Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Kurt Cobain

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Just the other day, dad dropped me and my sister off by Books-A-Million for a brief thirty minutes to just browse the place. While there, I realized that I currently didn’t have anything good to read, and was searching with PURPOUSE for something interesting. So, I was just stumbling along,. And there—next to the green “NICKTOONS!!!” book, was a thick novel, the cover art resembling none other than a worn, used Mead notebook. I picked it up, a bit interested, and discovered that it was, indeed the “Kurt Cobain Journals.” The thing was a compilation of several of his notebooks, all scanned and put onto computer paper, then mass reproduced with this spiffy cover and sold to book stores all across the world. Being as thick as it was, it was a bit heavier than expected as I held it there in my hands. I have to admit—I was DESPERATLEY intrigued….How I LONGED to know what his diseased, pressured mind was conjuring up from it’s (undoubtedly) creative dregs. However horrible a sickness depression is, it has always been romanticized for the side effect of creativity it seems to induce. Truly, this was the case with Kurt, along with numerous other artists. He had a undeniably very DIFFERENT way of seeing the world, and to tell you the truth, I selfishly wanted to share a slice of the pie with him….So with these thoughts of curiosity and self-benefit, my greedy hands flipped the cover back. Yeah that’s right. I admit it. …..I invaded Kurt’s right to privacy. Even after his death. But I swear to GOD, I only read the first page. …Aside from taking a glance at a handful of his doodles and comics. (As a side-note, he was an amazing artist, anyway….) But the opening sentence summed it all up. Read this, and you’ll judge. And after reading that, I put the bloody thing back in it’s shelf, feeling a lifetime’s supply of shame, but still resolving not to judge. NEVER to judge. …. Kurt suffered many inflictions. Both mentally and physically. He possessed an ongoing, undiagnosed stomach pain, no doctor being able to determine what it was, or what was the cause. Therefore, no medicine worked quite the way it should have. The pain was relentless, and never did seem to fade….Therefore, Cobain resorted to heroin to ease the pain after discovering that when enough to knock him out, the stomach pain subsided for three continuous days. He WAS, indeed very sick, and the heroin only added a new dimension to this sickness. He was an incredibly self conscious, surprisingly emotional guy. It was said that just seeing a television ad supporting the hungry children in Africa, Kurt could be driven from the room. Though due to his band’s (Nirvana’s) massive increase in popularity, Kurt’s privacy grew more and more stretched apart. He became obsessed with trying to prove the judgmental public’s opinion of him wrong, thus leading to much of the anger in his most likely heroin-induced journal writing. I have come to understand that much of the reason for his suicide was, indeed, this pressure and lack of privacy the public inflicted upon him. He was terrified of what we might come to think of him…the lies spread…but even more terrified of what might have BEEN true. Society drove him to it. We drove him to suicide during his life. And now that he’s dead—now that he has set an example for us, we completely disregard his pain, his suffering….We defile him in death as well with this chain-produced copy of his journal entries. The LAST little piece of privacy he owned in life has once, at last been stolen away from him. We stripped the man of his dignity, we berated him, we raped him. …And still, America simply CAN’T get enough of Kurt Cobain! And this is why I will NOT purchase “The Kurt Cobain Journals”, friends. In fact, I urge you to boycott the mass production of the bloody thing. Suicide notes simply should NOT be sold to the general public, however “interesting” or “deep” they may be. So please, however shoddily written this may have been, pass it on. Kurt deserves some respect.