how heavy is heaven?
Well, what can I say? I think it strange when I apologize for not posting—in a post. But I do it anyway. My time is much regimented theses days: up about 830 or so, eat breakfast, pack my shit, out the door. Class from ten ‘till four-ish. Justin, Brendan and I are playing music again at camp so I’m flyin’ home the night before we’re playing with the intention of a smash and go practice session the morning of, followed by dynamic and invigorating show Friday night. Funny. I haven’t played my instrument since this same show last year. I’ve been so occupied with moving, and starting my life over—figuratively speaking—that once again I’ve forgotten how much I love playing music. I get to play with my friends, and we play for people who are not there to examine us, but just to sing along and dance. Pretty kick ass.
Being that my kit is buried in the basement of mis padres casa, I have no way of practicing down here. So I got hold of the right person over in the music building, and gained access to a practice room—with a whole week and a half left of the semester! It’s cool, a couple hours a day should be enough to sufficiently prepare me for a hard nights rockin’.
So I gotta say that while last semester sucked, this one is pretty kick ass. With the exception of my lame Mass Com teacher (mass com? Who expected this class to be interesting/worth my time?) my Spanish and Psych teachers are fantastic. My psych teacher is a funny guy who has been teaching for over fifteen years, he’s published, and he does the same thing to his son that mom did to us: he tests the theory in real life. I remember doing all kind of “games” as a kid which mom had learned in class. Good times. He teaches in a manner which is easy to stay connected to. And overall, he gets a little giddy about the subject matter: he still thinks this stuff is cool. So that’s pretty groovy. All I’ve done in my Spanish class is learn more about the language and culture in four weeks than in the past thirty. All it takes sometimes is a teacher who relates the content to you in a way that makes sense to you. No se. pero este semestre yo no quiero me mato.
So before the last semester was done, I felt a serious absence which needed to be filled: I had no book to read. So I decided that this summer I would pick some books to read and then when I was done with the worthless, shitty, semester, I would have time to expand my mind (bro!). I chose to spend the summer reading about my favorite musicians. Originally, I looked up John Coltrane, but by chance—not chance, I mean every library probably keeps all their related material together—all the biographies of musicians and bands were together. Before I could get to anything about Trane, there were several books about Bird Parker, and Dizzy, and Ella, and every one from Carlos Santana to the Beatles on down to Mozart and Tchaikovsky. There was also, one I hadn’t considered until the moment I read the name: “Heavier Than Heaven” in faded gold lettering on the dull black spine of a hard cover book—what a title; what a book.
Charles Cross, the author of this particular biography, chose the right title. I wouldn’t have read this book otherwise. The title dragged me in before I had even put a finger on it; this is a biography of Kurt Cobain. Someone for whom I’ve had many years of anger built toward. But I knew I had to read this book, so did. I finished it this afternoon after my Spanish test.
Here’s my thing about Nirvana: when I got to high school, there was a massive worship for this band, and the lead singer and song writer. I had heard this band in 80’s when our neighbor and good friend Kelly played a bootlegged copy of what was probably “Bleach” for my sister. I was just a kid, like six or seven years old. But by the time I got to Community, all my peers and many of my old friends were enamored with this grunge god named Kurt. You should’ve heard the shit people said about this guy, and seen how we modeled ourselves in his image. We ridiculed ourselves and each other for trying to fit a mold, but ostracized any one who didn’t fit neatly inside it. (See also: why punk rock is bullshit and punk rockers can suck my balls.) But I digress…
I didn’t get into Nirvana as intensely as my friends did. I liked them well enough, but I didn’t see them as this great artistic exodus from the mental slavery of the 80’s. At this point, I hadn’t even started listening to Jazz. I had a bootlegged tape of Bob Marley songs which fed me all I needed from music. (Thanks dad) Gabe had done a favor for this girl named Lauren: he carved the name “Kurt” into her arm. Apparently it was important for this to happen in her mind, as she was in so much pain over his passing. I shouldn’t make light of someone who felt so intensely about someone that they hurt themself. But for me, when he died in the spring before I was even out of Jr. High, I didn’t care what any one said about why he did it.
I really started to love Nirvana around ’95 when I started playing music and we jammed out, at one point or another, just about every Nirvana song ever. But by this point, I was well beyond any connection to the person who was Kurt Cobain.
The book about him that I finished today was pretty good. Really, I began the first chapters with a nagging uneasiness as it described the horrible situations that he faced as child. His folks divorced, and he found himself homeless frequently as he couldn’t live with either of his parents and their new spouses. The author may have been pushing me to feel pity for the circumstances of Cobain’s childhood, but I’m not that easy to sway. Many of the situations that Kurt was the “victim” of were situations that many of us have looked at. But for what ever reasons, maybe his artistic genius maybe, he was unable to eat shit in order to have a roof over his head. Many people don’t get along with their step father or mother; many people try to live with surrogate families. I don’t know where I’m going here, I just don’t buy that his crappy life growing up is what caused him to eat a shotgun at 27.
In this book, as it detailed his last moments on earth, and even shared the note he left behind (as well as many excerpts from his copious journal entries) it was hard for me to keep myself from crying. (picture me sitting at a table in the library eating my Tupperware dish of pasta and choking back tears at 1 in the afternoon) I found myself right back where I was when he had killed himself over a decade ago. I remember watching the vigil that took place in Seattle. Where thousands of people stood in the rain, sobbing and broken, while Courtney Love read pieces of his suicide note over a P.A. system in a prerecorded message. She spouted answers to each statement he made in the note as though she were addressing him directly: “why didn’t you just stay?” I remember so vividly. It makes me so mad, even now. Some one who loved US so much that he had to leave.
Toward the end of the book, through many excerpts from his private journals, all the proof I need was presented. The only thing that killed Kurt Cobain is drugs. A few of the things that he wrote, particularly about the addictions which had estranged him from almost every one in the world including himself, read like a road map to suicide. Fame didn’t kill Kurt. Courtney didn’t kill Kurt. Depression, family, chronic illness, traumatic past, uncertain future—none of that shit killed Kurt Cobain: Drugs killed him.
I’m glad I read this book, although I feel like all my nerves are raw all over again, like I just got broken up with or something. This guy made music that sounded like I felt, but then he crossed a line I wasn’t willing to follow him past. I wish he was still here; I wish I had the music he was going to make, the musician he was going to become. But I don’t.
Being that my kit is buried in the basement of mis padres casa, I have no way of practicing down here. So I got hold of the right person over in the music building, and gained access to a practice room—with a whole week and a half left of the semester! It’s cool, a couple hours a day should be enough to sufficiently prepare me for a hard nights rockin’.
So I gotta say that while last semester sucked, this one is pretty kick ass. With the exception of my lame Mass Com teacher (mass com? Who expected this class to be interesting/worth my time?) my Spanish and Psych teachers are fantastic. My psych teacher is a funny guy who has been teaching for over fifteen years, he’s published, and he does the same thing to his son that mom did to us: he tests the theory in real life. I remember doing all kind of “games” as a kid which mom had learned in class. Good times. He teaches in a manner which is easy to stay connected to. And overall, he gets a little giddy about the subject matter: he still thinks this stuff is cool. So that’s pretty groovy. All I’ve done in my Spanish class is learn more about the language and culture in four weeks than in the past thirty. All it takes sometimes is a teacher who relates the content to you in a way that makes sense to you. No se. pero este semestre yo no quiero me mato.
So before the last semester was done, I felt a serious absence which needed to be filled: I had no book to read. So I decided that this summer I would pick some books to read and then when I was done with the worthless, shitty, semester, I would have time to expand my mind (bro!). I chose to spend the summer reading about my favorite musicians. Originally, I looked up John Coltrane, but by chance—not chance, I mean every library probably keeps all their related material together—all the biographies of musicians and bands were together. Before I could get to anything about Trane, there were several books about Bird Parker, and Dizzy, and Ella, and every one from Carlos Santana to the Beatles on down to Mozart and Tchaikovsky. There was also, one I hadn’t considered until the moment I read the name: “Heavier Than Heaven” in faded gold lettering on the dull black spine of a hard cover book—what a title; what a book.
Charles Cross, the author of this particular biography, chose the right title. I wouldn’t have read this book otherwise. The title dragged me in before I had even put a finger on it; this is a biography of Kurt Cobain. Someone for whom I’ve had many years of anger built toward. But I knew I had to read this book, so did. I finished it this afternoon after my Spanish test.
Here’s my thing about Nirvana: when I got to high school, there was a massive worship for this band, and the lead singer and song writer. I had heard this band in 80’s when our neighbor and good friend Kelly played a bootlegged copy of what was probably “Bleach” for my sister. I was just a kid, like six or seven years old. But by the time I got to Community, all my peers and many of my old friends were enamored with this grunge god named Kurt. You should’ve heard the shit people said about this guy, and seen how we modeled ourselves in his image. We ridiculed ourselves and each other for trying to fit a mold, but ostracized any one who didn’t fit neatly inside it. (See also: why punk rock is bullshit and punk rockers can suck my balls.) But I digress…
I didn’t get into Nirvana as intensely as my friends did. I liked them well enough, but I didn’t see them as this great artistic exodus from the mental slavery of the 80’s. At this point, I hadn’t even started listening to Jazz. I had a bootlegged tape of Bob Marley songs which fed me all I needed from music. (Thanks dad) Gabe had done a favor for this girl named Lauren: he carved the name “Kurt” into her arm. Apparently it was important for this to happen in her mind, as she was in so much pain over his passing. I shouldn’t make light of someone who felt so intensely about someone that they hurt themself. But for me, when he died in the spring before I was even out of Jr. High, I didn’t care what any one said about why he did it.
I really started to love Nirvana around ’95 when I started playing music and we jammed out, at one point or another, just about every Nirvana song ever. But by this point, I was well beyond any connection to the person who was Kurt Cobain.
The book about him that I finished today was pretty good. Really, I began the first chapters with a nagging uneasiness as it described the horrible situations that he faced as child. His folks divorced, and he found himself homeless frequently as he couldn’t live with either of his parents and their new spouses. The author may have been pushing me to feel pity for the circumstances of Cobain’s childhood, but I’m not that easy to sway. Many of the situations that Kurt was the “victim” of were situations that many of us have looked at. But for what ever reasons, maybe his artistic genius maybe, he was unable to eat shit in order to have a roof over his head. Many people don’t get along with their step father or mother; many people try to live with surrogate families. I don’t know where I’m going here, I just don’t buy that his crappy life growing up is what caused him to eat a shotgun at 27.
In this book, as it detailed his last moments on earth, and even shared the note he left behind (as well as many excerpts from his copious journal entries) it was hard for me to keep myself from crying. (picture me sitting at a table in the library eating my Tupperware dish of pasta and choking back tears at 1 in the afternoon) I found myself right back where I was when he had killed himself over a decade ago. I remember watching the vigil that took place in Seattle. Where thousands of people stood in the rain, sobbing and broken, while Courtney Love read pieces of his suicide note over a P.A. system in a prerecorded message. She spouted answers to each statement he made in the note as though she were addressing him directly: “why didn’t you just stay?” I remember so vividly. It makes me so mad, even now. Some one who loved US so much that he had to leave.
Toward the end of the book, through many excerpts from his private journals, all the proof I need was presented. The only thing that killed Kurt Cobain is drugs. A few of the things that he wrote, particularly about the addictions which had estranged him from almost every one in the world including himself, read like a road map to suicide. Fame didn’t kill Kurt. Courtney didn’t kill Kurt. Depression, family, chronic illness, traumatic past, uncertain future—none of that shit killed Kurt Cobain: Drugs killed him.
I’m glad I read this book, although I feel like all my nerves are raw all over again, like I just got broken up with or something. This guy made music that sounded like I felt, but then he crossed a line I wasn’t willing to follow him past. I wish he was still here; I wish I had the music he was going to make, the musician he was going to become. But I don’t.
posted by texas_wolverine at 9:30 PM
0 comments
