I will begin by explaining why I decided to make this post, about this specific topic. And it is quite simple. There are trends on social media, 500 dollar T shirts from capitalist brands with the name and logo of Nirvana, and Generation Z does not have the slightest idea who this person was... I am not a purist, do not misunderstand me, but it does create a lot of noise for me... Since when is it normal to leave behind what we once loved? I do not know if it happens in another field, but in music and in culture it is something that repeats itself endlessly...
Frances Farmer, artist, feminist activist and writer inspired Kurt Cobain to the point of naming his only daughter the same. We are talking about someone who became a father in 1992, and Farmer had died decades earlier... Che Guevara fought against capitalism, perhaps with more force than Joseph Stalin himself, he literally died in the mountains of Bolivia doing what he considered the cause of his life... Decades later, the same system he opposed not only profits from his image, but turns him into a myth and carries him everywhere; even becoming a symbol of the LGBTQ struggle...
With all that said, what is my point? We all know that rock gave us a final icon of music, of his generation and a true genius with the death of Cobain. When he did what he did with his life, I was less than 2 years old. I am the same age as his daughter. I did not belong to those Generation X kids who felt, lived and adopted the philosophy of Grunge as a movement and vanguard for their lives. I did grow up with the myth and with the legend. I loved Nirvana since I can remember. And I never met anyone who knew them or at least could identify a song... Everything changed when I spoke with kids at a high school, in the middle of a workday...
For reasons unrelated to rock and to culture, I work in a government agency in charge of teaching and educating about delicate topics, such as the prevention of violence and legal assistance in that matter... We were having this brief talk in an auditorium of a local high school, and suddenly I see a boy, no more than 19 years old, wearing a Kurt shirt, with the fantastic Nirvana logo and the following words With the Lights Out. Since I know what those words mean, I wink at him and point with my finger in approval at his shirt. To which he, with his arms crossed and a frown, says to me in a low voice, what are you referring to, and I gesture with my hands indicating that it was about his shirt and what it said, and he answers at the end of the talk, maam, I bought this shirt because I like its logo. The logo was literally the cover of the album Nevermind. That boy did not have the slightest idea of what he was wearing... I insist, I am not a purist or conservative, but if Kurt, Dave and Krist are starting to be forgotten in less than 40 years...
Everything that you, and I, and anyone you know, will also be less than nothing itself. It sounds like a philosophical trick but it is pure Grunge minimalism. Not even Kurt himself could have come up with something like that. It is incredible how our worries seem so vital when in reality they are tiny... A guy, with his friends, changed the most powerful genre in the history of music 31 years ago, and the generation immediately after mine, I am Millennial, they are Z, does not even recognize a genius. It is part of life, you know? Even so, and to be fair, I have also met 19 or 20 year olds who do Nirvana covers and still love Kurt... But the moral remains intact...
