Happy Birthday

In honor of what would have been Kurt Cobain's 40th birthday today.......born 2/20/67

Such a brillant artist in so much pain.

I used to love Nirvana!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Happy Birthday Kurt!!! Michele

Everybody's wearing a disguise

To hide what they've got left behind their eyes

- Dylan, Abandoned Love

Kurt Cobain had grown up in small-town Aberdeen, Washington, "like Twin Peaks without the excitement". His happy childhood was shattered forever at the age of eight with the rancorous separation of his parents. The sudden and unexpected success of Nirvana, with their Nevermind album selling in excess of ten million copies world-wide, gave Kurt Cobain the place as one of the spokesmen for a generation. Their music opened the way for countless other "underground" bands, but brought the inevitable barrage of media attention, picking his life apart, carving him open and laying his innards out for all to see. Kurt had suffered from a rare illness for almost seven years, causing a chronic stomach pain of such an intensity that almost every day he considered killing himself. This constant severe pain led to a deep melancholic depression verging on schizophrenia, and frequent bouts of narcoplepsy. None of the doctors he visited were of any help, but the money he made from Nirvana offered him a temporary release to the pain - through heroin. Soon the heroin took over, and although he tried to kick the habit on numerous occasions, the stomach pains returned with such an intensity that even the heroin appeared to be a better alternative.

His undoubted love and devotion for his wife, Courtney Love, and his daughter Frances, brought the first real happiness and hope into his life for many years, but the constant media attention, and increasingly frequent bouts of depression finally drove him to the edge. There will surely be much speculation as to what finally caused him to crack, but one thing can be said for certain - this was no "rock and roll martyrdom", but rather the tragic waste of a creative life. The pressures which brought Kurt Cobain to the point of ending his life were supremely human and not explained simply as the result of a "degenerate" lifestyle. The tears he cried were as valid as the tears of any other human being, the pain he felt was just as real and as justified as any pain ever was, and the tragic actions he took were the only solution he could find.

Around the Cobain home, on the morning Kurt's body was found, dew would have fallen. The sun would have risen on a new day, the air would be filled with the sounds of the morning, yet, within the house, Cobain's body lay as silent witness to the pain and emptiness that typifies the human condition. Looking at a famous photograph of Kurt taken after a concert in 1991, I see a distraught young man wrestling with forces inside him which he cannot understand or control. There are no rock dramatics about this young man, nor is there any of the craziness which permeated his work and his lifestyle.

R.I.P. Kurt Cobain.

Comfort zones are plush lined coffins. When you stay in your plush lined coffins, you die.

-Stan Dale

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