a letter to kurt cobain

dear kurt,

it all ended 17 years ago. you died on this date. you took your own life. you were my first hero. i was 14. from the ages of 12-14 i listened to the music your band nirvana released religiously. you were the front man of my favorite rock band, the first rock band i ever truly worshiped in my teenage years.

i look back at it now and i understand now how i didn't understand so clearly back then. i didn't know all that much about you. i didn't know what you were going through. i still don't know what it is you went through. i don't know how the path of your life lead you to where it did. but it did, and that's all that matters. there's no undoing these sort of decisions.

when i first bought 'nevermind,' it was just 1 of 10 cd's i bought from columbia house for a penny a piece, back in the days of cd clubs. i bought your album along with a copy of pearl jam's '10,' and the doors' greatest hits. i was just truly discovering rock and roll and i wanted to know all about it. 'nevermind' blew me away. i couldn't explain it, still can't. but when i heard that album, i wanted to throw shit at the walls. but not cuz i felt destructive.... it was like something inside of me clicked. i didn't know what was wrong with me, but i didn't feel in place in the world. i was an odd teenager. i felt alone. but as i moved my way through the tracks of 'nevermind,' i felt less and less alone. i felt finally someone figured it out. someone took the feelings of isolation, of being weird and odd, and sometimes being lonely in this world... someone took those feelings, bunched them up together and made music with it. i had an anthem, a soundtrack. for the rest of my life, no matter how weird shit gets, no matter how much i think the world's out to get me, i will always have this album to come home to and feel alright about my odd place in the world.

and on it went. i discovered 'bleach.' i bought 'incesticide.' i was filled with excitement as i waited for the release of 'in utero.' the first time i saw nirvana unplugged was on my birthday. it just made total fuckin sense the whole time.

you taught me two of the biggest lessons in life. the first you taught me was that i was not alone. there were plenty of people who felt odd and out of place just like me. nirvana sold tons of records. i now knew out in the world, there were plenty of people like me, and we all had nirvana. it was the first time i felt part of something, like a movement. like nirvana were our heroes going out in the world and fighting the good fight for all us fans. nirvana was huge and couldn't be ignored and that made me feel huge and impossible to ignore.

it was okay to wear old flannels and beat up jeans. the rest of north bergen high school was concerned with fashion but i didn't give a fuck cuz nirvana didn't give a fuck. i started to write poetry and express myself. in my own mind, i was suddenly against the grain and damn proud of it. that was probably my first pure "punk rock" moment.

even the first serious crush of my life was on a nirvana fan. i said to myself, 'holy shit! even women are into this! women like nirvana! i like nirvana! maybe women can like me too!'

and it was cool. being uncool was cool. being sad sometimes wasn't necessarily bad cuz everyone gets sad. why be a total fake about it like the rest of those other conformists?? fuck them! they just don't get me and i don't want them to.

and then one day my best friend eric calls me up. i forget the reason he called, i can't remember if it was to hang out or if he only called me to deliver the news. kurt killed himself.

fuck.
why?
what now?

i was 14. and just like that, i was 14 with low self esteem all over again. fuck, my hero took his own life. if the biggest fuckin hero of my life can't stand up to the weight of the world, what chance do i got?

this is where lesson two came in. you inadvertently taught me that sometimes in life, you're gonna be alone. and you're gonna have to deal with that. and just cuz one dude commits suicide doesn't mean i have to. hero worship was suddenly the ungrungest thing i could think of. and just like that i labeled you a coward who just happened to write good music.

kurt cobain. the name's still huge, like in my head, when i say it to myself, it's huge... just bigger than any other name floating around in my brain. i'm over the coward thing. you did what you had to do. and some people think you didn't even take your own life, that someone else did. these are details i'll never know for sure. but i'm glad that i was a teenager when i was. i'm glad i had nirvana, and grunge, and a hero named kurt. it was a nice little foundation for an oddball such as myself. to this day, i still feel out of place in the world but now i'm just totally cool with it. don't bother me at all. when i'm angry, i grunge out, i blast 'in utero' from time to time. when i'm mellow, there's the unplugged album.

and maybe that was your role in existence. maybe it was up to other people to tell us what comes next. give us some sorta battle plan beyond what we already thought we knew.

many years later i saw dave grohl and the foo fighters in concert. dave's whole agenda seemed to be letting the crowd know it's ok to rock out, make noise, drink beer, and have a good fuckin' time! as long as no one gets hurt and everyone's smiling, what else really matters? i'll never be as much a fan of the foo as i am of nirvana, but it seemed to make so much damn sense that after all these years, after all the dust settled, here stood one of the men who was in the forefront of what i called my movement. and now he told me it's ok to smile and have fun. so what if we were all odd, dirty, rocker kids? just take the odd, dirty rock stuff and turn it into a party.

anyways, thanks kurt. you helped me out in a huge way. i will always be like, 'fuck yea, i was a grunge kid! i was there when it was alive!' sometimes it seemed you didn't want to be a hero, but you were and still are.... minus all the suicide stuff.

probably not your biggest fan, but i like to think i am,

josh wells


ps- if you were here today, you'd probably think everything's lame; stuff like reality tv, social networking, cell phones, even rock music. you'd be mad at it all. i know i am. i guess we gotta keep that torch alive.