Kurt
Life is tricky business.
There are always something that you think you have out-grown but turns out to have long lasting effect on you.
I was drawn to Nirvana when I was a timid shy, but somewhat angry teenager. It was fresh I mean looking at them at 1996’s music magazine cover. Hippy and posh, seemingly careless with everything going around them. Their music are loud and catchy but also has this texture of roughness and sadness. For a kid growing up in small city in China, this is enough to capture my attention. I remember the first song I listened to was “Negative Creep”. Without knowing anything about the lyrics (to Kurt’s own words, their lyrics are mostly meaningless), I was just fascinated by the power and all the vibe that the song gave out.
I know it was cool to be a Nirvana fan back then. Then the world changed. and so did I.
I was not that of a pissed off kid anymore. Life is going alright for me. I didn’t have to pretend to be emo - or anything punky to make myself heard. So I just keep the fact that I know the band and their music for sometime, but never bother going deep and listening to their music again.
Then things are changing again. I’m in my 30s and I feel nostalgia.
I miss the energy. I’m sure there are some form, some representation of youth for everyone near their mid life. I found myself going back those Nirvana cassettes. It’s a type of energy that you don’t see again in any sort of media. I think there is a reason that it was considered revolutionary when Nirvana first came out. The posers, want-to-bes, fakers all seem to vanished overnight when Kurt came out.
After 30+ years of living on this planet, you mind are going places and often it stays there. You become some stereotype, almost inevitably. If you are lucky you might not turn out to be the type of person you hated when you were little. But, a lot of us do turn out that way. We become cynical, cheap, scared and just old. Old in the sense of being overly worried and cautious about meaningless things.
But here is this guy in his mid 20s, finally able to show the world his talent. He’s not cool type of guy that were popular in school. He was a outcast, he’s looked upon and laughed at. Yet once he’s on the top of the world, he’s still that person. He was always young, always himself. The only thing is probably he’s more assertive in being outspoken. I would wonder if Nirvana never made it, what would Kurt look like. Would he just turned out to be an old grumpy guy or maybe better off?