#not that she wants to be 'found' but her mortal self does very rarely peek out. and it pisses the mostly sheo part of them off when she doe

[argonianfeather]

FINALLY cracked down and designed Avreth a Sheo!HoK design! Their right side a remnant of the sad mortal that was, the left a representation of the chaotic god that now...sort of is?

[lifeonashelf]

COBAIN, KURT

Dying was definitely the worst thing that ever happened to Kurt Cobain.

That may not read like a particularly brilliant statement. You’re saying: “Taylor, I’m sure if you solicited any random sampling of people to compile a list of the worst things they could imagine happening to them, dying would end up at the top of most of those lists” (although, it would land below “being married to Courtney Love” on mine). However, the reasons I’m positing this in regards to Cobain are only tangentially related to the most common side effect of death being an immediate cessation of one’s mortal presence on this earth. Explanation: Cobain’s too-short life was characterized by profound and abiding existential pain, so in his specific instance I presume ending that life at least came with the not-unwelcome corollary of providing a respite from his suffering. Besides, the manner of his death left ample evidence that he sincerely did not want to be alive anymore, so it’s unlikely he was overly concerned with side effects. In case there’s any misconception that I’m somehow endorsing Kurt Cobain’s suicide, please feel free to text me and I’ll gladly forward you a selfie so you can see the tears that are filling my eyes right now as I revisit the devastating final chapter of a man whose music means the world to me. Yet, somehow, the strip-mining of his memory that began the very day his body was found strikes me as a tragedy which nearly equals what was done to that body.

Tucked away on one of my shelves, you will find a bootleg box set entitled Into the Black (I mean that figuratively; you will not find it—if you really want to see it, I will get it down for you; seriously, don’t start touching my shit). I procured this anthology upon its release in 1994, and back then it had the distinction of being the richest available source of previously-unreleased Nirvana live performances and songs that were never included on any of their albums. Such a find would be largely meaningless today, when a quick internet search can immediately unearth all of those tracks within seconds. But for a distraught fan to whom the prospect of facing a world where there would never be any new Nirvana music again seemed unbearable, Into the Black was an immensely cathartic salve for me at a time when I desperately needed it. The scope of the compendium remains impressive—I think it’s a way better collection than the official With the Lights Out box set that came out 10 years later—and by presenting the included material in chronological order, all the way from Nirvana’s first demo cassette to a complete recording of their final North American concert, the seven hours of tunes on Into the Black provide about the most fitting and comprehensive Kurt Cobain encomium ever delivered.

Which is part of what makes the final track on the anthology arrive like a dagger to the soul and the ears. There really isn’t a name for this closing selection—after all, it isn’t even a song. But the creators of Into the Black had to call it something in the track listing. So they called it exactly what it is: “Courtney Love’s Complete Eulogy For Kurt Cobain.”

This recording was played for a crowd of several thousand despondent fans who gathered in Seattle for a public memorial on April 10, 1994, two days after Cobain’s body was found. Its manifestation occupies a limbo unique to itself, half significant historical document, half ghoulish tabloid spectacle. Though the song “Miss World” was released on March 28, in a very real sense, it was this Courtney Love recital that served as the first proper single from Hole’s Live Through This, which would be released forty-eight hours later and subsequently propel her music career to previously unthinkable heights—a result that arguably stemmed as much from Love’s deft public navigation of her grief process as it did from the fact that Live Through This is a fucking incredible record.

Reactions to “Eulogy” (for lack of a better title) will inevitably vary by listener. If you view Courtney Love as an unfortunate casualty of Kurt Cobain’s war against himself, you will probably hear a shell-shocked widow valiantly facing her worst nightmare. If you view Courtney Love as one of the likely reasons Cobain loaded his shotgun on April 5, 1994, you will probably hear an unhinged harpy using the most intimate words her late husband ever wrote against him in a monstrously demeaning fashion. Over time, I’ve come to rest somewhere in the middle of those two poles, so I don’t quite know what to make of the recording now. What I do know is that I never want to listen to it again, and don’t really need to since it’s still vividly burned into my brain from past spins—I couldn’t bring myself to revisit it while authoring this segment about it. Because even in 1994 when I was playing Into the Black endlessly, even when I was struggling to make sense of something that seemed utterly senseless, and even when the message Love was delivering was allegedly intended for anguished fans just like me, my reaction to that audio was exactly the same as I assume it would be today: I shouldn’t be hearing this.

“Eulogy” essentially features Courtney Love narrating Cobain’s suicide note in its entirety. Since photographs of the document have subsequently surfaced in numerous places, a cursory review plainly reveals that despite Love’s proclamation on the tape that she elected to omit parts of the letter about herself and their daughter Frances “because they’re none of your fucking business”, she does in fact share nearly everything that appears on the page. Irrespective of that, her rationalization is a bizarre one—after all, it can be sensibly argued that nothing in that epistle was really the “fucking business” of anyone outside Cobain’s immediate circle. The mere reading itself denotes a sort of indecent invasion, but it is the peculiar spin the author’s self-appointed spokeswoman put on the broadcast that truly makes it astonishing. Love didn’t simply orate Cobain’s note, she annotated it, interjecting frequently to pose her own biting counterpoints to his words, sometimes leveling these ripostes directly at him, sometimes addressing her running commentary to the royal listening we. Her delivery veers between naked tear-choked agony that will move you no matter how you feel about her, and primal hissing vitriol—at one point on the recording she instructs the entire crowd to call the man they came to mourn “asshole.�� It is the sound of a woman purging an entire spectrum of very private emotions in a very public way, it is an unseemly peek under the mortuary drape of a man who had just shot a gaping hole in the hearts of millions, and it is extremely uncomfortable to listen to.

I do not know Courtney Love. I have no desire to know Courtney Love. Only she could tell you how actively she calculated the channeling of her deceased husband’s musical legacy into the birth of her own. I cannot definitively state that Courtney Love exploited Kurt Cobain’s death to make herself famous; it’s not nearly that simple. I can state this again, because it’s true: Live Through This is a fucking amazing record, and it probably would have been a next-level hit even without the supernatural timing of its arrival and the uncanny way several of its key tracks seemed to capture what all of us who were shattered by Cobain’s suicide were feeling at that moment in time. But regardless of her intentions, the transmission she delivered at the Seattle Center on April 10, 1994 was undeniably indecorous. The very circumstance of it feels wrong, and witnessing it via that recording feels even worse. I didn’t want to know what that note said. I wish I didn’t know what that note said. And I wish I could listen to Live Through This—which is, to reiterate, SUCH A FUCKING GREAT RECORD—without inescapably pinpointing it as the moment Courtney Love became the first person to strike gold at Kurt Cobain’s gravesite.

Unfortunately, that was only the beginning of the excavation.

Elsewhere in my apartment, on the bookcase directly to the right of the desk at which I’m sitting, you will also find no fewer than six biographies about Nirvana. In relation to the sum of available material, my library isn’t even close to complete; after a while, I stopped buying every associated text as they were published (once you read a half-dozen volumes about a band that only existed for a half-dozen years, redundancy becomes an issue—also, reading about Nirvana is always a dispiriting experience because no matter how good the book is, you’re inevitably going to reach THAT chapter eventually). Filed next to those is Cobain, a coffee table book which assembles almost every Nirvana-related article that appeared in Rolling Stone during their career. And directly beside that rests an even larger coffee table book entitled Journals. Kurt Cobain is the credited author, which I suppose makes sense, since nearly every word therein is in his handwriting. Nevertheless, that attribution becomes difficult to digest when you consider that the tome was released in 2002—given that Cobain had been dead for 8 years when Journals came out, I’m naturally skeptical about the scope of his involvement in the project.

I have a hard time accepting that this book exists. On one hand, the drawings, correspondence, and scribbled musings which comprise its pages offer a rare and informal glimpse into the mind of one of my favorite songwriters of all time. Yet a much larger part of me can’t discount my impression that by glimpsing these things I have in essence sneaked into Kurt Cobain’s room and picked the lock on his diary. It seems highly improbable he would have ever published this material in this form of his own volition; actually, I suspect he would have been mortified if these logs were leaked while he was alive. The justification, one would suppose, is that Cobain is a singularly iconic figure and remains an object of fascination, therefore any piece of himself he took the time to immortalize in writing has intrinsic value (even a dip recipe he got from his mom, evidently). Except the absence of his agency over this particular venture indicates that the significance of the content showcased in Journals was determined solely by outside agents. Cobain was actually fairly prolific given the brevity of his career—it would take a book roughly the same size as Journals to assemble all of the lyrics he wrote for Nirvana’s catalog. Yet, like any artist, he put most of his work through rigorous internal scrutiny and editorial refinement before he unveiled it to an audience; he was the only person who decided if and when it had value. A lot of the poetry featured in Journals was eventually funneled into Nirvana compositions; those are the pieces we can presume he was ready to share with the world—because he, you know, did share them. But when it comes to the numerous drafts of personal letters that appear throughout the tome, it seems innately obvious he did not want those to be read; if he did, he would have fucking sent them to the people they were addressed to and they wouldn’t still be present in his notebooks to be pilfered.

When the release of this relic was announced, the rabid fan in me was of course curious, and I knew this was an item I wanted in my library. But the altruistic side of me always grappled with that desire; I could never quite concur that Cobain’s inability to object constituted a license for me to read work that he chose to keep to himself. Obviously, Journals was a guaranteed best-seller, which is precisely why it was published (oh, I was never snowed by that “a way for his fans to better understand him” bullshit; I have no doubt “a way for his fans to spend money” was the primary purpose this tome was meant to serve). It certainly has intriguing bits, particularly the sections that show sketches Cobain made for early Nirvana t-shirt designs that were never produced and the numerous mixtape track-listings he itemized (sadly, due to his fondness for bands so deeply obscure they are outside the scope of even a collection as large as mine, I don’t have all the listed tunes to faithfully reproduce any of them for my own listening pleasure).

Other articles such as a grossly-gushy sweethearts note to Courtney Love and a childish screed addressed to MTV are far less interesting to me, since the only parts of Cobain they help me “better understand” are parts I already know far more about than I care to. Good and bad are basically negligible designations here anyway, since the revelatory bits and the patently trivial snippets are all culled from the same invasive pedigree. It certainly didn’t assuage my conflicted feelings about reading Journals when I opened the book and saw that the very first sentence printed in it is, “Don’t read my diary when I’m gone”… a request that becomes somewhat clouded by what Cobain wrote two lines later: “please read my diary… look through my things, and figure me out.” I did look—I looked cover to cover—but since I listened to all of Nirvana’s records long before that, I already had Kurt Cobain figured out about as much as I imagine he wanted myself or any of his fans to. A photocopy that confirms he did ordinary things like pay his phone bill doesn’t do much to augment my appreciation of all the extraordinary things he did.

By exhibiting monumental developments like Cobain’s first stab at the lyrics to “Smells Like Teen Spirit” alongside snippets of humdrum humanity like his jotting down of the 1-800 number for NordikTrack, a chronicle like Journals is ostensibly meant to show that even a man who was exalted as a demigod used to put on his Daniel Johnston shirts one sleeve at a time just like the rest of us. If so, the very existence of Journals negates its own premise, since none of its content would be considered even remotely noteworthy if said content wasn’t scribed by Kurt Cobain—which only advances the misguided hero-worship that plagued his quintessence and encumbered a future suicide victim with spiritual baggage he never welcomed nor desired. Even with my limited understanding of what Kurt Cobain’s art meant to him, I am certain he would never have wanted a book like Journals to happen. Just as I am equally certain that the inflation of his esteem to such excessive heights that his admirers would be itching to read the undisclosed documents he kept in his underwear drawer played a large part in the events of April 5, 1994.

I guess this is as good a time as any to explain why a songwriter who was never a solo artist is the subject of his own entry here—especially since I just chastised the publishers of Journals for giving him special treatment. It’s true that nearly every piece of music Cobain had his hand in was issued under the Nirvana masthead (except for that collaboration with William Burroughs I wrote about a long time ago… but I’m trying to forget that ever came out since it’s not much more enjoyable to listen to than “Eulogy”). Yet, thanks to the same vulturous machinations I’ve been recapping throughout this piece, the Kurt Cobain discography does indeed include one solo album to date. There is an itty-bitty asterisk next to that item, though:

* Kurt Cobain’s solo album came out twenty-one years after Kurt Cobain died.

Oh, and * Kurt Cobain did not participate in the making of Kurt Cobain’s solo album.

Oh, and * Kurt Cobain’s solo album is not technically an album.

Oh, also * Most of the songs on Kurt Cobain’s solo album are not actually songs.

Oh, and lastly * When Kurt Cobain recorded this solo not-album of mostly not-songs, he had no idea that anyone was ever going to hear it.

The sort-of record I’m referring to was assigned the title Montage of Heck, which is needlessly confusing for anyone familiar with Nirvana’s history, since Montage of Heck was originally the title Cobain bestowed upon one of his earliest demo cassettes. The Montage I’m examining in this essay bears no relation to that one; rather, Montage of Heck: The Home Recordings is an ill-considered compilation that was released in conjunction with a congruently-monikered and congruently ill-considered 2015 documentary. Licentiously-hyped as one of the most profound musical portraits ever unveiled, Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck was directed by filmmaker Brett Morgen, who was granted unprecedented access to Cobain’s personal archives and shaped that material into an allegedly insightful study of the artist’s epigrammatic life and shocking death. Since she had already exhausted the potential for monetizing her late husband’s sketchpads, Courtney Love upped the ante for this project by allowing Morgen to use the family’s personal home videos as the film’s major selling point—evidently, neither party gave a shit that two decades earlier Cobain expressed how violated he felt when strangers invaded his private life in a song bluntly entitled “Rape Me”.

I’ll keep my review of the biopic Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck brief—mostly because I didn’t enjoy it at all and the overriding emotion I was left with after watching it was anger. But it is worth mentioning here, since it was similarly levied with the purported intention of making its viewers “better understand” its subject. Strange, then, that the two most memorable moments in the movie are unabashedly salacious, and both are focused on candid glimpses of Courtney Love’s behind-the-scenes comportment rather than her husband’s. If you’re wondering what Love’s breasts looked like in the early-‘90s, or if you relish the notion of watching her toddle around the couple’s apartment in a state of opiated incoherence in the presence of their baby daughter… then, brothers and sisters, this film is the Casablanca of that specific genre. But anyone seeking a meaningful exploration of what kind of person Cobain was outside the limelight is bound for disappointment since Montage mostly underscores his least appealing traits, the unpleasant facets of his humanity that we as fans have trained ourselves to banish from our thoughts as we continue applauding his inimitable artistic contributions. Aspects which, of course, Courtney Love is central to. Her odious presence throughout the documentary, and indeed in Cobain’s orbit, serves as a manifest reminder that a man we lionize for writing some of the most exquisite songs of all time was also deeply in love with a vulgar, revolting succubus. And perhaps this is a key reason why revisiting him via panegyrics like Montage of Heck and Journals always leaves a sour aftertaste—as long as Courtney Love has stewardship over his legacy, the worst thing Kurt Cobain ever did will be always be a principal figure in each new celebration of the best things he did.

In addition to her boobie videos, Love also turned over a box of cassette tapes to Brett Morgen (if memory serves, this batch of recordings was dutifully referred to as a “treasure trove” in every press release about the project I read). Morgen cherry-picked a few bits of music from this lot for usage in his movie, which were naturally cobbled into a soundtrack that was touted to fans as a cache of “previously-unheard music by Kurt Cobain.” Since the filmmaker was ostensibly the one who decided what portions of the tapes to appropriate, he is recognized in Montage of Heck’s liner notes as its “Executive Producer”—a dubious acknowledgement that gives Brett Morgen the distinction of being the only person in the history of audio engineering credited with producing an album whose recording he wasn’t actually present for, by an artist he never even met.    

Morgen’s pastiche job doesn’t merely form the basis of Montage of Heck: The Home Recordings, it is the disc’s entirety. Stripped of any historical provenance generous listeners may feel obligated to apply, what the proffered material basically amounts to is a half-hour of Kurt Cobain getting stoned in his living room and fucking around on a series of out-of-tune guitars. I wasn’t present for Morgen’s listening party, so I can only speculate on how much music was available for him to sift through, or what the stuff he rejected as inadequate sounded like. But this much is clear: the pieces he chose to disseminate on Montage of Heck range from drearily frivolous to blatantly insulting. The disc offers no real insights (unless you didn’t already know Kurt Cobain got high or played guitar, I suppose), and fans searching the conclave for Nirvana songs that might-have-been will merely discover that Cobain was sensible enough not to pursue an inane number called “Burn My Britches” any further than the two-minute segment he toyed with on his couch here.

Perhaps fittingly, the disc opens with the unmistakable bubbling of a bong, which effectively sets the tone for what follows: Cobain yodeling to warm his pipes up before launching into a rudimentary power chord sequence and yodeling over that for a little while for no apparent purpose (at least Morgen gave the cut a suitable title—it’s called “The Yodel Song”). Elsewhere, attempts are made to tie this cycle of doodles into the songwriter’s established canon, such as the inclusion of the promisingly-dubbed “Scoff (Early Demo)”. Yet, while the prospect of hearing a preliminary version of the 7th-best number on Bleach may seem like cause for celebration, the actual track lands like a slap to the face once you hear that this extract which Morgen judged as precious enough for commercial immortality merely consists of Cobain scat-growling gibberish lyrics over the tune’s main riff until the tape unceremoniously cuts off 38-seconds later; identifying this nothing-morsel as a rough draft of the song “Scoff” is akin to calling a piece of paper with the word “It” typed on it a rough draft of A Tale of Two Cities. Such is the caliber of material spotlighted on Montage of Heck: The Home Recordings, a “treasure trove” that would have been better left buried.    

One of the few genuine items of interest among the detritus is “Reverb Experiment”, which consists of three minutes of droning throwaway instrumental noodling, but still sounds kind of cool since a lot of it sounds like the refrain of Slayer’s “Dead Skin Mask”. There’s also a fairly well-formed idea called “Desire” that might have been turned into something striking if its author had chosen to develop it, and the closing number “She Only Lies” is noteworthy since it features Cobain working out an idea on bass guitar instead. Regardless, nothing on Montage of Heck justifies the ballyhoo that accompanied its release, and even the marginally decent pieces are unworthy of mention on their composer’s resume—although, Brett Morgen certainly got a great resume item out of the deal; now he can call himself a “filmmaker / record producer.”

However, this was Kurt Cobain who documented these scraps on the battery-operated boombox in his apartment. And he’s an icon, remember? So—said Brett Morgen and Courtney Love and everyone at Universal Music who had their dollar-bill-mounted fishhooks in the water of this endeavor—Montage of Heck: The Home Recordings shouldn’t be treated like some gratuitous cash-grab collation of idle time-killers which Cobain thought so little of he didn’t bother revisiting most of them again. No, no, no. This is an Event. Try this: Montage captures a peerlessly illustrious artist as his fans have never heard him before, in his rawest, most intimate form, no studio, no audience, just a man and his guitar seizing inspiration out of the ether and channeling it into his instrument as he explores new incarnations of the sound that made Nirvana the band that launched a revolution. Well, hey, that sounds pretty good; we can really shift some units with an idea like that. The only problem is, if we’re going to treat this thing like a legitimate album, it has to have a legitimate hit single we can sell it with. And how do you dig a unicorn out of a pile of lo-fi cassette tapes that live in a shoebox?

Luckily, Brett Morgen found just the solution for this quandary inside that shoebox.

“And I Love Her” was issued with all the buzz of an actual lost Nirvana song—it was even pressed on 7” vinyl like a proper single. It didn’t really matter that the sound quality was wispy, nor that the performance wasn’t particularly polished. This was a recording of Kurt Cobain playing a fucking Beatles tune, dude, and not only was it previously-unavailable, no one even knew it fucking existed. And the internet went apeshit. The cosmic synchronicity of this find couldn’t have been scripted any better: the architect of the band who electrified the zeitgeist in the 1990’s covering the band who electrified the zeitgeist 30 years earlier, arguably the only other rock group in history whose rapid ascension to immortality Nirvana’s was comparable to. The concept alone was glorious, and it wasn’t merely some music nerd’s wetdream—this Moment in musical mythology Actually Happened.

Here’s the thing, though: Kurt Cobain’s rendition of “And I Love Her” only has significance because people desperately wanted it to, NEEDED it to. It was still just a lark the dude recorded in his living room one lazy night, and it still sounds just as slapdash as every other fragmentary living room lark featured on Montage of Heck: The Home Recordings. There isn’t anything especially revelatory about Cobain esteeming The Beatles so highly that he learned to play one of their songs—both his backstory and his discography are liberally sprinkled with evidence he appreciated the Fab Four’s work, and in case you missed the homages there, nearly every piece of literature ever written about Kurt Cobain has helpfully cited the “Beatle-esque hooks” in songs like “About A Girl” and “In Bloom” to underline his unambiguous approbation. Even casual Nirvana fans were surely already well aware that Cobain enjoyed playing songs by musicians he admired—the dozen-or-so covers in the band’s repertoire and the fact that nearly half the tunes which comprised their legendary MTV Unplugged performance weren’t written by Nirvana provided some telling clues on that front.

The level of hype which heralded the arrival of “And I Love Her” (and Montage of Heck as a whole) intimated that a vital missing piece of the Kurt Cobain puzzle had finally been unearthed. Yet the disc supplies nothing more than a disenchanting anticlimax once you actually listen to it and ascertain that the venerated songwriter’s busy-work wasn’t all that impressive. Perhaps this is more a result of a faulty selection process—I’m willing to imagine there is some truly fantastic material on those tapes which Brett Morgen overlooked for whatever reason—but whether or not Cobain’s archives are ripe with undiscovered gems, the resounding impact of The Home Recordings is much the same as that of Journals: nearly everything in that time capsule would be appraised as inconsequential nonsense if it wasn’t Kurt Cobain’s nonsense. Which takes us right back to the pitfalls of deifying any musician to such a degree that every note they ever played is assigned an implied indispensability, even the botched ones that actually make them sound like a less gifted musician than they were.

Besides, we Nirvana fans already got our missing piece. That happened in 2002, with the release of the band’s self-titled greatest hits package. The one I bought despite owning every record which sourced that compilation, solely because there were three minutes and thirty-eight seconds of music on there I had never heard—the one and only known completed and previously-unreleased Nirvana song: “You Know You’re Right”. (Although, Courtney Love had the audacity to debut that tune way back in 1995 when she performed it as part of Hole’s MTV Unplugged set—seriously, sometimes I wonder if every single thing she’s done in the past 25 years has been predicated on a willful and concerted effort to make everyone who loves Nirvana hate her; although, her campaign of terror has made it nearly impossible to even mention Nirvana without also mentioning her, so maybe she’s a fucking genius).

In stark contrast with the nebulous scribbles on Montage of Heck or the interesting but inessential rehearsal tracks which dominated With the Lights Out, “You Know You’re Right” is indeed a revelation of almost religious proportions, a roaring burst of dynamism that is as powerful as anything else in Nirvana’s catalog—the lone tantalizing taste of a fourth record the band would never get to make, a frozen moment of fragile optimism captured just before the world as we knew it ended. “You Know You’re Right” is fucking AWESOME, and its explosive potency is all the more impressive considering that the lone recording of it which exists was essentially the group’s first stab at it. It is one of my absolute favorite songs in a catalog bursting with favorites. And I cried the first time I heard it. And I cried the second time I heard it. And the third… And, 17 years onward, I cried when I listened to it moments ago.

Plenty of Cobain’s tunes have this effect on me. Still, “You Know You’re Right” is a singular case. And I know exactly why that song, above all others, devastates me the most. It’s not because the lyrics are especially poignant, even though they are. It’s not because the track’s intoxicating promise reminds me of precisely how much all of us lost on April 5, 1994, even though it does. The reason “You Know You’re Right” tears my fucking guts out every time I hear it… is because that was it. That was the final song Nirvana recorded. And after it came out, there would never be any more. “You Know You’re Right” was the moment I had to say goodbye to Kurt Cobain forever.

I did that. And I think it’s time for the rest of the world to let him sleep, too.

Over the years, I have accumulated bootlegs of more than 200 Nirvana concerts. Roughly 150 of those shows are phenomenal, and plenty of them are of strong enough audio quality to warrant an official disclosure. That is the true “treasure trove,” a nearly limitless stockpile of unreleased Kurt Cobain recordings that could fuel a supplementary Nirvana release every single year for the rest of human history. And we already know he wanted an audience to hear that music, because he stepped onto the stage and played it for them. Since the continued fracking of his legacy is inevitable, by all means, the Cobain estate should absolutely tap into that wellspring whenever the marketplace is clamoring for fresh product or Courtney Love is clamoring for further cosmetic augmentation. I’ll buy every goddamn disc they put out, and I’ll probably buy them all on vinyl, too. And if you, personally, feel the need to explore the more obscure corners of Cobain’s discography, there are already plenty of places you can look—start with the single for “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, where you’ll find the tremendous B-side “Even In His Youth” and a killer alternate recording of “Aneurysm” that blows the version on Incesticide out of the water.

Hey, I’m a fan first and a snarky asshole second; I get it. I can surely identify with the sustained hysteria enveloping his heritage. Cobain’s suicide was the single most traumatic event of my teen-hood, and all these years later I can still tell you where I was, what I was wearing, and even what I was eating when I first heard the horrifying news of his departure (my family’s comic book store in Anaheim Hills, a Groo the Wanderer t-shirt, and a foot-long tuna on white from Subway). Still, even then, I had a firm pragmatic grasp on my grief. Kurt Cobain wasn’t my mentor, my hero, someone who embodied the man I hoped to eventually be when I reached his epoch of then-unimaginable elder statesmanship (hey, when you’re fifteen, 27 seems like an eternity away—at the time I assumed when I was Cobain’s age I’d probably be doing all sorts of old-people shit like buying a house and raising babies… or at least finally having sex). He wasn’t deity to me, he was simply someone responsible for some of the most imperative music in my life; unfortunately, since music has always been a lot more imperative in my life than deities, his abrupt absence was crushing nonetheless.

But the nature of Cobain’s subsequent beatification seems to suggest that many of his fans choose to remember him as something more, a shooting star that painted a tapestry of light across the heavens before inexorably crashing down to earth, “the grunge-poet voice of a generation” and all that. Hell, to many people, he was. But despite his canonization by the masses, Kurt Cobain was not a messiah and never strived to be. He was flawed and beautiful and complex, and a mystery even to himself—in other words: he was just as fucked-up and human as any of us. Kurt Cobain is not some riddle to be solved; we will never decode him because he didn’t stay the course of his journey long enough to find out who “him” really was or would become. And his awful conclusion will never make sense, because there’s ultimately nothing sensible about putting a shotgun in your mouth and ending a life that meant so much to so many when it had barely just begun.

As we near the 25th anniversary of Cobain’s death, let’s resolve to (finally) allow him his humanity again, and to allow the still-buried pieces of his spirit he chose to keep solely for himself to remain interred with him. Because we’re only paying disservice to the topsoil of his legacy by continuing to dig. And besides, we have Bleach, we have Nevermind, we have In Utero, we have Unplugged, we have a few-dozen additional non-album tracks, and we have “You Know You’re Right”—Kurt Cobain already gave far more of himself to the world than any of us were entitled to ask for.

So if you want to “better understand” him, you won’t achieve that by reading his diary, or seeing his widow’s areolae, or hearing him offhandedly strum some ditty from his childhood to amuse himself. The best avenue available for those of us who never met Cobain to look through his things and figure him out is lighting a candle, putting on a set of headphones, and letting the breathtaking majesty of “All Apologies” surge out of those speakers and into our souls. There is no more intimate way to honor him than that. Nor should there be. Understanding Kurt Cobain isn’t necessary. As long as we understand his music, and we understand what it means to us.

We don’t need his secrets. We have his songs. And for anyone who truly holds the memory of Kurt Cobain in their heart, that’s enough.

 March 25, 2019

[baby-come-bach]

All writing asks!

Oh daaaamn! Thanks, bro!! @brynhildr13 !!!!

In response to this post!

1. What is your preferred place to write (notebook, laptop, cellphone, etc.)?

~Normally I try to do everything on my laptop in Zoho’s Notebook app. I seriously love the app, and there’s a desktop and mobile version that will sync so if you’re on the go you can still edit your notes! If I’m ever stuck I’ll hand write in a paper notebook and that usually works really well for me.

2. When did you start writing?

~I started writing back in the third grade, when I wrote and illustrated a comic series called The Evil Substitute Teacher from Mars! Obviously it was of a third grade quality and I had no intentions of being a writer at that point, but it was the first time I seriously flexed my skills even though it was just for fun!

I started writing fanfiction in my freshman year of high school.

3. What is your favorite thing to write?

~I love to write stories that take characters through intense emotional journeys. I absolutely love quality character development when you can track it from beginning to end.

4. Fluff or angst?

~Angst. I have little to no interest in writing a love story or love encounters as the primary plot. It’s hard to emulate the kinds of emotions people feel during those encounters when I’ve had minimal experience.

5. How would you describe your style?

~Hmmm . . . I would say . . . healthily balanced between pragmatics and prose. I try to make things as literal as I can when there’s action happening, but when I describe character’s emotions I literally love to pour on the cheese.

6. Where do you usually find inspiration?

~In general, for overall fanfic concepts I’ll find it in the source material, in a detail that wasn’t well-expanded. For specific ideas within a story, and for specific language to describe something I’ll borrow from both the source material and other writers in canon-based fics.

7. Do you listen to music to help you write?

~Hell yes.

8. What’s the biggest “challenge” for you as a writer?

~I love to write and I mainly write for myself - meaning I write the stories that I would want to read. But it’s extremely easy to fall into the “Nobody else will want to read this/Nobody is reading this = it must be bad and I’m a terrible writer” mindset. Surprisingly, that hits me harder than comparing myself to other writers. I understand and embrace that my style is different and the way I tell stories is unique. I actually really love how I write in comparison.  I also struggle with pacing.

9. Where do you usually go to write (bedroom, living room, etc.)?

~When I’m at home, my bedroom. However, occasional changes in scenery do wonders for my inspiration, so I also love public libraries. When it’s very late at night (and it usually is because I’m a night owl to begin with and I work two jobs), I love to go to Denny’s. The people at my local Denny’s know me by name and I have the same server almost every time. They let me sit there for hours and hours (and if I do stay, I always leave a gigantic tip).

10. Can you give us a sneak peek of your current WIP?

~We’re mid-fight scene and this is unedited (I’m just really self-conscious lmao). It’s from my Dissidia fanfic, A Petal Among Thorns:

“’Cosmos's assassins!’ the Emperor sneered. He laughed, calling his staff from its resting place next to the throne. "I'm glad you could make it!" Removing Cloud first would be the most important thing. That, and deflecting Terra's magic. Cloud lifted his sword behind his head and slashed it down, and an arc of power careened off the blade towards him. The Emperor slammed the end of his staff into the ground and called a cluster of purple mines in its path. The Blade Beam collided with the mines and they detonated on contact in a cloud of smoke, the sound booming through Pandaemonium.”

11. How many stories have you written so far?

~18, though not all are complete.

12. What’s your favorite thing you ever wrote?

~In the first version of A Petal Among Thorns, I wrote a giant fight scene between a goddess and her warriors. It was intense and epic, and really maximized my skills at the time, and I loved every second of it.

13. How many chapters does your longest series have?

~Well, the new and improved version of A Petal Among Thorns has 45 posted chapters at 171k words, and I’m working on 46. The original Petal, which I finished, ended with 64 and had 108k words. Both are my longest so far. the most words, though, is Horrible Bosses with just under 200k.

14. What’s my favorite character/person to write for?

~This is so tough. But I think the Emperor for A Petal Among Thorns. He’s a classic kind of “Muahahaha” villain and I absolutely love getting into that evil headspace.

15. “OCs” or “Reader” inserts?

~If it’s an either/or question, then I say OCs. But nothing against Reader inserts. I love those, too. If it’s a do I read or write them question, then not really. I did one back when I was in high school. But I do read them and I support writers who do. There’s no such thing as cringe culture anymore so don’t let any elitists make you feel shitty for writing them.

16. Can you tell us anything about your current WIP?

~Sure. I’ve got four major ones:

1. A Petal Among Thorns (Dissidia Final Fantasy) - Cosmos just sent a group to take care of the Emperor since he’s been plaguing her and her warriors, but they’re caught unprepared when they realize he’s been secretly amassing power.

2. The Krypt (Mortal Kombat) - The group just found Master Hasashi and Kenshi, two out of the whole group they’ve been looking for. Their next order of business is to escape the spider caves, but it won’t be so easy.

3. Legends Yet (Final Fantasy XII) - Balthier and Fran are preparing to infiltrate the Archadian Palace to go after a special item. Little do they know the palace is more prepared than they thought.

4. This is My Punishment (Final Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerberus) - The Turks go looking for Vincent after he fails to report in. They confront Dr. Hojo about it, but he’s smug and disinterested.

17. How long was the longest fic you ever wrote?

~The longest COMPLETE story I ever wrote was the original A Petal Among Thorns with 64 chapters at 108k words. The longest INCOMPLETE story I have right now is the rewrite of A Petal Among Thorns with 46 chapters at 171k words. The most words I ever wrote was Horrible Bosses at just under 200k but with only 15 chapters.

18. What fandoms do you write for?

~Final Fantasy and Mortal Kombat and Hetalia are pretty much it right now, but a variety of FFs! I have written for Assassin’s Creed too, and Voltron, and I did one very self-indulgent Black Butler self-insert.

19. What is/are your favorite fandom author/authors?

~Poisonous Panda on AO3 (she used to have a tumblr but she deactivated for some reason), and Jaydee Grey on ff.net

20. Have you ever written an AU?

~No. All my stories take place in the actual world and parameters of canon. Although, I guess Petal could be considered one, since Rosa was never called to the cycles in any Dissidia game except Opera Omnia . . . ?

21. What’s your favorite AU trope?

~I don’t know if I have one. I read them but they’re not my go-to. I usually stick to canon stuff first.

22. A fanfiction cliché you can’t help but love?

~Hmmmm . . . I think descriptions of eyes. Not like, the word ‘orbs’ or anything, but the use of gemstones to describe color. I love the aesthetics associated with gemstones and their luster and how they shine, so if someone has “emerald green” eyes, or “amber” eyes, “crystalline blue”, etc. It makes me understand that their characters’ eyes are aglow with something, that they have character or passions or an ideas.

23. For how long have you been a fandom writer?

~I started my freshman year of high school, so . . . 10 years?

24. Have you ever had an idea for a story and forgot about it?

~No, I usually write stuff down right away. But as I develop my stories they rarely stay along the path enough to end up using the idea. Either the plot point is too out in left field now, or the characters are too far along in their journeys to make it work in-character.

25. What do you do to motivate yourself to write?

~Motivation? I don’t know her. 

In all seriousness, I have ZERO self-control, so I can’t bribe myself. I mostly use my own desire to see my stories finished, plus nice comments and reviews from users on AO3 and ff.net. They’re so few and far between that a single one can make my entire day.

26. How did you find out you like to write?

~I’ve always enjoyed telling stories, from the third grade up! Making my own comics, and novelizing games I used to play, like Pac-Man World 2! I sort of never stopped, but WHAT I wrote matured as I grew older and joined fandom.

27. Are there any writers (fanfiction writers or not) that have inspired you to start writing?

~No, I was writing in general before I knew what fanfiction even was. But what inspired me to start writing fanfiction in particular was reading a Dissidia fic on ff.net by the name of Slash and Burn, that hasn’t updated since 2011. Reading that fic made me realize that the stories and scenarios I was coming up with surrounding these characters I loved could be transcribed and posted, and that other people were doing it too! I simply started writing down what I already was imagining for these characters outside of the events that happened in their games.

28. What’s your favorite fandom to write for?

~Final Fantasy, hands down!

29. Describe your style in three words.

1. Balanced

2. Introspective

3. Natural

30. What would you say is the most ‘famous’ fic you’ve ever written?

~Definitely The Krypt for Mortal Kombat on AO3. Writing for an active fandom is vastly, vastly different than writing for an older, stale one. The Krypt has the most comments and shares. On ff.net, it’s Horrible Bosses.

31. Blurbs or drabbles?

~Drabbles. Flesh it out more! I wanna be more immersed in whatever this is!

32. Have you ever written smut?

~I have written ONE SINGLE SHEEPISH scene in chapter 13 of Horrible Bosses. It was my very first attempt at smut and it is god-awful. Go check it out on AO3 if you want (and can withstand the second-hand embarrassment!)

33. How long does it usually take for you to write?

~LMAO that depends entirely on if I can get started for the day. If I can start and I can stay focused, I’ll easily write 3,000 words in one sitting. If I can start but I’m not focused I can usually still grind out anywhere between 100 - 500 or so words. But I’ll go days without touching Notebook if I can’t even get started.

34. What’s your favorite font to use when writing?

~I don’t put much stock in fonts but the one I’m using now on Notebook is Montserrat. I will change it every so often if I want something new though. Changes in scenery help my focus most times.

35. Which do you prefer to write: longer or shorter fics?

~Longer definitely. Shorter fics are easier but I love the challenges associated with aligning plot points with character development, as well as pacing.

36. how do you keep yourself inspired?

~My love for the fandoms I’m writing for usually does it. I love these universes and characters so much that I want to spend more time with them and watch them grow and change in ways that are or aren’t necessarily spelled out in canon. That, and the idea that since I’m writing stories I would want to read, then I’m the only one who can tell this story in my own way, so it has to be me.

37. Have you ever written something you didn’t like but posted anyway?

~Hell yeah. It be like that sometimes. Sometimes you stare and stare at a chapter and you absolutely hate it but you can’t figure out why and eventually you get pissed and say, “Fuck it, i have to post this to move on,” and you do. Specific examples for me are a few chapters in the new Petal.

38. What is your “strong suit” as a writer?

~I pride myself on my characterizations, to be honest. I feel like I have a good sense of who these characters are based on canon, and I can translate their reactions well to situations that test them.

39. What’s your favorite trope?

~I actually really, really love when characters are injured or slipping physically or emotionally, but they keep it to themselves for the sake of others. It can be for any reason - they don’t want to be a bother, they think they should be strong enough to handle it, etc.

40. How many likes do your fics usually get?

~Depends. The most I’ve gotten on anything was ~70 follows/favorites for Horrible Bosses on ff.net, and 128 kudos on The Krypt on AO3. Those are outliers, for the most part. My more popular fandom fics float around 20 - 40 kudos, my smaller fandom fics float around 5-10. The mean average for AO3 kudos across all my fics is 32, and the mean average for ff.net favorites is 14.

41. Have you ever used a prompt?

~No. it’s very, very hard for me to imagine characters into scenarios that I didn’t myself come up with?? I’m not sure why.

42. What is your weakness as a writer?

~Pacing.

43. Have you ever cried or felt any emotion while reading something you wrote?

~Yes, I cried when I wrote the aftermath of the large battle I talked about earlier, between Cosmos and her warriors in the first version of A Petal Among Thorns.

44. Have you ever done a collab with another writer?

~No, I’m too self-conscious.

45. One thing you love about fanfiction.

~I love how it allows fans to expand upon these worlds and universes that were created for us. I love how it allows us to demonstrate our love by interpreting things that were either not touched or not expanded upon in canon. It also allows me to express myself in a healthy and creative way.

46.�� What’s your favorite emotion to cause on your readers?

~Nothing makes a person sexier than physical pain. But I also love anger and regret.

47. What’s your favorite thing about writing?

~See above. Writing fanfiction is another way that I express my love for something that matters so much to me, which are these pieces of media I write for. It also gives my daydreams purpose and doesn’t make me feel like I have to bottle them up!

48. Do you post your writing in any other platforms?

~Yep! AO3, ff.net! I’m Keyblader41996 on both.

49. What app/apps do you use to write (word, notepad, etc.)?

~I’ve got notes all over! I’ve got some in Notepad on my Mac, and I have some in Notebook by Zoho on their site and app, I have some in my paper notebooks, I have some in my college textbook margins and notebooks, etc. My favorite to use is Zoho’s Notebook.

50. One thing you don’t like about fanfiction.

~Thinly veiled, arbitrary and unnecessary bullshit that is masqueraded as “constructive criticism” when I didn’t ask for it, and when it’s easier for the commenter to just, idk, LEAVE THE FUCKING FIC?!?!?!!??!?!?! Rather than spend ALL that time just to be shitty???????????? get away from me.

51. Least favorite trope?

~I dislike time travel.

52. Favorite words to use when writing?

~I love facial descriptions and body language: He crossed his arms. Her eyebrows furrowed. She winked coyly. His fists balled at his sides, trembling. She jumped, clapping her hands enthusiastically. etc.

53. Least favorite words?

~I hate describing clothes and bodies/figures. Hate it.

54. Do you usually like what you write?

~It depends. I cycle through different phases. (1) This is great. (2) Oh god, what the fuck??? is this??? (3) I can’t even look at this, it’s so bad. *Stops writing for days* (4) Wait, why did I hate this so much? It’s a great starting point! (5) Edit (6) YESSS YESSSSSS YASSSSS!!!!!!!! (7) Post

I can start at any one of those numbers and go from there but it’s always in that order no matter where I start.

Thanks so much for asking me these!! I love them!!!