FIERCE FEATURES: Kurt Cobain by Carrie E Woodworth

Kurt Cobain 

 

 “Wanting to be someone else is a waste of who you are.” 

-- Kurt Cobain

            Kurt Cobain settles himself on a chair on stage, slumping a bit. He holds his guitar in soft arms. His hair (blond, dirty, greasy), hangs in a centre-parted bob. An oversized t-shirt and moss green knit cardigan cover his thin body. When, at one point during the performance, a woman yells the name of their most controversial song, “Rape Me,” Cobain responds in a disdainful tone “I don’t think MTV would let us play that.”

            MTV had, in fact, told the band not to play the song. This didn’t stop them from playing it during rehearsal. Nor did it impede Kurt Cobain from strumming its opening chords during the live performance before transitioning into an approved song.  

He appears relaxed. As he talks to his audience and band mates, he gives no indication that this will be his penultimate performance or that he will be dead in five months.

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            When I was seventeen, I typically wore bell bottom jeans, a t-shirt, Doc Martens, and a hemp choker. And, more often than not, I paired it all with an old beat-up brown wool cardigan. I loved that sweater so much. Wore it deep into the ground. It also paired well with a tea-length floral print dress and Doc Martens. I listened to a lot of Cranberries at the time. Kurt Cobain was already dead so I wasn’t confronted with his music. That made it easy enough to ignore the fact that I liked it. 

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Kurt Cobain died by gory gunshot wound. Self-inflicted after consuming a tremendous amount of heroin. He had struggled with drug addiction for much of his life.  

I feel bogged down when I think about how he died. The drug addiction. The messy suicide. It’s too much for me. Too much darkness, unboundaried. He wore his pain on the front of his skin. Unguarded, unprotected. Most of us keep our pain inside. We hide it. Are we protecting it? Or are we protecting everyone else from seeing it? Kurt Cobain’s pain makes me uncomfortable. I feel it crawl across my skin, threatening to nibble at me bit by bit until I am no more. Is it contagious? How much of my own pain can I let myself feel before it consumes me, as his did him?

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I never wanted to go to law school in the first place. 

“I’m trying to decide between a masters in psychology and law school,” I told the university career counsellor. 

“Why do you want a masters in psychology?” he asked me.

“Because I find human development fascinating and I would like to study children to learn more about that.”

“That’s not a very emotional reason for wanting to work with children,” he said. “Go to law school.”

The scholarships were already lined up.

You can do anything with a law degree, they said. Then the carrot moves, and you must article. Then you can do anything. Once you practice for five years, you can write your own ticket. You can do anything. 

But don’t forget to make partner. 

Sixteen years later, I sit in my livingroom. I am on the floor, cutting a blazer into miniscule pieces. It is black, with a cinched waist and ruffles flaring out at the hip. It looks fabulous and powerful and has been to court many times. The shoulders are too tight. I cannot move my arms properly in this thing. I cut it into teeny tiny bits and promise myself that I will never wear another blazer again.

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Some of us are artists. We do not choose it. We come to this earth already created. We show up in this world as sentient beings, as reflectors to the doers of what they are creating and reinforcing. Our job is merely to ask the question “Is this really what you intend to create?”  They do not see the things that we see. They need us to show them. 

Do not lose heart, do not conform, for you are the ugly duckling.  

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            I can look at art for hours. I wander around a gallery, room by room, and get into a space of open-heartedness. My mind has nothing to do with this first initial scan. My subtle body expands and feels for the art that is meant for me. I can look at hours’ worth of pieces that don’t resonate, then find the one piece that blows my mind. And it is worth it.

            “Disremembered X,” by Doris Salcedo displayed in the Guggenheim in its 2020/2021 season. It consists of light, translucent jackets. They appear wispy. But when you get close, you see that each is made up of thousands of tiny needles. The postcard on the wall nearby explains this to you, in case you don’t pick up on it yourself. A beautiful jacket that looks good to others. A thousand tiny pinpricks in the skin.

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“In Bloom,” by Nirvana 

            “He’s the one who likes all our pretty songs/ And he likes to sing along / And he likes to shoot his gun / But he knows not what it means.”

Kurt Cobain –Liner notes from Insecticide album

I would like to get rid of the homophobes, racists and sexists in our audience. I know 
they’re out there, and it really bothers me. So at this point, I have one request for our fans: If any of you in any way hate homosexuals, people of different colour, or women, please do this one favour for us…Don’t come to our shows and don’t buy our records.

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            “You can always go back to practicing law,” Alia says. “If massage therapy doesn’t work out.”

            Massage therapy doesn’t work out. I experience a shoulder injury that proves resilient and will limit my physical capacities for years. Just like that, Plan B falls through. 

            “Are you going back to law?” Marisa asks.

            “No,” I tell her. “Cleaning houses keeps me away from a desk. Plus I am not responsible for anything: I show up, do my job and go home.”

            Cleaning gives me back my brain as well. All day I think my own thoughts. I make up stories as I work with my body, then write them down on weekends. Slowly, the trauma of my legal practice leaks out of my body and energy for something new takes its place. Plan C begins to take shape, and before I know it I have enrolled in a creative writing program. I have promised myself to submit for publication one piece per month for the entire year. Every month self-doubt holds me back until the end of the month. 

            Am I crazy?

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            Two years before MTV Unplugged, Kurt Cobain introduced “Rape Me,” at a concert at the Paramount Theatre in his home state of Washington. No hardness came into his tone or demeanour. All of him was steady, matter-of-fact.

“This song is about hairy, sweaty, macho redneck men,” he said. “Who rape.”

            And the song kicked off, the volume of the guitars exceeding his. Quieter than the guitar, he begins the lyrics. “Rape me. Rape me, my friend. Rape me. Rape me again.” Typical of Nirvana’s style, he blends quiet and loud, yelling the chorus “I’m not the only one.” His loudest, most raw vocals come at the very end of the song when he screams “rape me,” eight times to close out the song. 

            A man (and self-identified feminist) singing “rape me,” night after night, back in the nineties when women mostly bore their burdens silently. Was he lending women his privileged voice? Whatever his intention, I find his boldness striking. His very calmness suggests confidence in his stance. Righteousness. How was he able to do that? 

            Was he crazy?

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I don’t listen to Nirvana. I listen to Kurt Cobain. When I listen to his music, I feel something inside of me that only his music has ever touched. There is a space in my heart that feels warm and real. It is where my art comes from. My deepest compassion comes from this space. This part of me sees darkness and beauty and power and vulnerability all mixed up together. They are all one, this sacred space of me knows. No human being has ever shared that space with me, but his art does. 

Kurt Cobain did not hide pain. He showed it. He showed it for those of us who cannot. He called out those who caused pain. At the height of his career, rather than just sing pretty songs, he spoke his truth. He stood up for what he believed in, right in the face of those who made him a so-called success. 

But his success limited him in the end. It turns out, the carrot leads you into a cage. He escaped his cage with a shotgun. I escaped mine with quiet steps and soft breaths as I looked around and squinted at the newly bright sun. Slowly I have put one foot in front of the other, towards my own truth and righteousness. 

            It has taken me a very long time to admit that I like Kurt Cobain. 

--Carrie E. Woodworth