Kurt Cobain was on my mind today. That’s certainly because of the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame yesterday, although perhaps also because of the weather today, which admittedly was downbeat, maybe even a bit Seattle-y and Nirvana-y. [Editor’s note: I wrote this before Robin Williams’ suicide, but that seems particularly relevant now, and I’m going to talk about it in my next post.] Mother Nature’s final attempt to keep me from finishing my loop around the lake. Anyway, Nirvana is one of the headlining exhibits in the downstairs area, and obviously they talk a lot about Kurt, and how he committed suicide at 27. In the gift shop they had a book of reproductions of some of his personal journals, that I guess his wife gave to fans after he died. It’s a mish-mash of things, presented without comment, which makes it even more powerful - just the papers he happened to have lying around when he died, I suppose. What struck me about them was how *normal* many of them are. Childishly incomplete shopping lists, abortive attempts at keeping a budget of some kind. I was surprised to feel a sense of kinship with him.
Now - make no mistake - it would be easier to make a list of the things that Kurt Cobain and I do *not* share in common than those we do. For one, I’ve never felt suicidal. I’ve never been in a grunge band (although sometimes I kinda wish I had). I’ve never been famous, never lived in Seattle, never been married to Courtney Love. Believe it or not, I’m actually a pretty optimistic guy who’s relatively cheerful - at least on the inside. But I think at some level we both share two things: we both feel misunderstood, and we both wish we could be “normal” sometimes, whatever that is. The journals I read in that shop are not the memoirs of a man who wanted to live apart from society, like Ted Kaczynski, or Marilyn Manson. They are the journals of a man who desperately wanted to be able to be normal, and go to the grocery store, etc., but just couldn’t quite seem to do it. And I get that, because I’m often in situations where I *know* what “normal” people would do, I can visualize “normal”, and yet I just can’t quite get there. I was having a conversation with my Dad earlier today and was struck by something he said; we were talking about where I would stay tonight, and I was saying that I could get a hotel but it would be expensive, or I could try to go on warmshowers/craigslist/etc. and try to find someone to let me stay at their place (or I could cheap out and camp in the rain). He said - quite logically - that I should try to find someone to let me stay at their place, and I was trying to explain that was going to be hard for me, because I was in a really lousy (or at least introverted) mood, and I knew it would be hard to interact with people. He advised me to just put on my “happy face”, and I said it was in my other pair of pants - and then he said - not in a mean way, but just as a matter of fact - that I would “have to suffer the consequences of being you.”
I immediately understood what he meant, and that’s something that I think Kurt Cobain would have understood. It’s a good way of describing how I feel, a lot of the time. I feel a powerful sense that I have to suffer the consequences of being me. And it’s a really striking phrase, because of course, I can’t *be* anybody but me, and yet for some reason, society consistently wants me to. Suddenly the lyrics to Smells Like Teen Spirit popped into my head:
I feel stupid, and contagious
Here we are now, entertain us…
A denial, A denial, A denial, A denial
I’m particularly struck by the word “contagious”. As with any great art, we could debate what he meant by that word; I’m sure there’s a thousand possibilities. For me, what I get out of it, is that people always want you to be like them, and reward you for thinking like them, or at least pretending to. Combine that with the next line, and I’m suddenly reminded of how people always want you to join them in whatever opinion or thought they have. A lot of people have used the word “intense” to describe me, and even though I don’t really like that word, I’ll admit that it fits, and I think one of the reasons is that I just am not willing to sit around and do nothing, or feel nothing. A lot of times, like on dates, or with coworkers, people want to talk about stuff like Game of Thrones. I don’t particularly want to talk about Game of Thrones. And that never goes over well. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten the advice - especially with dating - to just stick to really banal topics, avoid discussing anything important, stay neutral, make small talk, shoot the shit - and I just can’t do it. I don’t like that stuff. I’m exaggerating, of course - I have lots of meaningless hobbies, and at *times* I enjoy small talk. I like YouTube. But by and large, I like to really get into the meat of things. To figure out what the heck we’re doing here, and why, and what we should do about it. I’m intense, basically. And people don’t like it. They don’t want to think that hard. A denial.
I would say there are maybe only 2 or 3 people on this entire planet that I feel like have ever really gotten who I am, and understood me. Maybe 4, at a stretch. And that sounds like a really angst-y thing to say, but I guess what I mean, concretely, is that people’s vision of me; who I am, what I value - is often out of wack - sometimes *way* out of wack - with what *I* think I am, and what I think I value.
In other words, people think I’m an intelligent, dark, intense, smart, argumentative and talented engineer, who’s a little bitter, more than a little depressed, reasonably attractive and funny. But *I* think of myself as an intelligent, athletic, child-like artist, who is pretty intense, reasonably talented, relatively funny and fairly cheerful and calm. It has become clear that I am the only person on the entire planet who thinks of me that way. When I meet someone who also sees that inside of me, they will become very important in my life. :)