When I was a child in the 1990s, I spent my spare time playing Nintendo and watching MTV.
MTV at that time was not garbage. To this channel I owe my eclectic musical taste, and much of the aesthetics that I have adopted at different times of my life.
I remember that when I saw the video for “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, despite my young age, I was shocked. It was spectacular and chilling at the same time. The singer was absolutely gorgeous, the voice and music were stunning, and there was so much anger in that artist’s gestures and screams.
I also remember loving it when this band Nirvana, played their Unplugged, especially when they played “The Man Who Sold The World”, and it was only a long time later that I found out it was a cover of an original Bowie song.
And it was a long time later too that I learned that “Polly” is a creation by Cobain based on a devastating true story.
And this is where this tribute has its soul. It has been documented that when Bob Dylan heard Kurt Cobain sing this song, he said “that kid has heart”. And so, I titled this tribute.
Do you know how difficult it is for a person with severe depression and acute sensitivity to survive a decaying world like ours?
I am convinced that what killed Kurt Cobain was not heroin, nor was the gunshot. What killed this man was human pain.
When one feels so deeply, one hates strongly, loves madly, and suffers lethally.
The impotence of not being able to change the world even when you are on top of it. And still, he tried. He was vocal in rejecting misogyny, rape, racism, homophobia, evilness.
Although it hurts me greatly, I understand Kurt Cobain’s heroin addiction. I understand his suicide. I understand, although I wish it had never happened.
His death put a spotlight on mental illness, often (even to this day) swept under the rug, stigmatized, tabooed.
How difficult it would be for him to meet this world today, where in the fight to normalize mental illness so that its treatment can be more extensive and successful, many have called today’s youth “the crystal generation.”
God bless this misnamed crystal generation… who don’t accept verbal or physical abuse as character builders. Bless them, because they bring a little awareness and hope to a very sick world. I’m convinced that the crystal generation will be medicine to heal it, for the sake of us all.