"Now I'm Bored and Old"

Some lessons I learned from the tragic life and death of Kurt Cobain

Teenaged angst has paid off well
Now I’m bored and old

- Nirvana (Serve the Servants)

A couple of weeks ago the world remembered the tragic death and ongoing legacy of Kurt Cobain, who took his own life on April 5th 1994, some 30 years ago.

How can it be 30 years?

I was 15, and I still remember the moment that I heard. This was long before the days of home internet, socials, and 24-hour news cycles and so I had been blissfully unaware until my oldest brother walked into my room late at night, red-eyed, having clearly prepared himself for a moment when he knew he would remove some naivety and innocence from his youngest brother.

Kurt was dead.
He shot himself.
He lied when we he said “I swear that I don’t have a gun.”
He had one.
He used it.
On himself.
It was over.
He was 27.

We turned on the radio and listened to a multi-hour and deeply emotional tribute on 5FM, hosted by the alternative music guides of South African youth - Barney Simon and Uncle Paul - who struggled to come to grips with the reality of the loss of the man who had changed it all for music fans around the world.

It was - I willingly concede - truly ridiculous that a 15-year-old kid in the suburbs of Johannesburg, who had grown up in a happy and flourishing, religiously conservative home, would identify so strongly with the music and ideas of a deeply broken, punk rock anarchist from Seattle. Kurt had lived in another world, and was wrestling with demons and difficulties that my comfortable life had never and would never have to face. And yet, from the first time I heard them, I knew that Nirvana was tearing the fabric of popular culture apart. In an era of glam rock, hair metal, MTV, and the late 80’s pursuit of unhindered and unrestricted debauchery, materialism, and global domination, here appeared a broken prophet who tore back the veil on the brokenness of it all. This was Ecclesiastes in the era of Cosmopolitan, and while I had no justifiable reason to tap into his rage, I knew right away that this skinny, fragile, screaming maniac from Seattle was showing us all that the emperor had no clothes on.

But now, I am 45, and I live the in the suburbs, and I have gone on to embody much of the life that Kurt was trying to warn us all against. A life made up of compromise, settling, and the varied trappings of suburban excess, but also a life - as it turns out - of contentment, love, and more joy than I thought imaginable.

My teenaged angst had paid off well, and now I’m bored and old, and happy. It turns out that there are significant elements to the life that we were all trying to avoid which are actually … great. I wish Kurt had lived long enough to make it through all of the angst, and to come to terms with a life in which he was loved. He would have found it hilarious that they sell his band’s T-shirts at Target now, and that middle school girls don the Nirvana “happy-face” shirt as part of a carefully constructed ensemble with their Lululemon shorts and matching Stanley cups. Well, he may have found that hilarious, or totally soul destroying. It’s 50-50 on how he would have experienced that.

The Nirvana “Happy Face” logo that I now see on T-shirts everywhere

And so … I put some Nirvana records on the turntable this week (yes, records, like every other suburban dad trying to reconnect to some form of analog purity) and as I listened, I penned down some lessons I have learned from the tragedy of Kurt over the last 30 years. It was interesting to note that the records still absolutely thunder with power, and the collision between the bumbling rage and the undeniably pop-centered melodies still comes together in some form of magical chemical reaction of genius.

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Some Lessons … 30 Years On

There is a big difference between sharing your pain and dealing with your pain

The vulnerability of Nirvana’s music and Kurt’s lyrics are still painfully obvious today. Kurt was in deep pain, wrestling with major mental and emotional demons, and he wore that on his flanneled sleeve for all to see. If you go and watch “All Apologies” from the their MTV unplugged performance, the pain is palpable.

All this goes on to show that while vulnerability and honesty is a high value, it isn’t actually enough to make you better. It is one thing to openly declare how broken you are, it is another thing all together to do some of the hard work that it takes to get better. That was way harder to do in 1994 than it is to do today.

It is okay to be not okay … and it is not okay to be okay with being not okay.

Whatever your demons may be, fame will only make them bigger

Kurt was undeniably ambitious. He wanted to be famous. If you read any of the many biographies of his life, it is clear that he wanted his band to be massive. I think he though that it might silence his inner critic. I think he though it would make it better.

It made everything worse.
Frankly, I think it always does.

Fame makes everything in your life bigger, including your dysfunction, and so be careful of the constant pursuit of a bigger platform. People tend to launch themselves off of the largest platforms, and no one is there to catch you.

If you hate yourself, then you will also hate the people who love you

This is related to the point above, but distinct. Kurt ended up loathing his fans, and I think that was in large part because they loved a version of him that he hated, and so he viewed them (us) as foolish and deceived. The last year or so of Nirvana’s touring life was filled with antagonistic interactions with their own audiences, and yet when you hear Kurt interviewed, he was very grateful for their fans and for their support. But, he hated the game, and he hated that he had to sell some caricature of himself, and then he hated people for loving that caricature.

While Kurt was an extreme example of this, there are many who live in this tension. If we pretend to be something we are not in order to win the approval and love of people, then we will land up loathing people for loving the version of ourselves that we know isn’t an actual reflection of the self that we cannot stand.

Pop culture is a bloody spectacle of microscopically observed and oft-rewarded self destruction

The rise of Nirvana was insane. It was obvious that Kurt wasn’t well. And yet the shows went on, the records kept being recorded and the cameras kept filming.

We watched someone destroy themself in the public eye.
And then we moved on.

We still do it. Pop culture is terrible.

Self-loathing is a powerful, performative fuel. It burns bright, but also really hot

Listening back to Nirvana lyrics is painful. The self loathing is immense, and it captured the sentiments of an entire generation.

I still yield to it, justified as a (false) form of humility. It is as self-obsessive as arrogance, and it probably grows from the same root.

A friend called me out on some of my loathing self-speak the other day. He said … “It’s really funny when you do that, and quite endearing, but also really sad. You would never talk to anyone else like that and so shouldn’t speak to yourself like that either.”

At some point, as unglamorous as it is, we all need to come to terms with who we are.

Life goes on … even when yours doesn’t

I watched an interview with the other two members of Nirvana the other day. It was encouraging to see them 30 years later. Dads, musicians, adults. Their lives went on, and they found a way through the haze.

I wish Kurt had done the same. It would have been fascinating to see how he might have turned out.

It is humbling but also liberating to remember that life goes on without you. That should make suicide illogical (I know it isn’t a decision of logic) as you realize that life continues, and things pass, and situations (for the most part) get better.

If you are someone who sometimes wonders if you should keep going. You should. You must. Please do. It keeps going. It gets better.

If you don’t figure out meaning, then the world is a cruel and unrelenting place

I loved the tension of Nirvana’s music. It is a like a musical journey through the book of Ecclesiastes, but it is one that never gets to meaning. Kurt was excellent at pointing out the meaninglessness of things under the sun, but he never managed to find any meaning of a life beyond the sun.

It is, in fact, a whole lot easier to point out brokenness than it is to draw people toward beauty. A life that understands the former while embracing the latter is the life of meaning and joy.

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It is crazy to consider that 30 years have passed. Kurt’s death is now as far removed from this moment as the Beatle’s first tour of America was from Kurt’s death.

That makes me feel old, and boring, and tired, and … happy.