Kurt Cobain's Stomach

If rock'n'roll is a menace to society, then maybe it's because we're all so ill-equipped to pick our own role models. We somehow spend our formative years idolizing long-haired, philandering men in ripped Spandex who have no greater skill than the ability to keep 4/4 time while drunk.1

How does this happen?

When Kurt Cobain died, they called him the spokesperson for my generation, without considering that this spokesperson was best known for lines like "Load up on guns " and "I have never failed to fail." I'm not sure that this is what one should seek in a spokesperson.2

What is the long-term lingering effect of a whole generation that admires and aspires to be a sickly, whiny, hyper-sensitive, drug-addled suicide?

I wonder this because lately I seem to have inherited Kurt Cobain's stomach—his famous stomach, the one which caused him so much hard-to-diagnose pain that he turned to heroin (or so the story goes)—and I'm proud of it as though it were a stigmata.

---

1. Which is not entirely unimpressive.

2. I took a makeup class once. (If you've ever wondered what exactly people do in acting school, this is one such thing.) After a few rudimentary lessons ("This is a pancake…"), we were each asked to clip a photo of a celebrity from a magazine, and then, using our makeup kit and whatever we could find in the nearby costume shop, make ourselves look like that celebrity. Become the celebrity. Be the celebrity. (If you've ever wondered what exactly people do in acting school, this is one such thing.) Most of the class walked in that day with photos of rock stars, and I had that famous Rolling Stone cover of Kurt Cobain.

 

Kurt Cobain Action Figure