These hollow attempts to understand him mean nothing and ignore the truth each of his songs conveys: the world is simultaneously horrifying and beautiful. “Come As You Are” is welcoming, enticing yet dark, ending with Kurt’s empty promise that he doesn’t have a gun.
Kurt shot himself on April 5, 1994 . Twenty years later, we still don’t fully understand why or what could have been done. Though I was nine months old when he died, discovering Nirvana and learning of Cobain’s demise at 15 broke me.
How could someone so talented, so feeling and thoughtful end it like that? The truth is, his talent, feeling and thoughtfulness made him do it. Cobain was too great for a world with a high capacity for pain.
Last month, the Seattle Police Department released newly developed photos taken at the scene of Cobain’s death. Once the photos leaked, I grappled with myself about whether or not to view them. I read his note once and was upset for days.
The photos, though, tell a similarly gut-wrenching sadness. The room: messy and dirty then, in a corner, Kurt’s note sits with a red ink pen jammed through the center, a final sign to the world — read this note and respect my words .
If you walk into Forever 21 right now, you’ll find, in addition to hoards of ill-fitting bandage skirts and crop tops, racks of t-shirts dedicated to Tupac, Biggie Smalls and Kurt Cobain. The idea of a 13-year-old girl wearing the Nirvana logo because it’s ‘cool-looking’ makes me want to vomit but I guess it’s a sign that Cobain’s not going anywhere soon.
