Nirvana
Kurt Cobain : Journals

...a pretentious, self absorbed compulsive liar, but that makes him human in a way. I've read bits of the journals, although I don't own it. Extracts of it are used really well in his biography 'Heavier than Heaven' which is a good read. I can't remember off the top of my head who wrote it but a google search will tell you straight away.

I realise this is a late post to a dead thread, but it is something I feel all Cobain and Nirvana fans should read.

Would be interesting to get some feedback on this!

For the record all the below is my own work and has been submitted elsewhere, hence it is copyright protected. A full version of the essay in its original context is available on request.

We can never truly know if we are sane. What is acceptable - that which doesn’t disturb the individual or that which doesn’t upset society? If we do not adhere to the codes of culture then we are said to be insane. The problem is that insanity is a dynamic term, varying between ages and societies. Perhaps for that reason then sanity should be based on a personal barometer of tolerability, leaving us to decide for ourselves what we think is inappropriate behaviour. This does not bode well for society, as surely more intense feelings are more pleasurable to the human psyche than the mediocrity culture allows.

As it stands though, culture determines the markers of sanity. Issues begin to arise from this if no one in society particularly cares about whether an individual is of sound mental health or not, or rather becomes fascinated with an idea.

There is often in the depressed a genuine feeling of guilt that they feel unwell because they have no physical maladies or can recognise no single causal depressive event. This search for a validation of her depression leaves Cobain not only waiting for an answer to its cause but waiting for a revelation. He is convinced that one day he will reach a moment of catharsis and he will pass through the darkness of depression back towards the light of normality. For all his talk of this though, we are left questioning if he really means it, if he knows that he will never find the answers because there are none.

"Depression is not a sudden disaster. It is more like a cancer... If you ask anyone in the throes of depression how he got there, to pin down the turning point, he’ll never know." (Wurtzel, E. 'Prozac Nation' 1996, pp. 18-9)

Simply put we must appreciate the effect society has on the human psyche in assimilating and numbing it to such a degree that sometimes individuals feel the need to test it in order to acknowledge their own existence. The extent of human experience is defined purely by the rules of the society in which we live, and so in order to experience anything beyond what is presented to us, the limits of such experience must be tested and subverted,

“Culture, mental illness, and personality development are intimately related�.
(Castillo, R. 'Meanings of Madness' 1998, p.37)

Often it can be that social anxieties are projected on to the individual and result in feelings of personal unease.

The deliberate undermining of the symbolic order is an idea discussed by Julia Kristeva in relation to the concept of abjection (see Kristeva, J. 'Powers of Horror' 1941, pp. 1-31). According to Kristeva, the abject is no particular thing, but rather something we instinctively reject and put beyond the thinkable; it exists outside us. Even though we are unable to assimilate to it, we are fascinated by the border of non-meaning it represents. This idea of nothing being a part of our minds evokes terror in the sense that we realise that we could not-be. Essentially the abject allows being and not-being, living and dieing to occupy the same territory by blurring the lines between them. Insanity comes into play when someone takes such delight in the abject that they constantly engage it, in Cobain's case through drug abuse.

Moments such as this explore the fragile boundary between being and non-being. In wanting what is inside to cross the border to the outside, (or vice versa) one plays with the idea of not existing. The skin is the boundary of life and by making even small breaks in it Cobain tests his existence.

Self-harm is not the only flirtation with the abject and the desire to not exist. In finding repulsion attractive one is being wilful and self-obsessive, and gets a thrill from transgressing social codes.

This is narcissistic depression.

This type of depression, if untreatable, can result in suicide representing a method of release from living with the pain of constant lacking.

There are two forms of narcissictic depression.

In the first form there is a general feeling of lacking or absence which the sufferer wishes to rectify in order to become complete, but doesn’t know what the solution is. This void is referred to as ‘jouissance’ by Lacan, who believes that it is something we will spend our entire lives trying to fill but will never be able to.

The second type of narcissistic depression is formed not by the process of separation from the mother, but rather through a loss that has occurred in life. Freud observed that the accusations melancholic patients aimed at themselves were usually more applicable to a loved one, but had simply been shifted onto the sufferer’s own ego.

Freud describes one of the symptoms of melancholia as being an expectation of punishment. If no such punishment is administered then the sufferer may seek to harm themselves to create in their minds some balance of justice.

In further regards to my last post, Kurt
was very sarcastic and introverted about expressing his negative feelings, and we must remember that.