When I was a freshman in high school, I bought Nirvana’s Nevermind and fell instantly in love with it. I’d listen to it all the way through every day for months. It wasn’t just the album that consumed me, it was Kurt Cobain. He was saying things that I could identify with, he was expressing things that I’d felt in a way that no one else had. He was telling me it was okay to feel the way we felt, that there was someone else who felt the same stuff. I became obsessed with him. I covered the walls of my room with images of him and the band that I’d tear out of magazines like Hit Parader, Metal Edge, Rolling Stone, etc. I tried to dress like him. I read Michael Azerrad’s incredible bio of them, “Come As You Are.” I wanted to be Kurt Cobain. I bought their albums as soon as they came out and listened to them over and over again, listening to the words and feeling like it was okay to be me.
On April 8th, 2004, Kevin Glacken—a senior at UHS who knew (like everyone else did) how obsessed with Nirvana/Cobain I was—came sprinting down the aisle of the UHS auditorium in the middle of “Fiddler on the Roof” rehearsal to exclaim directly to me, with a big smile on his face, “Hey John, did you hear about the new Nirvana album? Well there isn’t going to be one, because Kurt Cobain just killed himself!” He wanted the joy of being instrumental in my devastation. He got it. I mourned that death harder than I’ve ever mourned anything in my life. The person who was telling me that it was okay to be who I was and feel the way I felt killed himself because he couldn’t handle who he was and how he felt. So where did that leave me? But beyond being devastated, I was furious, betrayed. I haven’t listen to Nevermind since. I refuse.
And now, today, another cultural figure who’s works I tried to emulate has killed himself. “Infinite Jest” changed the way I read, it changed the way I wrote, it changed the way I thought. The way he used language, the way he played with structures, the way he processed information left me awestruck, and I found myself adapting his little tricks and flares in all of my emails/blogs/essays/etc. I read every book of his, even that dry and confounding non-fiction book “Everything and More.” At the risk of being awkwardly revealing, at the risk of sounding over-dramatic, when someone whose level of talent/skill I aspire to, someone who seems to have something really amazing going on that I myself would like to have takes the easy way out, does that mean that I, someone who hasn’t shaken that vintage adolescent feeling that their shit is nowhere near even remotely resembling together would probably be best off doing the same thing before things get any worse? Lately I’ve been in that place that no creative-type wants to be where I wonder if everything that I do even matters, if it will ever materialize into anything of greater significance. And when someone I put at the top of my list of people who know what they’re doing, someone whose work actually has materialized into something of greater significance decides to fucking hang themselves, well it just makes it that much fucking harder to put my head down and keep walking confidently forward. I’m sure the old, “Well no one really knows what he was feeling or what kind of depression-related issues he was suffering from,” points will be made but you know what? Fuck him.
On some level I understand the insanity of my expectations of (Dependence upon? Inappropriate idolizing of?) people like Cobain and Wallace (I can’t even type his full name or search for news stories to link to yet), but on a level that is more immediate right now, I find this devastating.
I used to recommend Wallace’s work to anyone who would listen. Lately I’d even been contemplating reading “Infinite Jest” again. I’ll do neither of those things. I refuse.
9 months ago