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05 - The Kurt Cobain Tragical History Tour - part 1
41 Plays2 months ago
Jen explores the life of rock star Kurt Cobain by taking a psychogeographical journey into the heart of Washington State. Part 1 begins in Seattle and takes us to Aberdeen, WA.
Part 2 will be released next week, on March 19, 2026.
Apologies for the state of Tracy's mic. It was in the process of dying.
Sources and further reading can be found at www.thewonderkamer.ca
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Transcript
Introduction and Host Overview
00:00:22
Speaker
camera Hello, everyone, and welcome to the latest episode of The Wonder Camera. I'm your dilettante, Jen Rumpel, and I'm here with Dave Powell and Tracy Anderson Powell.
00:00:33
Speaker
Also a couple of dilettantes. And are you guys doing today? Oh, terrible. It's just dead silence as we try and figure out how we are. we have no idea how we are. Have you seen what it's like outside? It's wretched. But you know what? thing We're here together.
Exploring Complex Topics
00:00:51
Speaker
I'm snugged up in this lovely little walk-in closet.
00:00:54
Speaker
And because it's sort of a perfect audio space and I'm in my happy place. I'm glad to hear that. I hope this episode doesn't tear you out of your happy place.
00:01:05
Speaker
It'll be an interesting one because it's my turn today to take on our, to, to reveal something, to, to pull an object from the wonder camera to show to you and our audience.
00:01:16
Speaker
So this one is going to get, Oh, go ahead, Dave. I was about to say ah to our dear audience, the way this works is because Tracy and I, as you might have noticed, are a couple.
Interpersonal Dynamics of Hosts
00:01:28
Speaker
And ah so Tracy and I always kind of know what the other one has cooking. Jen often hints what she has coming coming in. And in this case, Jen has hinted absolutely nothing aside from the fact that it's a sprawling, complicated topic. And we have no idea what we're in for.
00:01:45
Speaker
ah Okay, yes, it is sprawling and complicated, and that could be an issue. But you know what? I'm learning how to write a podcast script. So I'm also exploring different concepts, as I like to do. And, you know, if this is a place where we can do that, where we can branch out and...
Unique Perspectives on Topics
00:02:02
Speaker
Look at things from a different or unique perspective. Some things that maybe aren't even that obscure, but if you look at it from a certain way, could be seen, you know, in a fascinating new light.
00:02:13
Speaker
Anyway, enough of that word salad from me. I'm actually going get started on our topic. That's kind of going
Can Places Be Cursed?
00:02:18
Speaker
on a bit. ah Do you think ah places or objects can be cursed? Yes.
00:02:25
Speaker
I'm thinking in particular of places. I'm an agnostic on ah the concept of being able to curse or place or object. I dearly want it to be the case and I'm willing to accept that it is possible, but I'm also not convinced it's ever happened in a way that will convince me, but perhaps you will change my mind.
00:02:43
Speaker
That's what I'm here for. You don't need to change my mind because I am already convinced. Okay, you're you're pretty affirmative. Yes, places can be cursed. Objects can be cursed. Absolutely. Okay, so yeah, myself too, I think of myself as pretty rational.
00:02:56
Speaker
So, you know, I'm looking at, prefer sort of an evidence-based approach to problem solving and to like life. You know, I don't believe in the supernatural, pretty much a materialist, you know, Occam's razor, all that stuff.
00:03:08
Speaker
But sometimes, you know, when you go places, you get vibes, right? Yeah. I guess I kind of believe in vibes. We all believe in vibes. So sometimes these vibes are bad. so we're going to talk about a bit of a bad vibey situation here. So where do vibes come from?
00:03:27
Speaker
Do vibes come from the place itself? Do the vibes come from our minds? Ooh. This is a whole philosophical debate we can get into, which we don't need to because this is part of the question. On the origin of vibes. Okay. Yeah. The origin of I always thought the vibes came from the location.
00:03:43
Speaker
Okay. Interesting. Yeah. It's hard to say because it's a little bit of both, I would say. so I'm sort of thinking, um again, in particular places, right?
Psychogeography Concept
00:03:52
Speaker
Vibes are informed by our experiences ah of a place. Like, have have we been there before?
00:03:57
Speaker
Is it somewhere we're familiar with? It could be informed by our personal history. Of course, everything we do, we all bring baggage to everything, right? Yeah. um we might even be subconsciously aware of the history of a region that kind of imparts a feeling to it, right?
00:04:12
Speaker
This is basically what psychogeography is about. So I'm not a philosopher and I'm not a theoretician in any great sense. I'm a dilettante, as I've said, right? so I'm going to do my best with this topic.
00:04:24
Speaker
So do you, have you heard the term psychogeography? Are you familiar familiar with the concept? I am not. vaguely Passingly. Passingly. Okay, that's good, because this will be new and hopefully interesting.
00:04:36
Speaker
So we'll back up a bit. So psychogeography, this concept, emerged from the situationist, which this is a Marxist movement. So of course, I approve Marxist situationist movement in France in the 1950s.
00:04:49
Speaker
but So situationism is a bit different. Have you heard of that? No. familiar Yes. Okay. You have. Okay, cool. um But maybe I'll just continue to summarize. So the situationism, as far as I can interpret, you know, going back to the documents, is the idea basically that art should explore human, true human experiences and desires, authentic experience, in contrast to what has been essentially a a commodified and alienated culture that capitalist society produces, right?
00:05:19
Speaker
I don't like MCU movies, does anyone, but you know this is what the culture produces. It's sort of an alienating experience. we We don't have control over the culture we produce necessarily. So situationism is sort of about that.
00:05:32
Speaker
Mass media, then, and industrial capitalist society have basically turned us into passive consumers of culture rather than creators for the most part, right? So what the situationists want to want us to think about is how we can create situations that to provoke what they call collective ambiances, which is really not defined very well.
00:05:52
Speaker
It's essentially new emotions, new experiences that sort of poeticize or romanticize the everyday. Okay. So it's kind of interesting. um There is a lengthy document, which we will link to in the notes. This is, it's Report on the Construction of Situations and on the International Situationist Tendencies, Conditions of Organizations and Action. This is the title. It reads...
00:06:14
Speaker
The goal of situationism must be to expand the non-mediocre part of life, to reduce the empty moments of life as much as possible. So it's sort of coming out of this similar philosophy of like existentialism, where you're finding meaning in life. Again, it's all sort of ephemeral, vaguely described, but it's about reconnecting with authentic relationships.
00:06:34
Speaker
authentic life in terms of real life experiences, real world experiences and creation. Right. I started to interject a little bit because I don't really know situationists, but as a good lefty, I'm vaguely familiar with a lot of these different movements and,
00:06:50
Speaker
And if you're taking the notion of ah sort of the commodification of anything, if you talk about labor and alienation from your labor and those various sort of orthodox Marxist concepts, you then go to these very front front French people who talk about alienation from the cultural industry and cultural products, where ah you're then talking about how, ah like,
00:07:17
Speaker
Again, like the alienation from MCU movies or ah Thomas Kinkade paintings or they get that name right? Yeah. Yeah, it is. ah Yeah. And but the notion of this ah this mass culture, because it's devoid of genuine human expression.
00:07:36
Speaker
is, again, a kind of, it's a spiritual dulling as much as it, how is this related to curses? I'm so curious to see where you go with this. But ah but yeah, and these are the group that was interested in the spectacle because the the the Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord has been coming up a lot because, and this gets into one entire thing about All we're seeing in politics so much is an inability to differentiate political action from political spec ah from political spectacle.
00:08:08
Speaker
And we're always staring at the spectacle, having great difficulty understanding that this is that in many cases, is these are serious things that affect human lives or in many cases aren't.
00:08:22
Speaker
And that ability to differentiate the real from the spectacle is a whole thing. And this is doing that a Society of Spectacles disservice because I've never read it because I'm a dilettante and I don't know anything. Yeah. yeah Anyways, they that's that's the start and the end of what I know about situationists. And also, I think they really like the avant-garde art.
00:08:42
Speaker
So, yeah. That's right. Yeah. No, yeah, I like that. It's a good way to explore that idea further and to kind of lay out the idea more clearly that it is about.
00:08:52
Speaker
Yeah, cultural alienation as well, right? So I do like this part from their manifesto that I was reading, quoting from above. So our situations will be ephemeral without a future.
00:09:04
Speaker
Passageways. Our only concern is real life. We care nothing about the permanence of art or anything else. Eternity is the grossest idea people can conceive of in connection with their acts.
00:09:16
Speaker
Situatious techniques have yet to be invented. So they're basically saying, you know, we have this really radical idea. we don't care about eternity, man. It's all about the now, here and now experiencing the world, which I, sure, I like that.
00:09:31
Speaker
And then very promptly followed up with, we don't know how do we're going to do this yet exactly. So this manifesto was sort of putting the theory out there and maybe letting the reader figure out what to do next.
00:09:42
Speaker
So i sort of reading it as meaning kind
Authentic Urban Exploration
00:09:45
Speaker
of sorry, I read it as meaning kind of like touch grass. Go aside, engage with people, explore the world, make art. You know, they, you know, talk about not wasting your life, right? Essentially getting away from the mediocre.
00:10:00
Speaker
Peel yourself away from your computer and go out and experience something. That's right. Or do something cool and weird on your computer. That's right. this We're creating a situation right now.
00:10:11
Speaker
Our interactions, we are having a poetic experience, I hope, as I read my script. And we have a good laugh. It's enjoyable time. Authentic experience. Okay, so from this basically emerges the concept of psychogeography as well. Because this is a way to...
00:10:27
Speaker
sort of have authentic experience. So it um psychogeography is ah means of mostly urban exploration that allows the participant to experience a situation or place by wandering and letting their own ideas and emotions interact with the spaces around them.
00:10:43
Speaker
So again, this is an authentic experience versus a mediated one. You're going out into the world, you're going out into the streets, you're observing. um This comes a little bit, which I want to talk about probably another time. i don't really have time to get into the idea of the flaneur, sort of the...
00:10:56
Speaker
Baudelaire idea of the Flaneur. It comes out of Paris in the eighteen sixty s It's the the man who walks around and just observes society, observes the culture going on around him.
00:11:08
Speaker
Although I do not live in a city anymore, one of my favorite things in the world is to be in a city I'm unfamiliar with and just strike out and start walking and just see what kind of stuff. My brother-in-law is a fantastic person to do that with because ah suddenly we're in Chinatown and he's made best friends with the guy who runs the knife shop and things like that. And it's just you get these...
00:11:32
Speaker
Very. And again, it is a ah very real experience. You build memories. It's a what's that? Oh, God, I can't think of the term. It's a silly one. ah Right. It's enrichment.
00:11:46
Speaker
Yes, it is. If I take my dog for a walk, my dog not only requires exercise, he requires enrichment. He needs to smell some nice smells and piddle on some different grass and just engage in something outside of his very small indoor space. So he needs that enrichment. Yeah.
00:12:02
Speaker
As do you. As do what definitely. Well, yeah, I mean, we kind of all do and that's what I do. Like, honestly, I like to travel, but even when I'm not, I go for walks every day. I love to wander. I like to be in urban spaces in particular, but you know, i like a hike, but in general, being in cities, being around culture, you know just wandering around and looking at stuff, observing people. Very interesting. It's,
00:12:23
Speaker
you know, something, it's basically my hobby, right? So, but as you mentioned, Guy Debord, I think you mentioned him. Guy Debord was the most famous. The irritation of psychogeography, right? I'm not going to get into that in detail. That's for another topic. But you see this on display in fiction writers like Ian Sinclair. have you British writer Ian Sinclair. Yep.
00:12:42
Speaker
And Alan Moore in particular, they're sort of focusing on, they're incorporating psychogeographical concepts into their work, namely focusing on London and Alan Moore focusing on Northampton, England.
Literature and Psychogeography
00:12:55
Speaker
I'm very familiar with Alan Moore. So that's also ah one of those things that I love. even like Even if you go into something like pulp mystery novels, which my mom loves and can be a lot of fun, the really good ones are, ah using a language, ah work with psychogeography, where the setting is where the setting is more of a character than the protagonist. And it's entirely about evoking that setting and that the crime and the plot and the conflict can only come from that setting.
00:13:30
Speaker
hu Exactly. Yeah, there's a good series of books. It's like Amsterdam noir, like so Berlin noir. They're just collections of noir and mystery tales set in a particular city. And you do get those those vibes. So yeah, Alan Moore, he focuses on sort Northampton, England. yeah um Ian Sinclair writes about walking through London. So the author Brian Baker notes that in Sinclair's work, the city of London, the the city's secret history is uncovered or discovered in urban topography, graffiti, underground publications, crime and marginal artistic endeavours.
00:14:04
Speaker
So you're wandering around a place. Yeah, you're seeing graffiti everywhere. You're thinking, what could have happened here? What do I know about this place? What am I bringing to it? What is it reflecting back? Right? So it does rely to an extent on the mythological. Alan Moore's vision of psychogeography is a little bit different because he...
00:14:22
Speaker
yeah As far as I can tell, he literally believes that the places hold the power. the the the this The actual physical space, the buildings, the bricks, the mortar, they actually are where you are our feelings come from. So it's sort of an interplay between our emotions and the environment, but the environment...
00:14:41
Speaker
is what creates the emotion. That makes sense to me. Basically, the places can be essentially cursed or have a vibe or have particular significance. So like it's very interesting. like The novel Jerusalem, for example, he...
00:14:56
Speaker
takes the idea that Northampton, England is basically the center of the universe in a way. And he, you know, talks about the history of the city from like, you know, ancient times, you know, pre-settlement or prehistoric settlements to the current day, pretty close. And then he's talking about how, you know, incorporating his own family's history into the city. And it's really highly mythologized.
00:15:17
Speaker
I've been to the city and it's fine. But it does take some imagination to, you know, to evoke that mythology and to make it seem more mythical than it actually is. You have to have that city in your bones. There is yeah to nerd out a little bit. There's a role playing game like a tabletop style role playing game I like. where their concept of magic is about taking the notion of obsession. And all of it is kind of tied into Alan Moore's idea of magic, which is sort of through manifesting in a personal or social way, where i belief results in whatever you call magic is, whether it's social belief or personal
00:15:56
Speaker
belief And one of their things is the notion of people who are so obsessed with cities and places and know it so well and understand the history and relate to it so strongly, which would be Alan Moore with Northampton, that that sort of magic comes from that ah sort of ah obsession ah is the i it is the word with that place. And it's all very much tied into the concepts you're talking about here.
Historical Significance of Places
00:16:22
Speaker
hmm.
00:16:22
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. So it's interesting where we locate these sort of the the mythology or the vibes or whatever you want to call it, right? The sort of feeling we get. So yeah, so for to me, it's, you know, bit of a conflict. So you can have a mythological sort of, you know, because what I do when I travel, I like to go to places where things happened.
00:16:41
Speaker
in the past or where somebody famous lived right so it's what i have found is going there in person really does a lot to sort of demythologize people so i'm sort of seeing things like i'm more of a materialist things they're still just they're just rocks they're just bricks and mortar these are just buildings these are just streets like i don't know if anything really hangs around in terms of vibes So I don't know. What do you guys feel about that? do you, if have you been somewhere? So I've been in the room where Vincent van Gogh died.
00:17:12
Speaker
That one had pretty strong vibes. I have to say, because they haven't changed the room in 150 years, right? They haven't done anything with it. Same floorboards, no furniture, graffiti on the walls that he wrote.
00:17:24
Speaker
the same so you do get a good sense like oh no this is actually just a very small room above a pub essentially in a small french village you know with fields with crows flying over them so that was very evocative and that was you know i got a bit a bit of a sense there of his life and who he was but it was again demythologizing to a degree you know have you guys gone to a place where somebody famous lived did you do that when you travel Not to quiz you. but Occasionally. it's not yeah It's not a top destination. But I've certainly, like, if there's a if there's an interesting place to go, I'll go. But this is the place where this person lived. Not necessarily. But I have been to any number of different kinds of historical sites where X happened.
00:18:11
Speaker
One place that had vibes is the cannery that Tracy and I went to in Prince Rupert. That's exactly the place that I was thinking about. Yeah. A cannery in Prince Rupert sounds creepy as hell. So do tell. It was, it again, it was mostly this gigantic warehouse with surrounding houses and you could go into the homes of the different workers and these like dormitory ah style, like just,
00:18:38
Speaker
basically big houses on stilts out, out in the ocean. And this is the one where the indigenous people lived. And it was of course crummy. And then the china one where the Chinese people lived was even worse because they were treated the worst of all.
00:18:51
Speaker
And ah these very old, very complicated looking machines and these tiny little homes for the management. And yeah, there was a very somber ah feeling about it.
00:19:05
Speaker
I think somber is the best word for it. I mean, I've never been to a cathedral. Cathedrals are designed for vibes. Yeah. but Yeah. That's very interesting because it does make me think if places, i guess it depends to the history of the place. Like it's, it's built to, in that case, be sort of a temporary work. You know, it's, it's the, the purpose of this, these dormitories is for housing, short-term worker, short-term workers who are basically being exploited So you get the somber vibes from that purpose. like if Honestly, if i went to I couldn't imagine Auschwitz having anything but sinister, rancid vibes because of the purpose and what did happen there specifically. like Some places it would be unavoidable.
00:19:46
Speaker
But again, if you're talking about just a place that's been around for 6,000 years, like a settlement or a city, it just becomes different because the purpose is not inflicting suffering, for example.
00:19:56
Speaker
Right. And and that's what that's actually why I mentioned cathedrals, is cathedrals are very clearly designed to create a sense of grandeur and ah a mixture of splendor, but also solemn is another word for it, where they're very serious places.
00:20:17
Speaker
It feels odd. It would feel odd to fart in a cathedral. yeah Echoes going. but We were in Paris. We stopped at Notre Dame.
00:20:30
Speaker
And I ruined it for myself within about the first 10 minutes. There was a sign. There was this red box on the wall. And i they were they had blankets in it. And I had mistaken the word.
00:20:44
Speaker
for fire with the word for crazy. So I thought they were crazy blankets that you could wrap around people to beat out the crazy. And I started laughing and there's, you know, there's a service going on. So everything's really quiet and I'm trying not to laugh and I just ruined it for myself. So it was so hard for me to take that place seriously after that.
00:21:03
Speaker
See, that's interesting because, again, like, yeah, it's so that the interaction of place with psychology is sort of the psychogeographical thing. Like, how much of it is there is in our minds. That's that's actually really funny. Yeah.
00:21:15
Speaker
You kind of ruin the somberness. Yeah. why Yeah. That's. Yeah. No, that makes sense.
Myth-Making in Exploration
00:21:20
Speaker
forgot about that. Crazy blankets. I can see that, too. Just being like, yeah these guys are really medieval. in cases of Crazy rap in a blanket. Yeah.
00:21:28
Speaker
it's like yeah in case of madness yes uh what's mad at lefou yeah in french yeah yeah blanket wrap them in in un blanket i guess okay so just like again on to carry on a little bit to get to more of our core of this topic because we're not even there yet so so for me psychogeographical exploration is kind of what i do when i walk around it's It's kind of about myth-making as well. and you know But it's also myth-breaking. It's an intersection of a reality, the mundane of the everyday. So if you've always wanted to visit London and you get there and you're like oh yeah, it's not that great. It's just a bunch of bricks. I don't have that experience, but if you did.
00:22:08
Speaker
right sort of that isn't that the mundanity Isn't that something that happened with Japanese tourists visiting
Paris Syndrome Discussion
00:22:14
Speaker
Paris? Yes. it's Yeah, that phenomenon. they would Yeah, Paris disappointment. I think there's a word for it.
00:22:20
Speaker
Yeah. I have to say the first time went to Paris, it was a huge shock because I was in a particularly seedy hostel. oh and it was just, I get there. I'm like, where am I? This is a nightmare. Immediately have I'm swarmed by scammers. Oh no no. I got together and had a good time, but yes, I can see that. Yeah. The the the phenomenon I think is,
00:22:41
Speaker
Because, yeah, Paris is so romanticized in Japanese culture, in particular, anime, you know, all this stuff. is So that relationship, that romanticization, when they get there, they're like, oh, no, this isn't like the pictures, right? Paris Shokogun, Paris Disappointment or Paris Syndrome.
00:22:56
Speaker
And we loved Paris, but we also like genuinely just did a day of hard tourism and then left. Yeah. Yeah. were on our way out. So we took an extra day and just wandered around the main touristy stuff. Yeah, it's ah it's a beautiful city. Yeah, I've been a couple times. And yeah, the first time it was, I had that shock of like, oh, this is totally different. This is way busier, more crowded than I expected. yeah just because the the idea is so much, again, bigger and smaller in a way with with Paris. But yeah, so it's sort of a like you go into a place, it's inter the intersection of reality, right? The mundane of the everyday with sort of the ideals of the myths we might have believed in. so
00:23:35
Speaker
This place might be kind of a cursed place. To me, it kind of, again, I don't know if I believe in curses per se It's, you know, these vibes, these things that have happened, these histories. But I find Washington State to be extremely cursed.
00:23:49
Speaker
For when the vibes. All of Washington State. Pretty much, yeah. Is it because of the Sasquatch? No, it's it's a lot of things. so how do you How do you guys feel about Washington State? Have you spent a lot of time there? You're both ah more prairie focused folks. but i wear there times I was there once when I was five, so I don't really remember much.
00:24:10
Speaker
ki Yeah, it's just all, it seemed all foresty and drizzly to me, which really spoke to me. I like that sort of thing. um Okay. I'm kind of glad you guys haven't spent too much time there because then it's more on me to be more evocative because I've, yeah, I've spent quite a bit of time there.
00:24:26
Speaker
You know, my hometown is close to the U.S. border, 30 minutes s by car, basically. So, you know, this summer is we're going to we're going to Spokane. Spokane, Washington with the love to go to the White Elephant, the combined toy store gun shop.
00:24:41
Speaker
Oh my God, amazing. Love to go there. Washington, yeah, very fun. So it is to me very creepy. So I'm taking you on a psychological, psycho sorry, psychogeographical journey into one of the most cursed places in the world, which is Washington
Geological Threats in Washington
00:24:56
Speaker
State. den den duh Now, if you're from Washington State, don't be offended. I'm being a bit melodramatic because, yes.
00:25:04
Speaker
But... We all know that place is headed for total disaster, right? Particularly Western Washington. It's part of the Cascadia subduction zone. Yes. That tectonic plate boundary runs all the way on the West Coast. So for British Columbia, too, we're in trouble.
00:25:19
Speaker
yeah BC to Northern California. So, of course... prone to massive earthquakes, ah many active volcanoes in the region. Yeah. Mount St. Helens, Mount Hood, still active.
00:25:31
Speaker
So we probably all learned this in high school geology, maybe. We've all heard about the the big one. Yeah. So the geologists are predicting that because of the subduction zone, it's overdue for an earthquake.
00:25:43
Speaker
There's a pretty good chance that the big one, they're calling it, it's an earthquake of over eight magnitude is going to occur there within the next 50 years. Oh, wow. So scary.
00:25:54
Speaker
I'd like to be alive to see the results of that. You would or? i would. That's the thing. like Tracy is a bit of a volcano and earthquake nerd.
00:26:07
Speaker
That part is interesting, but it's just very scary because what's going to happen then, like Washington state is not well prepared for that to happen at all, especially now if you have, you know, FEMA not existing.
00:26:22
Speaker
Yeah. You hear a lot of predictions of what might happen. Essentially, you know, it's going to be fires, floods, tsunamis, right? So Caroline Fraser, the author, but quoting more in another episode, does note that when the big one happens, downtown Seattle will be covered by 80 feet of shattered glass from all the destroyed office buildings.
00:26:43
Speaker
Oh, wow. 80 feet of shattered glass. great i mean re then it'll probably get washed away by all the tsunamis tsunamis yeah melted by fires and things like this yes so they actually quite scary so chunks of land are going to sheer off just nothing but a flood plain they predict maybe 13 000 deaths triple the amount of other casualties injuries that's you know pretty scary there's volcanoes fires floods huge disaster Yeah, I never stop to think about the human cost when I'm thinking about earthquakes and volcanoes and natural disasters.
00:27:18
Speaker
Which I can't blame you. It's fascinating. Like, for a geographical or like Yellowstone, when Yellowstone explodes, that's a huge volcano. Oh, yeah. Don't like that, that my family's, you know... home is sort of within within sort of the Pacific Northwest region, essentially. i would say we're Pacific Northwest adjacent.
00:27:36
Speaker
Also, why maybe it's a little bit more creepy to think about. so Anyway, you're you're driving down your car, scooting down the I-5, thinking about serial killers and all that stuff. Kind of disturbing. it's Like I said, spent quite a bit of time in Washington State. um I want to talk a bit more about Seattle, specifically.
Seattle's Founding and Planning Issues
00:27:56
Speaker
so We're homing in on I'm going to quote this verbatim from Wikipedia.
00:28:02
Speaker
Decent enough source here, I think. So what is now Seattle has been inhabited for at least 4,000 years, so Indigenous people. In the mid-1850s, the Coast Salish people of what is now the Duwamish tribe and the Suquamish, as well as other associated groups and tribes, were living in some 13 villages within the present-day city limits of Seattle.
00:28:22
Speaker
So evidence of continuous human habitation of a village site within the current city limits dates back to 6th century Common Era. That stands to reason. Probably far earlier than that even. That's just how far archaeology goes.
00:28:35
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And the site apparently was abandoned in approximately the year 1800 for unknown reasons. I think people would you know come back later, but ah specific abandonment, and I'm like, probably because it exploded.
00:28:50
Speaker
Probably had a big earthquake. Something like this happens. Like, okay, let's get the hell out of here. So... Anyway, we'll we'll talk about this. Probably good reasons to abandon this potentially cursed place. So, of course, the city of Seattle named after Chief Seattle.
00:29:04
Speaker
Again, Indigenous leader who was born in the eighty or sorry born in the seventeen eighty s died in 1866. So Chief Seattle was a leader of the Duwamish and Suquamish people, and he was known as a friend of the whites who settled the area.
00:29:21
Speaker
So that's unfortunate. That's kind of cursed. Yeah. You don't want to be, unfortunately, if we've learned anything and we're all white on this podcast, I mean, mostly I'm like 80% white, right?
00:29:33
Speaker
Friend of the whites. yeah I'm 120, so it balances out. If I were any whiter, I'd be see-through. Yeah. All right. So I'm I'm carrying some more mixed background. Yeah. You need to do the most problem. ah You need to do the ancient problematic white thing and claim that that 20 percent of your background makes you a representative and an expert. People love that. They do. Really do. So again, I'm like, I'm white passing, which come on.
00:30:01
Speaker
yeah You're just white. Just joking. I'm just a white person. Exactly. We're all white people. um So this is fine. We can insult ourselves. Being a friend of the whites at this time, kind of any time in history maybe a bad idea.
00:30:13
Speaker
so Seattle, Chief Seattle, he converts to Christianity and he does play a role in accommodating the white settlers in the area. Of course, eventually the city gets named after him. And again, i find this phenomenon very funny.
00:30:25
Speaker
ah Developers like naming properties after the things they killed to build them. they'll like yeah cut down all the cedars on the ridge and then we'll call it Cedar Ridge. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. That kind of thing. Yeah. Very typical.
00:30:37
Speaker
Okay. So getting back to sort of more personal psychological experiences or just experience of the city of Seattle in general. Have you guys been there? I think you haven't. No. davey said I've only ever been past.
00:30:49
Speaker
well Okay, that's right. All right. So it's been a few times. The last time I was there, it really strikes you what a fucked up place it is. Again, speaking of poorly planned developments in North America. so I was there with a friend last summer. yeah we did the Seattle Underground tour.
00:31:07
Speaker
Very fascinating. So apparently this could be apocryphal. I was looking online for ah for a source. I got to dig deeper to find this, but this is what the tour guide told us. And it makes, you know, and it makes a moral sense or it's spiritually true, I guess. It's apparently the founder of Seattle's David Swinson or Doc Maynard goes down to the waters of Puget Sound one day Elliott Bay in Seattle. And he puts a stake in the earth. And like I said, they love to put stakes in the earth to say, this shall be my land. So he decreed this would be the new city is gonna be built right here.
00:31:38
Speaker
Puts a stake in the earth. couple hours later, high tide comes in, washes everything away. Stakes are gone. But he's like, you know what? We're gonna build here anyway because of course, why not? said so.
00:31:51
Speaker
God damn it. A wealthy white guy. The tides aren't gonna prove him wrong. you know so i do want to pause and just show you picture of this guy really quick nothing too spectacular but i have to say his picture pisses me off it makes me irrationally angry for some reason oh my god what a horrible man why would you consent to be having your picture taken with your glasses ah on your eyebrows That's what I'm saying. The bit's yeah the first thing he strikes you is the glasses. like he's so he's This is a stern-looking gentleman, 1860s dress. Even that's kind of weird. has some weird strap-on going on. Not strap-on. He has a weird strap-on-looking situation going on.
00:32:33
Speaker
and He has a weird cowlick hair, but his glasses are perched right above his eyes on his brow. And it makes me angry because it's so stupid.
00:32:46
Speaker
Sorry. Anyway, to share that with you because it made me irrationally pissed off. Like, buddy, come on, you're getting a nice photograph taken. Get pose there for probably five minutes. Yeah. So come on.
00:32:57
Speaker
Anyway, this guy founds the city of Seattle below the high tide line. They build the city there anyway. Of course, this creates a lot of problems. So um downtown, the entire downtown Seattle eventually has to be raised up.
00:33:10
Speaker
to the height of the story of a building. So if you're in downtown Seattle, like Pioneer Square, all the buildings you're seeing at street level, that's actually the second floor of the original buildings. Oh, wow. Because there's such horrible flooding. And the way they did this basically was they built up walls around the buildings to the height of. So they built up walls around the buildings to the height of like the one story.
00:33:33
Speaker
And they were filling in. They used. the So they built ah around this. Each building basically had a wall around it. ah The height of a story. The streets in the middle, they gradually filled with trash, essentially. Yeah.
00:33:48
Speaker
So to get to the buildings, they had to build stairs and ladders. So it's very, very bizarre. So they have these basically tunnels that they're filling up with literally like garbage, like dirt, rocks, of course, garbage, but garbage, animal carcasses, probably murder victims. Who the hell knows? What? All this crap.
00:34:05
Speaker
So all of this trash is what composes now the streets of downtown Seattle. So downtown Seattle, the streets are made of trash, basically. And there are tunnels down there. you can do the whole underground tour. The streets are paved with trash. Anyway, yeah. So again, very striking sense of like, this this place shouldn't be here. You know, what are we doing?
00:34:25
Speaker
All this weird stuff, you know. So the story, I'd heard that before, but this time... seems very bizarre. And then, of course, the friend of mine, he's from Europe. They decided to build the I-5 highway right down the middle of downtown Seattle. They're famous for that one, yeah. So he's standing there. He's a European guy. Now sell these cars. He's looking down, having a panic attack, like six like lanes on each side. Like, what's going on? So he's this horrible highway in the middle of the city that's built on trash that's going to fall into the ocean.
00:34:56
Speaker
So again, I'm really shitting on Seattle here. It's a nice city. i had a good time. i like the music, but it's kind of doomed and lived poorly designed. And unfortunately, I'll probably never go to Seattle again because it's in America. So anyway, that's just one Canadian's opinion. Okay, so that's ah Seattle. You go further south and west.
00:35:19
Speaker
You kind of come down the coast. You see this city of Olympia. um As you move away from Seattle, vibes don't really improve, right? you Really gorgeous landscapes. beautiful you have the evergreen trees you know green fields mountains ocean it's a really you know beautiful place uh in terms of nature but yes you're on the highway and there's like abandoned cooling towers power lines everywhere clear cuts logging trucks and ugly ugly cities just kind of a problem with canada i would say just nature is gorgeous or cities Oh, we build the ugliest goddamn cities.
00:35:58
Speaker
Don't try. just don't try. No, we don't. And anytime we have a nice old building, we tear it down. Particularly in Edmonton. Yeah, yeah. so Just put up a square. Put up an aluminum square. That's all you need.
00:36:11
Speaker
So I think, unfortunately, very hideous. So I went to Aberdeen, Washington. i was there by myself at that time. That was in 2012. So do you know what Aberdeen, Washington?
00:36:21
Speaker
Any associations? No. Dave? Yes. ah But, oh my god, i my... my my ah Nirvana right yeah yeah that's right yes so yeah you drive into you drive on the highway you kind of go past you go almost all the way to the coast you get to Grey's Harbor and actually we drive into Aberdeen they do have a big sign there in 2012 they had this as well it's 13 years ago just Aberdeen come as you are it's like oh that's nice yeah it's a sweet thing to do and You know, last the first time I was there, it was just kind of driving around.
00:36:54
Speaker
Kind of, a so again, creepy vibes about a girl comes on the radio like immediately, which I'm like, okay. yeah That's my favorite Nirvana song. This is like Kismet. Kind of nice. But the city itself actually is...
00:37:05
Speaker
Not that great. ah Not the nicest place. um I went you know to Kurt Cobain's house, you know go to that that famous bridge, all that stuff.
00:37:16
Speaker
It's very interesting and enlightening and very, very striking for me in terms of debunking a lot of the mythology. like my My own idea of Kurt Cobain right as a Nirvana fan. right Really interesting in terms of getting a sense of who the person was and sort of looking behind their self-mythologizing as well, I would say.
00:37:33
Speaker
So like, ah but but ah just to explore that a little bit, ah what was the misconception you had or what was the myth? Well, in that one particular, which I'll get to the idea, like, you know, you hear the song, something in the way, this whole idea. Oh yeah. I was such a neglected child. Like I was homeless and I lived under a bridge.
00:37:50
Speaker
Yes. So you thinking like this city, you're imagining sort of the city overpass, this poor child, like, you know, but by themselves, you know, shivering in the cold and you go there and it's, it's, it's a block away from his house.
00:38:03
Speaker
It's a tiny little bridge in a little, you know, a small little park. He clearly was like a kid who was like, I'm having a tantrum. Ah, got it. Okay. Sitting under the bridge for like an hour or two and then, okay, I'm going to go home. You know, really get the sense of like the, again, i could be wrong, but when you actually are there in person, you see it it's a block away, right? Like, it's not like he's...
00:38:25
Speaker
I don't know. It's hard to explain. Like I said, I could be. not miscon No, I totally get what you mean there, where you get the sense of like an unbelievably bleak situation. And instead you just see kind of a city.
00:38:38
Speaker
yeah it's ah Yeah, exactly, yes. It's a place. So going to places and seeing, oh no, they're just really places. And also, like for me personally, interesting, because the the town I grew up in is kind of similar.
00:38:49
Speaker
So, finally, 40 minutes in, looks like my recording, I'm going to get to the count
Kurt Cobain's Life and Myths
00:38:57
Speaker
of the point. So we're going take a psychological journey into the...
00:39:01
Speaker
ah mythology surrounding Kurt Cobain somebody I am a huge fan of again one of my little obsessions of course well ah maybe it not an obsession but you know interest since I was like 13 years old um what do you guys know about Kurt Cobain are you fans Nirvana fans I assume so yes we're all millennials here I mean, i'm in i'm I'm technically too old to be a millennial. I'm a little bit north, so is Tracy. But no, I'm i definitely Nirvana fan. I know a decent amount. I wouldn't say I'm an obsessive, but I can talk a lot about Nirvana.
00:39:34
Speaker
I know very little because I almost exclusively listen to sea shanties. Okay, that's right. Right. I can see. ah yeah I follow the beat of my own drum.
00:39:44
Speaker
Yeah, that's fair. And that drum is a bow run. yeah Is that so sea shanty lingo? yeah I'm not privy to. You guys are the musicians. I just, ah again... It's that two-headed beater drum.
00:39:58
Speaker
Ah, cool, cool. Yeah, anyways. Nice. See, I tried playing guitar when i was younger. i played Nirvana songs. They're relatively easy. Those three chords. So I'm going to just summarize sort of Cobain's life story and mythology. So again, Tracy, good thing you're not that aware because it will be new to you.
00:40:17
Speaker
yeah So is kind of the popular understanding. So he's born in Aberdeen, Washington. This is near Seattle. Kind of, okay, he's a happy and creative kid. But his life takes a dark turn because his parents got divorced when he about eight years old.
00:40:31
Speaker
He was like an outcast loser who's in school. he turned to music to sort of as a self-expression, right? He forms Nirvana in his twenty s And soon enough, they're the biggest rock band in the world and of the era, basically defining.
00:40:46
Speaker
Kurt Cobain sort of considered pretty quickly the voice of a generation, right? Generation X. i guess Is that you guys? Yeah. No, ah we i'd I'd call us cuss birds. We're between two. we're ah If you were to look at the southern boundary of Generation X and the northern boundary of millennials, where can be called in either one. So I've always felt that um I have the cultural references of Generation X, but the attitudes of a millennial.
00:41:11
Speaker
Same here, actually. Yeah, yeah I would say. Yeah. Upper lower generation X. Yeah, exactly. Upper lower millennial. Yeah. About the same. But yeah, so he's kind of a voice of a generation. Huge rock star, all this stuff. You know, Muslim Teen Spirit breaks in 91. So grunge music becomes mainstream.
00:41:30
Speaker
You see other bands, you know, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam. they're They're reaching mainstream success as well. Yeah. And then kurt Cobain marries Courtney Love, fellow rock star. And so their tumultuous relationship and Cobain's um at the time rumored but now confirmed heroin use draw draws kind of a quite a lot of bad press.
00:41:50
Speaker
So there's sort of the the bad boys, you know, kind of maligned in a lot of the media. There's a very famous Vanity Fair article, this stuff. Anyways, so all this stress was too much for him and he commits suicide or was murdered in 1994.
00:42:03
Speaker
So this is a popular conception. ah I do not believe he was murdered at all. I um ah just to interject, I think that's a misogynist fable. I'm a Courtney love defender. And I think the people who spend their time yeah hating Courtney love and Yoko Ono, uh, suck and don't like art.
00:42:22
Speaker
Thanks, Dave. Hole's a great band. Fuck you. Hole is an amazing band. Live through this. Again, i when i was 13, 14, was, I listened to it for like three years. Right.
00:42:33
Speaker
Loved them. Right. So yeah, I don't think he was murdered. Right. the, The popular conception, i think, I'd be curious if you polled the public.
00:42:43
Speaker
Probably more people think he was murdered. But I think, again, as you say, yeah and yeah, you put it better than me, Dave. I think those rumors are actually cruelly motivated and they're harmful to Cobain's survivors. He's a mother, a widow, a daughter. He's family, right? They're still surviving. And it's really cruel and sick to call somebody a murderer without evidence.
00:43:05
Speaker
Right. Yeah. Well, and like, I think it's misogynist. This horrifically depressed heroin addict becomes one of the most famous people on the planet overnight. The notion of killing yourself in that context is not completely beyond the, you know, bounds of possibility. Like it it's just, it's self evident. Courtney Love is ah an extremely imperfect person was apparently a dog shit mother.
00:43:32
Speaker
ah yeah And, you know, we don't need everybody to be a hero. But the notion that it's just it goes down to these like old tropes and archetypes in Western myth making.
00:43:49
Speaker
And if you look at the stories of the Romans, the stepmother did it comes up again and again whenever a emperor dies. It's the same goddamn thing. ah Yeah, I have, I genuinely believe it's, ah you know, a lot of people repeat it's like, not that, not very critically. They just kind of believe it. But clinging to Courtney Love killed Kurt Cobain because ah it's also just conspiracism. The notion that a bad thing has to have an actor ah and some sort of plot in order for the bad thing to be real because you can't accept that the world just sometimes sucks and a great artist ah kills himself.
00:44:27
Speaker
So what's the justification that people have for, or not justification, but the reason they have for Courtney Love killing Kurt Cobain? Like, how is that?
00:44:38
Speaker
That will be for next episode because I'm actually going to go into the conspiracy and in a bit more detail. oh Not the conspiracy per se but again, i again, the interesting thing about going to places, visiting places, looking at evidence, uh, psychogeography, geography these kind of explorations, trying to find, you know, the authentic human experience sort of,
00:44:59
Speaker
deflating these myths his death is probably the the greatest myth surrounding him i mean a lot of a lot of self mythologizing right but the conspiracy theory right yeah it's ah where john leddon's extremely senseless murder uh means that there has to be something bigger you no uh he was just very famous and you know sometimes shit happens Yeah, that's right. And people are, yeah, it's sort of, yeah. yeah So we'll we'll talk about more about the conspiracy theory and where that comes from and what the evidence is
00:45:33
Speaker
But yeah, sort of relating it to what was happening in his life as well. And hopefully that'll be an interesting episode because, yeah, I have to cover that next time, but I will get to it. So, okay. So yeah, so look the popular conception there. um Yeah. And so...
00:45:48
Speaker
Again, I was mentioning his possible murder and the conspiracy theories surrounding it. they Probably the most popularly known myths around Cobain. Like you say, Dave, people are just sort of offhand. Oh, yeah, something I heard. Right. oh Just something I heard. There was a documentary, I think. Yeah. And that's but that's the thing. And it gets pushed. like What I find fascinating, too, is the sort of Johnny Depp, Amber Heard scenario.
00:46:08
Speaker
michael god don't get me started on that yeah because even me i remember when this happened i i was kind of vaguely in the ether on social media was like oh i guess they're both bad people i don't know but then michael hobbs is like no if you look at the documents and human behavior this is textbook he is an alcoholic abuser and what she was doing was in reaction to that this is not hard it's not hard to believe she did nothing wrong And it was all being pushed by the media because people have reasons for doing that, right? Yeah, it's taking a very simple situation, a very obvious situation, and spinning it to be misogynist. Again, another wonderful thread in this tale.
00:46:50
Speaker
misogyny Right. So anyway, um like i say, anecdotally, when I talk about Kurt Cobain with people, most people are, oh, do you think he was murdered? He was murdered, wasn't he? Right. To me, ah the myth is that k Courtney Love had Kurt Cobain murdered for his money, which frankly flies in the face of all of the evidence and really does require one to ignore the realities of actual plausible human behavior.
00:47:11
Speaker
so next week or next, not next week, next episode, when we get into that some more, ah Yeah, we'll see what I mean, because it's there is really absurd. There was also a private eye that Courtney Lovett hired before Kurt Cobain had died, who tried basically to... And again, people do this all the time.
00:47:30
Speaker
ah tried to Is trying to claim that foul play was involved. And then there's stuff like there weren't fingerprints. Anyway, Jen's going to go into all of it, but the short version is ah There was one person saying he was murdered and therefore he was murdered and Courtney did it for the money, despite being an extremely successful and very wealthy person of her own right.
00:47:50
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And there's so many, again, so much evidence just to show that, no, this is pretty clearly straightforward, straightforwardly a suicide. And I want to get into that a bit more too next time in terms of talking about things like addiction and access to weapons.
00:48:07
Speaker
There's a lot of mundane shit going on here. Normal, everyday reasons why people suffer and eventually sometimes commit suicide. Mundane reasons that we ignore. We want this grand conspiracy, this grand myth.
00:48:19
Speaker
And again, this ties back to psychogeography in the sense that like you don't have to go to his house and see it for yourself. No, this isn't like magic. it you It's thinking about human behavior and then you know thinking about people as actual human beings and visiting sites that they're associated with them can help with that, I think.
00:48:37
Speaker
So yeah, I sort of feel like if you want to understand a cultural figure, you want to demythologize them and see them in human terms to go back to the reality of their lives. So psychogeography, psychogeographical explorations, you know, they can facilitate this understanding.
00:48:52
Speaker
So to me, they're kind of coming to terms with the mundanity of life. Because again, there is the the myth and then the reality. So the everyday physical materials. objects, you know, with which people interacted, things like this. You can go to archives, maybe see letters people wrote, things like that. Like it's, I'm really interested in and kind of fascinated by going to places where people I admire lived, right?
00:49:14
Speaker
Kind of one of my hobbies when I travel. So I don't know. And again, we kind of touched on this before. Like, I don't, it depends where I am. You don't necessarily feel a vibe. Recently, I went to Heptonstall, Sylvia Plath's grave.
00:49:28
Speaker
That was a fascinating and very, very, to me, ah instructive and really changed the way i viewed her life and her myth as well, which I'm not going to talk about here because it's a whole nother topic.
00:49:41
Speaker
hu But yes. ah So, yeah. Yeah. So and just to interject briefly, I get I get what you're spinning here, which is if you're to understand the story and understand that these stories which are particularly tied to places, if you were actually in the in that place and in that presence, suddenly you're seeing things from a completely different perspective and seeing past to the myth into these sort of, ah you know, very real, tangible things in front of you.
00:50:12
Speaker
Yeah. And the vibes, you know, yeah yeah exactly yeah, the vibes, yeah. The mysterious vibes. They come from within, they come from without. They surround us all anyway. Yeah, it's ah yeah.
00:50:24
Speaker
All right. So, yes, I think mundanity is important. Visiting these places, very instructive. I'm going to give the broad outlines of Cobain's life in more factual terms, and I'm going to kind of put them in the psychogeographical context of the places where he lived.
Mapping Cobain's Life in Washington
00:50:37
Speaker
especially Western Washington. And I think he's interesting in terms of attaching place with geography because he already is, you know, Nirvana and the grunge scene is so tied to Seattle, to the Pacific Northwest already. So strongly.
00:50:51
Speaker
I would say more so than most bands because a lot of bands you're like, you don't know where they're from. They're not necessarily strongly associated with their place, with their city. Some bands are just like from wherever. now the The Seattle grunge bands have more. And again, it does vary because there are always music that comes from scenes.
00:51:10
Speaker
ah And if you get into things like East versus West Coast hip hop and things like that, then yeah, the... yeah ah that's going to be I'm sure the psychogeography behind that is fascinating. Right.
00:51:22
Speaker
Yeah. When you think about Nirvana, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Mudhoney, etc. They are Seattle and that Seattle sound of that very specific like five years or so period.
00:51:36
Speaker
is ah really, yeah, it's particularly in rock music, I would say, more than other genres, because i can't think of movements in rock particularly, because like punk, hip hop, yeah, the city matters a lot. But in rock, it's usually like, if I think, ah like, I don't particularly know what part of England the Who come from, and it doesn't necessarily matter. Yeah, that's right.
00:52:03
Speaker
I mean, sure, a Who fan is going to kick my ass for saying that, but it doesn't ah matter to the Who. like ah Like Seattle matters to Nirvana is what I'm saying. Yeah, it's the the more clear association, right? Yeah. And then sort of the, again, wrapping up with the mythology of the city and, you you know, going to Seattle now, sort of 35, 30 years later, or more, actually, after all this happened, you know, it's it was me and my friend, we're basically just a Gen Xer and an old millennial, like hanging out. Oh, yeah, Eddie Vedder had breakfast at this pub, right? Or whatever, this this cafe. So, you know, and everyone's just like us. They all have gray hair. wearing their Nirvana t-shirts, like it's fine. And i was fine. I accept that. i accept that I'm a tourist, sort of, you know, indulging in some nostalgia, but I think that's fine.
00:52:49
Speaker
Anyway, so, so yeah. And I think we, with Crooked Bait, what particularly interests me in the geographical element is I feel like it really maps on to his sort of rise and fall, I guess. um Starting off in Aberdeen, you know, moving up to Olympia to Seattle, kind of breaking away from that redneck scene. know, ends up in L.A. ends up back in Seattle in a mansion.
00:53:12
Speaker
and that's where he ends it. Right. think there's interesting mappings, which, again, will get will become, I hope, more clear next episode as well. I think it's interesting kind of parallels. So he's born in on February 21st, 1967, in Washington.
00:53:29
Speaker
So couple of towns this is on the coast, Gray's Harbor. It's right on the coast of Washington state.
Aberdeen's Influence on Cobain
00:53:35
Speaker
It's on a, again, inlet river inlet. So Hokium cause it's funny. This town's called cosmopolis.
00:53:42
Speaker
that's probably ten thousand people That is something someone made up in a mediocre science fiction, graphic novel. i Yes, very funny. So towns of Hokeum, Cosmopolis, and Aberdeen, Washington, named after the town in you know Scotland, they form essentially a coterminous urban space located on Grey's Harbor near the Pacific coast. So it's, ah it's yeah, the It's all one urban place, it just called different things in different regions, kind of once one place. So Washington, or sorry, Aberdeen is about 175 kilometers from Seattle. I didn't do the conversion to miles, but it's probably about 100, 100 something. So Hokeum is a hospital on the hill there. kind of runs down to these little residential streets. Not that nice. Again, a lot of like sort of clapboard houses.
00:54:30
Speaker
Very, very saggy and damp. Like the whole place is very, very damp and wet and rainy. So yeah you you you can see there's a house where like his original house that Cobain was taken to as a baby. It's basically like a shack in someone's backyard, like a little gray shack. Like these are very, very nondescript places. Right. It's just a sort of like damp, cruddy little seaside town.
00:54:53
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. The friend I was with, that she's like, man, if it wasn't for Crook of Bane, nobody would even come to this place. Nobody would care about it. It's like, yep. Because interestingly enough, when I was there at first, there wasn't that many tourists. they You know, they have like a statue in the park in this, but now way more tourists are there.
00:55:12
Speaker
at the Memorial Park. So it's kind of interesting. But yeah, so yeah, yeah you you can go to the house he grew up in. This is kind of yellow cottage, little peaked roof. Again, pretty nondescript, right?
00:55:23
Speaker
You still got the yeah old screen door, newspaper racks, very mid-century house, apparently still owned by the Cobain family. And it has been difficult to sell. So I have to check for more recent information, but there's a really interesting Pitchfork article about that.
00:55:41
Speaker
They just can't sell the house. They had it up for half a million dollars. Like, oh yeah. And still the interiors are still the same basically as when he lived there. His graffiti is still on his bedroom wall. Like it's kind of incredible, but as far as I could tell, privately owned, it's not a museum. So it's just there. The link to that Pitchfork article will be in the show notes.
00:55:59
Speaker
Again, neighborhood as a whole is not that great. Chain link fences in the yards. Yeah. Houses look pretty rough, you know, paved streets are pretty crumbly. ah The downtown, again, things are falling into disrepair, essentially, in the entire place.
00:56:13
Speaker
So it's very similar to, again, I grew up my hometown is kind of similar, but actually a little bit nicer, just because we have a social welfare net in Canada. so it was kind of similar vibes though right just suburban kind of small town you know shabby upper lower middle class kind of situation again seaside shanty town remember my family the house i grew up in uh was right near the pits they called it lovely right by the river let's go to the pits you know yeah lots of things to do yeah yeah hang around you step on a rusty nail you know oh beautiful uh
00:56:52
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Again, what are my phobias? I gotta to get a booster. Just thinking anyway so just thinking about it, I gotta get a booster now. o ah So yeah, if you're sort of familiar with the Cobain mythology, and this kind of what talking about before, you you sort of heard that he was homeless and like living under a bridge you know over the Wishka River. So this is the Yonge Street Bridge.
00:57:11
Speaker
So when you visit, you know it does indeed span the Wishka. But again, it's it's like a block away, a block or two away from the house he grew up in. So again, in in your mind, it sort of this... He had a sort of a grand loser kind of mythology that he set up, which again, I don't think was entirely accurate. And sort of maybe exaggerating the extent to which he you know was homeless so even like krishna vaselic who is the basis for nirvana was like this is a tidal river you floods you can't sleep under there for any period of time like it's just something he made up maybe you know you can see him again like i would do that i'd run away from home and sit in the park for an hour and then go home right it's yeah sort of this sense of yeah and there's normal childhood stuff
00:57:57
Speaker
And you can still be like a sad, miserable teen and run away and like flee your home, just like hang out under a bridge to have like some isolation because you might not get that otherwise. And it's, ah but it's also not living rough, um which is the implication and something in the way. And I get, that's fine. Storytelling is mythologizing and the grand loser narrative is his entire thing.
00:58:25
Speaker
Yeah. And again, and again, and the guy was, you know, very sad and melodramatic about his feelings and who among us. And i I know I'm like, it's too relatable. And that's the tragic thing about him dying so young is, again, you listen to the last podcast on the left, does a really good series on the conspiracy theory specifically.
00:58:45
Speaker
okay murder theory um and he was like yeah they were kids like dying at 27 i remember being in her van i found like 13 like oh 27 so old and now i'm like my god yeah you were a child like maybe 27 is so young it's shocking and then also you know In that era, depressed Gen Xer, yeah, you know, again, but the the point kind of is it's it's it's relatable in a lot of ways, but it's not as melodramatic. It is just like, yeah, everyone had a shitty childhood in some ways. You know, we all had these experiences. So again, it's just interesting. So yeah, he grows up in Aberdeen, he' various communities
Cobain's Music and Identity
00:59:22
Speaker
in the area. He spends time in as well. So Montesano, Washington is right nearby, a 20 minute drive down the highway.
00:59:30
Speaker
I do this in driving terms. that's That's the only way to get around in North America, particularly in the States. So a lot of this driving distance. So you're driving from Washington to Aberdeen. It's like 20 minutes away. Very, again, similar, small kind of run downtown. You have some of the older, you know nicer Victorian style houses on the hill, but... you know, seen better days.
00:59:52
Speaker
The band, the Melvins. So those, those guys were from, they were friends and mentors to Kurt Cobain. They were from Montessano. So he saw Cobain, one of his first gigs, he saw the Melvins perform live in the parking lot of the Thriftway grocery store. Amazing. The Melvins are cool as hell. I am a Melvins fan. Yes. I saw them. Saw them a couple months ago.
01:00:13
Speaker
Oh, damn. Yeah. for you You tricked. Yeah. It was ah very lucky. It was very cool. ah Looking up King Buzzo's politics, though, is a bad idea. Good live show. Good live show, though.
01:00:24
Speaker
He's one of those, oh, both sides suck kind of guys. Anyway, maybe he changes his mind. Maybe changes his mind. It's true. There's worse. and Whatever. i ah My rant about the politics of musicians will be another day.
01:00:37
Speaker
They're not necessarily the most ah politically savvy folks. It's fine. They're allowed to be morons. It's all good. That's right. Yeah, that's right. Let people be wrong. um with There's bigger problems to deal with than whether or not a musician shares my political views. Honestly.
01:00:53
Speaker
That's the thing. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Good point. Yes. So he sees them perform at the thriftway grocery store parking lot. That thriftway is still there. And I bought a hoagie there in 2012 for breakfast.
01:01:05
Speaker
Delicious. The day I was having is fun. So yeah, Crooked Bane definitely want to mythologize his own childhood. So of course you you do read conflicting things, like you know, because the way people feel again, like you pointed out sort of earlier, Dave is things feel bigger than they are. And when you get older, you realize, okay, I was being melodramatic, right? Things weren't that big of a deal. But so Charles Cross and his biography, Heavier Than Heaven, he notes that Kurt Cobain did have a lot of friends, right? He's a good looking, funny kid. He played in bands.
01:01:33
Speaker
So he wasn't like this huge, totally shunned loser. Everybody hated, you know, his childhood. ah Though, again, we're kind of splitting hairs on a way because... It was less than idyllic, though. So his parents did get divorced, and that was traumatic for him, of course, right? Seems like there was some parental neglect.
01:01:51
Speaker
I mean, i don't know. Parents getting divorced in the 70s and kind of going off and dating other people, kind of getting in getting more into their their new family. And really, that would be very painful for a child, right? So I think, obviously, that's traumatic for him. Well, and again, was...
01:02:05
Speaker
He was a depressed heroin addict who killed himself. I'm sure he came by it honestly, but the grand loser narrative can also have been uh, and again, not, not even entirely a self, uh, self exaggeration, just like a myth that gets spread around and he just like, lets it go.
01:02:21
Speaker
Just fine because it works. Yeah, that's right. And it, you know, it was a style at the time, certainly sold records. And I do wonder like, if I didn't listen to Nirvana so much, would I've been a little bit happier?
01:02:35
Speaker
When was a teenager, I do kind of wonder, like, to me now reflecting on it, it's sort of chicken to the egg because, you know, being a depressed, bullied kid myself, listening to Nirvana was very comforting. But then I am kind of wallowing, I realized later. So, you you know, it's ah chicken to the egg. I'm sure if you listen to cheerful music, you'd probably still be a depressed, bullied kid just with less relatable music.
01:02:57
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. like I don't get this at all. Yeah, I don't. the I mean, like to an extent, it could be. a like Being the sad outsider was definitely an affectation of a 90s teenager. But at the same time, i don't think the listening to depressing music makes people depressed because Lord knows there's a lot of depression right now. And I wouldn't say that the music is extra depressing. The music is like the most popular music on the radio is pretty upbeat compared to what you had in the early 90s that's yeah definitely true the early 90s was like all right we're taking this making this a little bit grimmer yeah it's kind of funny but yeah so you know his parents divorced and he's kind of shuttled between his dad and his mom and he's kind of a you know he's rebelling you know he's a sensitive kid too
01:03:47
Speaker
And I, you know, I relate to this again, who doesn't very sensitive kid myself, you know, very easily bullied, you know, this kind of stuff, you know, and I went through my rebellious phase, my goth, my grunge phase in high school, pretty same, pretty similar trajectory, actually. So every kid kind of does this, especially if you're a bit of an outcast, right? So again, pretty powerful. just Straight into nerd and stayed there.
01:04:11
Speaker
See, I should have done that. I should have just hang in the library. That's what I realize now. If I can go back, the library was the sanctuary that I didn't realize it was. I should have just, ah yeah, gone and hid with the books.
01:04:23
Speaker
But yeah, so, you know, there's tales of him sleeping on friends' porches. So Dale Crover, the drummer from the Melvins, could sleep on his parents' porch. yeah Who hasn't, though, right? Yeah. It's pretty far from the course. Yeah.
01:04:36
Speaker
slept on my friend's couch or porches occasionally. Well, I haven't. I mean, that was in the context of a sleepover, not homelessness. So it's a bit different. But and anyway, this is also all happening in a little logging town where it's a bunch of red, not to be mean, but in Cobain's opinion, bunch of rednecks.
01:04:52
Speaker
It rains all the time, right? you want a sense of what Aberdeen's like to live in, it's kind of funny to, again, browse Reddit threads. Again, psychogeography. What do other people feel like when they go to these places? It's kind of interesting. This is from...
01:05:06
Speaker
The R Washington subreddit. This is from fishy account three years ago. Aberdeen is not a good place to live. Sorry. Salt water in the air wreaks havoc on houses.
01:05:16
Speaker
The poverty rate is high and drug abuse is rampant. Yeah. Okay. It seems about accurate. Yeah. Yeah. It's from ah our Wikipedia subreddit, AutomaticBlue1878, 10 months ago. Here's what he says, or she, or they.
01:05:30
Speaker
I was so excited when I first went because it was Kurt Cobain's hometown and I was bitterly and deeply disappointed. i mean, again, what were you expecting though, right? And they continue.
01:05:41
Speaker
Let's just say there's a reason Cobain was as musically angry as he was. because that town sucks so bad which again to be bitterly disappointed I was because I wasn't disappointed I was like okay this is more relatable i understand where he's coming from a bit better I appreciate his music on a whole nother level I guess but I didn't I wasn't from a crud hole relate Yeah, I mean, it sounds mean, but yeah, it's like, huh. But you do, you know, you relate, and you know, a bit a bit more, I think. Yeah. Right. So but it's funny, I wouldn't I wasn't bitterly disappointed at Aberdeen. kind knew to expect like, again, I don't know what you'd be expecting.
01:06:19
Speaker
hu Right. But yeah. So again, remember, Cobain died at 27. So he spends the vast majority of his life. He's in Aberdeen for 20 years. Yeah. Aberdeen and Enverance, Cosmopolis, know, the the glittering lights. And Aberdeen itself is about 17,000 people.
01:06:33
Speaker
So pretty relatively small town. yeah So his experiences in Aberdeen are reflected, of course, in his music, diaries, art. So again, looking at the Wikipedia article for the album Bleach, again, i need to get some more sophisticated sources, but this is pretty good for now. I don't have my books with me.
01:06:52
Speaker
When I'm near my books again, I'll have better sources. But yeah, so Cobain told Sounds journalist John Robb that most of the lyrics on the Bleach album are about my life in Aberdeen. Yeah. Fair. What you know.
01:07:03
Speaker
Yeah. So, you know, the song Mr. Mustache. Again, I'm going to have links to these videos because i Bleach is are underrated, I think. I don't love it. i think there's some good songs on there. i listen it's to it occasionally. Yeah.
01:07:14
Speaker
Good album. Exactly. It is actually, yeah. And honestly, a lot of the grunge from that era, I don't like. I really quite like bleach. So Mr. Mustache is sort of a criticism of the macho guys, you know, macho redneck kind of guys living in Aberdeen. The song Swap Meat. So if you're listening to this podcast, go listen to Swap Meat right now. It's a beautiful song.
01:07:34
Speaker
It's a very vivid portrayal, sort of an elderly couple who live on the road, you know, going from swap meat to swap meat and selling their handmade goods. So Swap Meat, if you don't know, is a flea market, basically.
01:07:45
Speaker
yeah So it's a really, it's a great song. Yeah. Conveys something, you know, there's selling trinkets made of seashells, driftwood and burlap. Right. So interesting. ne Yeah. So it's a great, great song. And he can vividly, sorry. He also vividly conveys the dark side of Zaberdine life, but there's a lot of beauty in it too. So probably my favorite Nirvana song is about a girl from the bleach album.
01:08:07
Speaker
And it basically, it's a gorgeous, like jangly pop punk song about sponging off his girlfriend, Tracy Miranda. So i love that song.
01:08:18
Speaker
It's a great tune. Yeah. So he kiuroba lives in Aberdeen in the Aberdeen area until he's 20 years old, roughly. And he moves to Olympia, Washington with the affer said aforementioned, I mean, Tracy Miranda.
01:08:31
Speaker
and here's where I'm going to take a break and pause. That's what I got so far, because I'm going to continue on to Olympia. Some of the ethical things there mapping to how Kurt Cobain's attitude and philosophy of life and of music and art were we're sort of influenced by, uh, indie aesthetics and indie ideals in Olympia. And then he signs to a major record label, becomes famous and has all this conflict and so
Upcoming Episodes Preview
01:08:57
Speaker
forth. So yeah, we'll get to that in the next episode. Well, thank you very much, Jen. Uh, psychogeography of Kurt Cobain and cursed places is, ah and also, ah
01:09:09
Speaker
Aberdeen Washington is a shithole in this essay. I will. I love that. mean I realized love hating on a town though. I love hating on a town. It brings me joy. I'm to be hating on my own town, too. and And I will be coming back to the Pacific Northwest in another episode. ah One thing you hear with the grunge scene is people say, oh, what was it? there something in the water? And yes, there was stuff in the water and in the air and in the dirt and in the food. And I'll talk about that in know probably a couple of weeks. Was it exciting? Yeah. The Pacific Northwest is a fascinating, troubling place.
01:09:48
Speaker
Again, very beautiful in terms of nature, but it also seems to me like an abomination. because This is a take I just never heard because the Pacific Northwest is always kind of described as an idyllic paradise with, you know, Seattle being a troubled city that despite being troubled is an okay town and then a bunch of and then a bunch of fascists out in the woods. And this gets yes but anyways i'm fascinated to see where you go from here thank you so much thanks okay so yes that was my tale of kirkobane psychogeography ah let's go out and have some authentic experiences everybody that was the wonder camera for this week um again that might be a two-parter episode we'll see how we edit it out tracy dave any parting thoughts for our listeners
01:10:38
Speaker
Knowing nothing about this topic, I am absolutely fascinated by it. All right. So I can't hear that hear the next part. Fantastic. And knowing a little bit about this topic, I am also fascinated because I only know a little bit as a proper dilettante. So I'm very excited. Thank you so much, everyone, for listening to The Wonder Camera.
01:10:58
Speaker
Bye. Bye. Bye. Thank you for listening to The Wonder Camera. Find us under The Wonder Camera on Blue Sky, YouTube and Instagram.