I’ve been missing the point of Nirvana for years. They were punk rock in disguise, or not in disguise at all. I was a punk fan and I did not know it.
Kurt Cobain and his widow Courtney Love continue to baffle me. Especially Courtney, it seems during every interview she reveals something new. Something once undiscovered is brought to the fore. Recently, she was on Opie and Anthony’s show on SirusXM. I think she truly has lost her soul mate. I didn’t realize how close they were. I don’t know what that feels like, but I can see she has been floundering for years and years. I think we have all seen this with regard to her. Courtney was completely her true, sober-ish self during the morning she spent with the boys. They were ever so good to her, despite the shit they talked before her arrival. They were only talking shit because she was talking crap about them on another radio show down the hall. In their defense, I must state these facts about the situation around her inevitable arrival on the show. It was a revealing and wonderful interview that they did. I was proud of them for the work they did and the love (pardon the pun) they provided to her. She talked about Kurt’s guitars that were no longer in her possession, some in storage, some that were sold, others that were in places unknown. All of this information was upsetting to me. Love sounded good though. She had reconciled some of her relationship with her daughter, Frances. Their lives have not been an easy ones. I feel for both of them. I know the difficulties of relationships and how that taxes the emotions. Though I have not walked in their shoes, I have stepped out in similar ones.
Another person that developed a close relationship with Cobain is someone quite unexpected. During a Podcast hosted by Joe Rogan. he interviewed Bobcat Goldthwait, Goldthwait opened for Nirvana in their early days on the road. He spent some serious time with Kurt one on one. I wish he would tell more of those stories. Bobcat has been interviewed by Marc Maron, as well, but he seems to begin his stories about Kurt and then bail on them. Bobcat is afraid to let out too much information on Cobain. I respect and understand where he is coming from as a person. He wants to protect the innocent and respect the dead. I protect peoples’ secrets for a living. I am firm believer in the person speaking for themselves. It seem Goldthwait subscribes to the same philosophy. It is important that people feel protected, safe in the skin in which they inhabit. We all deserve that assurance as does Ms. Love, and all others in the public eye.
With all this talk about Cobain, and upon flipping the channels one day months ago, I watched a Nirvana concert from 1992. It appeared on the VH1 Classic channel. Nirvana’s punk rock element became so clear to me. My mind was completely blown. I listened to the concert, and everything that I believed when they played together in the 1990s just melted away. Up was down, right was left. I was wrong about their music. They were far from alternative. Immediately I thought, I had to get Cobain’s journals from the library.
Last night I finally borrowed the book that contained his journals. I am sure that he would have never approved of the decision to publish these private musings, mixed with drawings, and lists of music that inspired him (the Melvins, Beatles, Fleetwood Mac and Ice Cube). The handwriting appeared slightly different from entry to entry. The images he drew are also compelling. He was quite an artist and cartoonist. He is quite good at depicting his moods, his guitars, describing musicians, bands, etc in cartoon form. He took the world heavily and lightly in these journal entries. There are letters and lots of details to unpack, not unlike any other person’s journals or diaries. It was all over the place, yet in the same place at the same time. In other words, it was just right.
Who’s decision was it to reveal what should not be revealed, and betray Kurt’s trust? That was Cobain’s story to tell, and he did not have the ability to make the decision to publish this tome.
So I know what you are thinking, what right do I have to read this book? You are not abiding by your own beliefs in privacy? Well, you are most definitely right, dear reader. I am no better than the publishers of the book, nor those that made money from it.
We are all walking contradictions.
I am seeking and searching for some meaning in this world, where I feel like a tumbleweed blowing in the wind. I am a seeker. I will leave no stone unturned. I am a creative type. I want to know the why and how behind what people like me feel or felt. I want to know how they channeled their creativity, so I can find ways to channel mine. I do not plan to share what I have read in Cobain’s journals to anyone. I am a keeper of secrets, as I said above, in a previous paragraph. I just need to know what made him tick, because we have so much in common (debilitating stomach conditions, feeling and being different, and a bunch of other things which I choose not to elaborate on). I journal too. I kept my journals from elementary school, much to my mother’s chagrin. (Where are you going to put those, Kara?) It is my personal archive. I don’t know if people will read my journals. Certainly, i will place something in my will so they are sent to the appropriate repository, whether it be with my dear brother, or with an institution, for safe keeping. If they are made available, I hope they help someone.
I hope that Kurt rests in peace, as always. I wish that Courtney find peace. Bobcat has found his voice, and his peace through his work as a director and filmmaker, in spite of a early self-destructive career path (see also: setting couches on fire on late night TV). Check out Bobcat’s new movie Willow Creek . It is about Sasquatch.
I will continue along the road to seek my peace, keep privacy alive, love, and learn from others.
Also, check out the Marc Maron and the Joe Rogan Experience. All available on Itunes. They keep me sane on my insane commute from home to work, and back, each day.
Thanks for reading my words, and putting up with my contradictions. Alas, I am only human and cannot live up to everyone’s expectations.
Kara Jackman 
World’s Greatest Dad is a movie written and directed by Bobcat Goldthwait. The character of Kyle Carpenter represents Kurt Cobain. Kyle Carpenter accidentally killed himself from self asphyxiation and a suicide note was written for him and he was made to look like he hung himself. Kurt Cobain accidentally killed himself with a heroine overdose and a note he had written was made to look like a suicide note and he was made to look like he shot himself. Kyle Carpenter’s dad wrote a fake journal for his son which was passed off to be his son’s and then published to make everyone feel sorry for him and love him which also made his dad money, made people like him, and also made him a celebrity. Someone, possibly Courtney Love or Bobcat Goldthwait or all of his friends or even the record company wrote a fake journal for Kurt Cobain which did all of the same things for him that it did for Kyle Carpenter. The bassist for Nirvana, Krist Novoselic, even had a cameo where he hugged the dad in the movie while he was crying while looking at porn because his son loved porn so much. I bet that it makes everyone close to Kurt Cobain cry and miss him every time they see or hear anything about heroine. The dad eventually admits what truly happened because he is tired of everyone pretending to know and love Kyle Carpenter when none of them really knew him. He knew his son and he knew his son was really just a jerk but he loved him anyway. Bobcat Goldthwait knew Kurt Cobain personally and knew that he was a jerk but he loved him anyway. Robin Williams’ character of the dad runs and takes off all his clothes and dives into the pool naked. We then see an underwater shot of him in the nude and we can see him floating and even see hit penis a little bit which is very similar to the shot of the cover of the Nirvana album Nevermind with the naked baby floating in a pool. World’s Greatest Dad is Bobcat Goldthwait’s admission through metaphors that something happened that has been covered up with Kurt Cobain’s death and he doesn’t want to keep the secret any longer.
Who doesn’t like a conspiracy…I would love to hear Bobcat talk about these things in World’s Greatest Dad that you mention. I think Kurt was in a great, great deal of pain (emotional and physical). I think he overdosed because he was blinded by that pain. I don’t think there was any foul play involved with Cobain’s death, but could easily see how there could be. No one ever makes these claims about Layne Staley, who also overdosed. Then again Staley was not surrounded by the same cast of characters as Cobain. For my piece of mind, I just want to believe that Cobain died by his own hand with no one else was involved. I do not want to entertain any more than that because I want him to rest in peace.
Oh, I didn’t mean there was foul play or anything sinister. I just meant that something could have happened similar to what was portrayed in Bobcat Goldthwait’s movie. I didn’t really mean it as a conspiracy. I think that if anything happened that it was just truly because of their love for him and trying to make it seem like a “better” way to die than whatever actually happened. I’m sorry if I gave the impression that something sadistic was happening. That’s not what I meant at all. It’s also interesting to me that Courtney Love always reacts to people’s love of her husband with such anger like her getting so angry recently that someone was just holding up his picture when she came on stage and she freaked out and said something really odd and ran off stage. I would think she would be happy that everyone loved him but maybe it tortures her because she doesn’t want to think about trying to keep all the secrets involved behind his death. Bobcat Goldthwait also doesn’t want to talk about it much either. Anyway, that was just my interpretation of his comments and looking at the journal and the suicide not and the various handwriting. If Kurt Cobain actually did write in such drastically different handwriting, I’m very impressed. I don’t think I could do something like that so easily.
I guess I read between the wrong lines. I like your take it is compelling and totally possible. Moreover, I definitely need to watch World’s Greatest Dad. I hope I didn’t offend you. The handwriting thing was very interesting to me…it was one of those “things that make you go hmmmm.” I guess I assume negativity if it has to do with me, but with others everything is always positive and pure. Anything, when it comes to Courtney is possible, right? The many documentaries I have seen can easily push me in either the foul play, or pure overdose direction. I just want to think of it as an overdose, as I said before, because I just want peace for him, since I have a hard time finding it for myself.
I agree with you 100%. I hope that he never really wanted to kill himself and it was just an accident. Although that would be horrible to die without doing it purposely. I don’t know. Either way is horrible to me. Some people have claimed that the “suicide note” was really him just expressing how he was feeling and thinking about quitting the music business but then once he died someone else wrote the ending that is in a different handwriting that sounds more like he did it on purpose. Even if they did do something like that and it was meant to be for good, it still could have accidentally made Kurt Cobain and Nirvana much more famous than they ever thought it would. Yeah, definitely check out that movie. It was really good! I was pleasantly surprised. 🙂 I actually didn’t have any of those thoughts about Kurt Cobain relating to the movie until a month or so after I had seen it. I just started seeing stuff in the news about the 20th anniversary of Nevermind and started hearing things out of nowhere that seemed to connect in interviews with Bobcat Goldthwait and Courtney Love and others. I wasn’t even trying to make any type of connection like that. It just came out of my interest in and love for Robin Williams in the movie, Bobcat Goldthwait and his comedy in the 80’s, and Nirvana’s music all put together.
Okay, this really doesn’t have much to do with your post but I always find coincidences to be interested so I thought I’d mention it to you. Since you were talking about Layne Staley, I thought I’d look up information about the lead singer of Blind Melon because I’d forgotten his name but I wanted to mention his name in a comment because he also died of a heroine overdose and no one tried to change that or cover it up or anything either. Anyway, I did the search on Google and typed in “blind melon lead singer” and the very first thing to pop up at the top of the page is an article about the lead singer of Blind Melon, Shannon Hoon, and the very first sentence explains how he went on the Late Show to do an interview the day after Kurt Cobain died and he had a question mark painted on his head to symbolize the uncertainty of life. What an interesting ko-een-ke-dink, don’t ya think? 🙂 Here’s a link if you’re interested in seeing it: http://www.rice.edu/projects/thresher/issues/84/970221/AE/Story01.html/ I guess it’s possible that what I was typing in on this page was somehow being read and used in my browser information and then Google used it in my search but I’m not exactly sure how it would do that.
Google auto completes frequently googled keywords. The drug is spelled heroin. Superwoman is a heroine, so isn’t Susan Sontag to some degree, too. 🙂
Oh, my fault. I keep doing that. Yeah, I realized I spelled it wrong later and correct it when I copied and pasted my comments and put them in my own blog. I also messed up “self-asphyxiation”, too. Sorry about that. By the way, my own personal favorite heroines are Wonder Woman and Clara Driscoll. 🙂