Sunday, May 06, 2007

Freaky!!!

As a child of the late 80's and 90's ... hell, what am I talking about? I'm still living my childhood well into my decrepit 30's!!

Anyhow, there are those events that define certain periods of our life. I was a young 22 year old in the Army who somehow didn't fit the Army mold. In my off-duty hours, I wore Doc Martens, plaid flat caps, listened to reggae and ska. I was engaged and together we were that young activist couple. We helped out in the Tampa AIDS Network; we were involved in the Anti-Racist Action group; we got out to help push the vote for Clinton.

As it is now, music was a huge part of my life. We'd spend Saturdays at independent used CD stores eschewing the corporate label stores that insisted on selling like 20 artists and then jacking up the prices for any artist on a label that wasn't mainstream. To this day, I feel sorta like one of those old hippies that laments about when music meant something ... but I'm just as full of shit as now as they were then (are you telling me there was some deep philosophical message in "Purple Haze" that was lost somehow when "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was released?)

However, the death of Curt Cobain was one of those moments when you realized that an entire genre of music had just died. A part of your life was gone never to come back except as nostalgia.
Now, his crazy wife is selling off all of his shit in order to cover her drug debts and jeopardizing what's left of Curt on this earth: Frances Bean. Look at this kid!! Who can't see Curt in those eyes. Freaky, right?? It's as if one last little piece of my younger, crazier days is all grown up and staring right back at me.

1 comment:

Chelle said...

hmmm.... Well put. I am always taken back by people who have left behind who they were in order to 'grow up'. We all grow up but do we eschew the people we were or incorporate our past selves into the people we are today.