by
I don't read much. Some would say that is a sad fact. Other's would call it stupid. I myself though, have increasing problems with media, and its words. I was talking to a friend very recently about romance. The romance of literature, to be precise. He quoted to me a line from a Biography on Tim and Jeff Buckley, about how Tim had this look that would cut into your heart and make you want to mother his wounded soul. What an image! This beautiful young man, like personified fragility and poetry walking suddenly enters your head with his own hanging down, walking through smoky streets alone. Tim is the sort of person we can obviously only dream of, beyond the reader with his 5 octaves of sweetness in his voice and the bitterness of sorrow in his heart. I don't believe this, in fact I'd go so far to call these words dangerous, more so than any Eminem lyric or Cradle Of Filth album…
I once read quite a lot. I have an article on my wall about the death of Kurt Cobain. I truly hate this piece of writing, but I keep it up to remind me of the stupidity of media and, in turn, popular culture. The writer goes into great detail about how an already quite fragile Kurt was sent over the edge by his art "being rendered meaningless by the system". An image again appears, the angelic Cobain, too good for this world has to leave it for the sake of music. A savour if you like in life and in death if you believe the journalists. This is so wrong. It's so sickening to the point of momentary insanity that I can barely think of words strong enough to convey it. Kurt had always been a loose cannon with weaknesses like everyone from urban gloom and the family swapping generation. He found solace in music for definite. Then, post-Nevermind, he was thrust into the fifth-dimension, the self-writing soap opera that is the media. Nirvana and their music was now the new sub-plot in this multicoloured fantasy-land where people assume everyone is on a plain, a kind of hidden plateau where the happy are so happy and the sad are too sensitive to be happy. I believe this IS something that could've triggered Kurt into self-destruction. The simple matter of having reality taken away from him so selfishly. His life, like so many, thrown into the theatre of dreams to appease all the dreamers out there who can't dream it for themselves. And amongst the glory of his demise, inspiring many songs and articles I'm sure, people forget that he died leaving his friends, a wife that he cared about (despite her being Courtney Love) and (as my mother always reminds me) a child. I couldn't care how fucking romantic the Kurt Cobain story is it still renders me full of enough anger and tears towards a culture that just doesn't fucking care. I dream everyday and without mindless escapism I'd be nothing, but that gives me no right to change the world to fuel them further. Unfortunately, that’s what journalism does so very well and it even tries to trick us into believing this is the way things should be.
Sometimes it would just be nice if more people loved music, and did the dreaming for them-selves, without having to conform to the imagination of popular culture. If you really want music-making heroin addicts for role models, go into the city and find them.
"I don't like you anyway…sealed in a box"
