Reaching For Nirvana

It was fun for me, watching the next generation of rock fans grow up in front of me. I’m sure my kids were a little put off by my absorption of the bands of their youth. There is supposed to be a genetic code somewhere that says your parents should never like the music of their kids. Kids want to like things that their parents detest. My mother would always plead with me as I listened to Dylan, “Must you play HIM so loud?”

Of course, I attached myself to Pearl Jam and Stone Temple Pilots and the grunge sound of the early 90’s. Geez, after the Corporate Rock of the 80’s, it was refreshing to hear bands just get up on stage and make noise. But I knew, by their shuffling of feet and their changing of topics, that my sons were a little embarrassed by their father and his rambling about rock and roll minutiae.

My generation had spawned rock and had also lived through tumultuous times. Times that went from seeking love and brotherhood to bloody wars, insurrection and cold blooded savagery done in the name of peace, pride and a higher life.

We had our heroes die from our political and social scenes. We had the cream of our generation die needlessly far from home. Our generation had their music heroes die too young, as well. Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and Gene Vincent at Rock’s beginning. Jimi, Janis and Jim at its zenith and John Lennon closed the book in a doorway in NYC. Death was something that, as much as you didn’t want it to happen, you had become inured to.

I can remember those news reports about those deaths. How I got a little chill thinking about what might have been, what could they have accomplished? The shiver that followed came from the realization of something that had never before been a part of my awareness. There had been death in my life before, of course. But they were old people. They were supposed to die, weren’t they? And if they weren’t old, it was caused by an “accident”, as if the word accidental before the word death made it less tangible. The realization was that I now knew I was going to die someday.

On this day, fifteen years ago, my sons found this realization, because the news that told us Kurt Cobain had died in his home in Seattle. His death resonated because he wasn’t old. It wasn’t an accident. He took his own life with his own hands.

Cobain was a rock star. He had started a rekindling of rock’s flame. Cobain, with his band Nirvana, had united young people across the spectrum to once again want to strap on a guitar and do it…whatever your it was. That was all you needed to be somebody. You could be somebody and get the girls. Rock has always been about that from Buddy to Kurt. The sadness of Cobain’s life and his tragic end comes from his wishing so hard for something that would make him happy and his never being able to find it.