Where were you when you got the news that Kurt Cobain died? Most people in my generation can't remember what we had for dinner last night but we can recreate that moment for you in a word-picture so detailed you'd think it had been commissioned for a million dollars. I was a freshman in college, in the pre-internet days when news traveled at its own pace. I didn't have cable tv in my room, and as I went about that business that beautiful spring morning, I noticed that the TV in the common area, which was often tuned to MTV, was playing the Unplugged version of "All Apologies" every time I passed through the lobby. It's not like it was a new release at the time, so when I finally got curious enough to slow down and watch for a few seconds, I saw the news of his suicide scrolling across the screen. There were a few other young women gathered at that point, and we all stood in silent shock, as it sunk in.
The truth is, though I was a Nirvana fan, I wasn't rabid. It was sad news, but it didn't rip my heart out like it did for a lot of people. It's just such a galvanizing cultural moment. Where were you? Who were you with? How did the news break? Today makes 27 years that we found out he was gone, exactly the amount of time he was alive. Pain is pain, and enough pain can make death look like a better option. I'm extremely lucky to never have gotten to a point where I can identify with this feeling, but anyone who does certainly has my sympathy. That's the overwhelming takeaway of the loss of a human, any human, regardless of the number of lives he may have touched.
Back to it from the standpoint of cultural impact, though, if you have read or heard anything about the novel I wrote (even just the title), you're aware that Cobain/Nirvana has something to do with it. That's because coming of age in the grunge era, as I did, the band and their music becomes a touchpoint, a common reference whether or not you're a fan. Let's not leave out the clothing of the time, which I took to wholeheartedly about halfway through high school and didn't look back for another decade and a half. Seattle bands and, to an extent the hip-hop artists that I favored, ruined fashion for me, I mean, it didn't exactly ruin it because what's wrong with being comfortable, but it ruined my ability to properly gauge what fit me and I wore things two sizes too big for way too long. When I wear a 90s vintage piece now, I remember swimming in my clothes all the way through to my 30s and I enjoy the resurgence of fashion as a hobby. It's frivolous, but it's an indelible marker of time.
You may have noticed that I lost the writing mojo I so smugly cultivated in the first few months of the pandemic, and I have lacked the motivation to force myself to recapture it. That's ok, we're all treading water in some way, but thinking about the significance of the date today made me want to sit in front of a computer and do something with it. The product is...errr. The point is not totally abandoning the practice.
RIP Kurt, and flannel forever.
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