Always Forget

I was out at the local market to do some hunting and gathering--OK, mostly gathering--when I spied none other than Kurt Cobain on the cover of this month's Rolling Stone. Some story about little Frances Bean (who, I suppose, ain't that little no more) trying to find her long dead father, whatever that is supposed to mean. I reckon you can just listen to his records, Frances, he seemed to put a lot of himself into them, or so it seems to me.

"Ah yes," I thought to myself, "it is that month, isn't it?"

I always forget the day and I came home to look it up and the anniversary of your death was on April 5th and that was--can you believe it--twenty-one years ago. Wow. I remember when that Nevermind record was the shit. Spoke to and for a whole generation of slackers and Gen Xers and post-punk lost souls wandering in the wasteland of a confusing, unfriendly, and uncaring modern society of idiot fucktards. What's changed, really?

Grunge the media called it. And it invaded the airwaves and help transform the idiot jock fucks into "alternative" cool folks ("he's the one who likes all our pretty songs, and he likes to sing along, but he knows not what it means"--oh the sarcastic irony of it all, Kurt), and brought the hip subculture--or some faction of a hip subculture, anyway--into the pop culture, and the rest is a tragic sort of history. Spawned a shitload of shitty fuckin' bands that sound like Theory of a Dead Nickel Creed.

And I hate that band. Well, "hate" is a pretty strong word. I guess I'd simply be much happier--or, perhaps better, wouldn't have to be bothered to care at all--if they all died in a tragic bus crash or something. Maybe all the masters and copies of all their songs could simply vanish from the face of the Earth along with them. All those bands that are that band--y'know what I mean.

You know, Kurt, that record isn't even all that good. I mean, I happened to put it on the other month and, having not heard it in years, well, it simply didn't do it for me anymore. Sure, there's still some good songs on it, yeah, but it doesn't have the same rawness of Bleach, say, and it certainly lacks the maturity of In Utero, and it's just not as fun as some of the tracks on Incesticide. And like I've ever bothered to listen to the "unplugged album" because, really, what's the fuckin' point? So, in this humble listener's opinion, well, Nevermind is the worst Nirvana album. But it does have few songs that were still pretty good to hear. Well, maybe it is less that it's not a good record and maybe it's more that it was a record that needed the historical context to make it as great as it was for a time. Still the worst of the bunch, if you ask me though.

Maybe Courtney had ya' killed, as some people still figure, or maybe you really did kill yourself, or maybe you wanted to kill yourself but were too scared to end it by your own hand--a lot of people with suicidal ideations are: it is a pretty difficult step to actually take, after all--and you hired someone else to do it for you and maybe some of these people actually know this to be true.

Who knows? I mean, I sure don't, anyway. And I reckon perhaps like the assassination of, say, JFK or like the actual events of 9/11, well, most of us will simply never learn the truth of the matter and the truth will fade into mythology over time. To quote a different Kurt, also no longer with us, who also died in April, and also tragically--but with much less mystery--"and so it goes."

And so you're gone now, and have been for twenty-one years. Crazy. And almost every year I forget that April is the month that marks the anniversary of your death. And every year it simply doesn't seem to matter, anyway, if I remember you or not. And maybe that's what you'd prefer, really. "Oh well, whatever, never mind."

But this year, thanks to a cursory glance across the magazine rack at the local market, well, here's a little tribute to you, Kurt. All in all is, indeed, all we all are. And if that's the case, then we'll see you again in the Western Lands.