It is not about the power of music or a disenfranchised young heart we felt a connection to. It is a thread that continues through so many great artists, that distinctive quality to be irreverent, sensitive, punk, pure, intelligent yet accessible all through the blue-eyed gaze of sincerity and struggle. Physical and spiritual struggle.
The name of the band was not arbitrarily chosen. The lyrics, while he may attest to them being random gibberish, are not. Poets free associate as well. That is where the soul peeks out sometimes, through a lucid sort of half-state dreaming. Yes, his image is ubiquitous, and kids born after his death plaster his image on their blogs and wear t-shirts bearing his name, but it’s more than the celebrity suicide, more than the deafening distortion and screeching vocals. If you don’t get it, you aren’t really listening.
When his journals were published over 10 years ago, I refused to buy them, so a friend of mine bought one for me and gave it to me as a birthday gift. I let the book sit there for a while, unopened, and then I gave in to my curiosity. What kind of writer was he? I thought. What I read in those erratic pages did not surprise me, but they did elucidate the thoughts of one very ambitious young man who was carefully plotting his future, doubting himself, establishing his place in the music world, honoring the ones who came before him and refusing to compromise.
That refusal to compromise is the blessing and bane of all artists. To bow down to commercial success or bow out? To take the money and build a future for your daughter or refuse the blood-stained coins of a dirty industry? Idealism leaves behind many victims. Self-loathing is poison. And the physical pain he endured is one I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. Even at 27, he was just a kid. A precocious, talented, maladjusted, difficult, disturbed kid.
And nobody likes to see youth in pain. No matter what you think of the man or his music, you can not deny the reach of his words and image, the effect he had and still has on the music produced today.
I’m off to listen to Bleach, my favorite album. I advise you to do the same.
- Armine Iknadossian
(Source: danielemarigold)
