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06 - The Kurt Cobain Tragical History Tour - part 2
46 Plays2 months ago
Join us for the final episode of Jen's look into the life of Kurt Cobain.
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Transcript
Introduction and Corrections
00:00:25
Speaker
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to The Wonder Camera. My name is Jen Rempel. I am here with David Powell and Tracy Anderson-Powell. And we are here to share something fascinating that we have an interest in. And ah in this episode, I'm going to be doing part two of my psychogeographical tour of Kurt Cobain's Washington state, ah the Kurt Cobain Tragical History Tour. So where we left off last episode was basically making fun of Aberdeen and calling it a shithole.
00:00:58
Speaker
So I do feel kind of bad about that. You know, people live in Aberdeen, Washington, and We're sorry for your loss about living in Aberdeen, also Cobain, but mostly Aberdeen. That's right. I do want to make a quick correction. I said Kurt Cobain was born on February 21st. He was born on February 20th. So ah fine. Made a mistake of a day. Typo. We
Kurt Cobain's Surprising Connections
00:01:19
Speaker
want to make ah we want all of our listeners to understand ah that we take our corrections seriously. And so if any of you are inveterate pedants, ah come at us. We will defeat you. Especially inveterate. Yeah.
00:01:34
Speaker
Tracy? Or you can send us an email at contact at thewondercavern.ca. You can. But one thing I will remind you of is we are three dilettantes, so we're doing our best. And ah my brain's full of holes and lesions and I've had COVID a couple times, so I'm struggling on a daily basis, as I'm sure we all are. But anyway, brain fart, February 20th, fine. Okay, so he's leaving Aberdeen. I wanted to show you guys a really bizarre website I found.
00:02:00
Speaker
This is really off-topic. But it kind of blew my mind. So last summer, going send you link in the... I'm so excited. Last summer, i was reading a book about somebody else, and I discovered this website called famouskin.com. And it's pretty wild. Everybody in America is related. All the famous people are related. So this is a list of famous relatives of Kurt Cobain. These are back to, as you can see, the Yeah. Wow. This is the most American.
00:02:29
Speaker
Oh, my God. But guess who he's cousins with? If you go down, you can see some very interesting ah relations. going send you this one. Some kind of surprise me.
00:02:40
Speaker
you open in the link. I mean six cousin removed six times from FDR basically means not related. So Kurt Cobain could have ethically had sex with FDR and Lavinia Warren, the dwarf circus performer.
00:02:53
Speaker
Exactly. But very famous. The podcast Evil Men, ah they did a Dahmer episode and they were like, he kind looked like Kirk. But what what I love about Evil Men, and I know we shouldn't be promoting other podcasts, but it is funny. They're always trying to relate their 90s stories back to what Kirk Cobain was up to. But they're talking about Dahmer and they're like, oh, Jeffrey Dahmer kind looked like Kirk Cobain. And sure enough.
00:03:13
Speaker
ah He kind of does. They do. Oh, my God. And he's related. ninth Ninth cousin, three times removed from Jeffrey Dahmer through one Nathaniel Warren. ah Taylor Swift.
00:03:24
Speaker
Taylor Swift, related to Crookabane, ninth cousin, three times removed through also Nathaniel Warren. So she's related to Dahmer as well. So anyway, blowing the lid wide open on all these celebrities. You got Marilyn Monroe, and Emily Dickinson, not related to Kurt, but to bunch of other people. So it's kind of wild. So the Nepo baby discourse, I know it's been popular. You know, we don't want people to succeed based on their birth name, but if they actually have talent.
00:03:46
Speaker
And of course, thousands of people were descended from these same people. But it is interesting. George W. Bush, the world's greatest Nepo baby. That's right.
00:03:56
Speaker
Yeah. it Related to Kurt Cobain. Back in the 1600s, of course. Viggo Mortensen is one of his cousins. Ted's cousin. That is so many generations back. where the It is is. But it's fascinating because my family, i think on my grandmother's side, we could talk me we can trace back to the Huguenots in France. oh That's where I get my, i don't know. yeah I guess I kind of side with the Protestants, but they're both wrong. Anyway, so yeah. But but for the most part, i very obscure family. Anyway, I thought that
Kurt Cobain's Early Life and Struggles
00:04:22
Speaker
was interesting. i thought I would share it with you just because it's kind of fun.
00:04:24
Speaker
So that is that. Yeah. Well, it's kind of fun to play around with. We have a link to that. We'll put that in our show notes. Okay. He is a two things. He's related to every celebrity in the U S but not closely. And it also tells me that every, every celebrity in the U S is a wasp.
00:04:39
Speaker
Yes. That is the thing. they these are This is like the WASP database, actually. Very few people sort of outside this Mayflower, Plymouth Colony.
00:04:50
Speaker
So these are basically Plymouth Colony kind of type people. Some of them, yeah they date back to like the like England and the like like Charlemagne even. I think Edward Norton is related to Charlemagne. Some very bizarre. I mean, everybody's related. When you go back far enough, that's the thing everybody is related to every single person who was alive in Europe in like 900 AD, which actually is too late for Charlemagne. family evolved from potatoes.
00:05:14
Speaker
No, no, but that's the thing. is the but is that is that If you follow the biblical begats of the Holy Roman Empire, potato, begat, potato, begat, potato, begat, potato, but there's probably someone who fucked Charlemagne mixed in there. That's right. Or some other random monarch because the population was so much smaller.
00:05:31
Speaker
So Charlemagne really thinks potatoes are neat. Yeah. mar ah That is a good Simpsons reference. I'm impressed. And I also want to apologize too because I feel like a good drinking game for this podcast would be every time ah we make us we quote the Simpsons or make a reference, take a drink. yeah Dangerous game. I'll talk about that a bit later. but ok i'll right i drink I'm drinking tea today so I'll be all right. Okay, good. i've coffee I have coffee and diet Dr. Pepper. so Okay, so our last episode, we left off with Kurt Cobain, shithole Olympia, or not Olympia, I'm sorry, Aberdeen. He leaves Aberdeen. He's about 20 years old.
00:06:06
Speaker
He's moving to Olympia, Washington. So just say recap a bit here, the history of Nirvana. So Nirvana is Kurt Cobain, guitarist, lead singer, chief songwriter. He met Krist Novoselic, the bassist, become the bassist, in Aberdeen. They met in high school, kind of jamming,
00:06:23
Speaker
playing guitar with each other, with friends, that kind of thing. Navaslic picks up the bass. Kurt's playing guitar. So they're trying to start a band. Kurt, from an early age, wants to be in a rock band. So Kurt and Chris, just before they go to Olympia, though, they do live together for about a year in a shack. It's called a shack. And they had sort of A kiddie pool filled with turtles in the living room, which which is what I understand. So this wasn't ah the nicest place to live. That's amazing. Yeah, Kurt's about 19. So his body for Charles R. Cross calls this the shack year.
00:06:55
Speaker
ahead. Oh, my God. I was about to say that aside from the fact that where we live is too cold, a kiddie pool with a turtle in it is very much the vibe of the hamlet we're in. Honestly, yep. I could i could totally see that.
00:07:07
Speaker
Yeah, it's just... lot of houses that are kind of shack-like in that area, too. so yeah Oh, absolutely. And I think we talked about... What was it? Shacks and can money in episode one? Anyways, that is the... ah basic residence and form of currency out here. And ah we will defend our can money. And if you come for us, ah we will use strange improvised rule weapons. Good, good. And, you know, you don't want to go for somebody's shack either. True. No, no, not at all. did Those shacks are violently defended. They should be.
00:07:39
Speaker
you got have your shack. This particular shack, you can't visit it anymore. It was torn down because it was a public health hazard. So you can find photos online. This is in Aberdeen. So Charles R. Cross calls this year between 19 and 20 for Kurt. So him and Chris Navsalic living together in the shack. He calls it the shack year. You can find pictures again online of the shack. It's gone now. So at this point, Kurt, he's been doing drugs, you know, as a adolescent sort of smoking pot here and there. This year, he gets heavy into drinking and drugs.
00:08:09
Speaker
So mostly beers, weed and huffing aerosols. He likes to kind of do anything. oh he just loves to do all the drugs. Already, he's 19. and i he kind of was yeah I have befriended a number of pretty serious drug users and all of them. Like I once asked someone to make a tier list of drugs and at the bottom, at the very bottom was in all caps, any aerosol. They're just...
00:08:35
Speaker
so rough on you they cause such a brutal headache most of the time and they destroy you in a way that is so fast and intense that other drugs often pale like to become as we would say around here methy you need to smoke a lot of meth you can't do just a couple meths and then you know start getting the lesions on your face and the bad teeth but uh when you're an for a long period of time that wears on you. But aerosols, you're just, you know, I don't even know who you're going look like if you do too many aerosols. Yeah, and I did not know that. That's actually interesting to me because I've never done aerosols. I don't plan to. You sort of, just think, know, Charlie Day from Always Sunny, just the paint on his face. And they seem like a joke, but actually is extremely serious and very dangerous, which I, again, didn't quite realize the extent to which it will destroy you. But yeah, stay away from those. He's getting to those. didn't even know it was thing. Oh, huffing gas? I mean, that's been on the news. Yeah.
00:09:34
Speaker
That has one aerosol. And nitrous would be another, which is probably the most popular. And even I've dabbled a little bit. ah But ah it's one of those things where if it's sometimes food, it's a very small amount and it's okay. But people get addicted very easily.
00:09:49
Speaker
And ah that ah messes up your brain pretty fast, allegedly. Yeah. That's a thing with drugs. I don't judge people who use them. I think actually they're fun and fine a lot of times. It's the hugeget it's it's what the drug is and what it does to you and the amount you take.
00:10:04
Speaker
And like again, we'll talk about that in more detail, of course. Oh, yeah. Really quickly, too. if I know all my episodes are probably going to come with like a content warning. I'm talking about suicide in this one and addiction.
00:10:15
Speaker
If you or anybody you know is feeling suicidal, take it seriously. This is just a PSA. I feel like I'm being serious here, but we'll talk about this
Influence of Olympia and Indie Music
00:10:23
Speaker
more later. Go get help. Maybe we'll have a link to suicide hotline because that's an important thing to do, which we'll talk about, is if we're talking about suicide, I'm also in this episode in no way going to romanticize it.
00:10:34
Speaker
It's horrible, sad, tragic event. If you are feeling suicidal, if your friends are, you know, somebody who is... talk to somebody. That is the main thing you must do. Okay. So now that over with. So living in a shack, huffing aerosols.
00:10:48
Speaker
He's writing a lot of music though. He's trying to form a band. He's really, really obsessed with this. Although he's also apparently obsessed with suicide and early death at this time. So he's already, his friends are saying, yeah, he's already talking about dying young.
00:10:59
Speaker
kind of ah an idea he has. But, you know, teenagers, young people, we have this idea lot. You know, this is pretty common. So despite his talk of these dark subjects, he is focused on forming a band. So he's spending most of his time writing music. A lot of the songs he'd write sort of in this Aberdeen period, they're going to appear on Incesticide. That's an album of B-sides and singles.
00:11:21
Speaker
i know what During this time. Yeah, it's a good one. ill like some of those tracks. He works part time as a maintenance man in Ocean Shores, Washington. So he was at the Polynesian ah Resort, which I did stay there. me and my friends stayed there last summer because Curcobain worked there. And I don't think that that place has probably not changed since 87. I'm like, I'm sure he cleaned the very room we're staying in. It's interesting. Yeah.
00:11:44
Speaker
I love this hobby of yours. ah i love this hobby of yours of following in the footsteps of ah artists you admire. And yeah, anyway, and i know that's the entire point of psychogeography and why we're here in the first place. But it's something that has never occurred to me as something to drive me. And you're making it far more appealing and interesting to me than it was previously.
00:12:06
Speaker
I'm glad to hear that. That's good to hear. Because, yeah, this is kind of what I do. Like, I love traveling. You guys know this. This is kind of what I just do. I just like to go. And, you know, again, being a dilettante, having a variety of interests, liking a lot of different people and finding them fascinating, there's a lot of places to go. And Aberdeen in particular, like, again, sometimes you end up in not very nice places. One of their early drummers, I forget which drummer it was, was from Tacoma. And when he went to Aberdeen for the first time, he's like, oh, my God, this whole town is a slum.
00:12:33
Speaker
So... If any of you are from Aberdeen and want to defend your town that we've been shedding on for the last, i don't know, this is part two, so hour and a half to two hours, probably for another hour after this, come in with your best defense of Aberdeen and we will record an advertisement for Aberdeen, Washington. I'll write the music myself and it will be beautiful. We'll shout out Aberdeen. And unless somebody does come up to defend it, it's a shed hole. And that's the point of the story.
00:13:04
Speaker
Yay. Thank you guys. That's a wonderful idea, Dave. Cause I will say like, look, I shouldn't place like this all the time, but I do, i have an affection for places like this too. It's interesting to look at a place where somebody grew up and go, okay, yeah, in a way it's relatable. i you know i didn't the The town I grew up in was not, I would say, was more economically viable and you know not as run down, but it's relatable too. And places like this that are kind of crappy, people still live there and that's their home. And I you know want to just acknowledge that too, that places can be crappy, but also, and that's kind of part of the psycho of psychogeography too, like with Alan Moore.
00:13:40
Speaker
His idea was, look, if the place you're you're from sucks... It creates a mythology around it, right? So Kirkabane at least helped with that, with the mythology. But actually, go ahead. i I have a strong love of a really shitty town.
00:13:54
Speaker
Yes. And often, anyone who knows me will know that I love to make fun of local towns near where I live. That ah because of the rural towns in our area, ours is a little nicer than most of them. But it's certainly not like a wealthy, well-to-do, hoity-toity place. It's just we have a...
00:14:12
Speaker
you know, we're generally growing, but there is something about the culture and magic of just kind of coming from a rough place to grow up with the depressed economy and nothing's new and stuff like that. That is also, I think, essential and good. And again, good artists can come from the most privileged places in the world, but you also need art with a lot of, you know, with ah bones and teeth mixed in and things like that. And you kind of got to know some rougher places to be able to do some yeah very evocative dave yes yeah i think of nico case i'm going to talk about her a bit more a different episode i think but nico case from tacoma washington writes very evocatively of the pacific northwest as well and definitely about the the rougher sides of life there but actually we we we're not going to make fun of aberdeen anymore i think um we're we're going to make fun of seattle
00:15:03
Speaker
Sort of. yeah Yeah, we're going to make fun lot places. This actually might be a bit more of a serious one than last time, but we'll be don't worry. Fun will be made. um so this is the end of Kurt's time in Aberdeen. If you want to see some evocative photos of some of the places I spoke about, Jillian Garr has a really good article in Goldmine Magazine online. It's about exploring Kurt Cobain's Aberdeen.
00:15:22
Speaker
Again, an interesting ah psychogeographical article in itself. She's just looking around and, you know, soaking in the vibes of Aberdeen. And those pictures are pretty interesting. So you can take a look at those. Oh, im sorry. that might I might sent you the wrong link.
00:15:35
Speaker
The link I sent you was also ah somebody on Reddit made a graph of where Kurt Cobain wrote most of his songs. i am Yeah, this is that's a fascinating way to look at this. is ah Here's where was when he wrote these songs that we obsess about.
00:15:49
Speaker
um I will say that a pie char with that many so a pie chart with that many slices is an affront to God, but it's a cool project nonetheless in the very Reddit ah obsessive kind of way.
00:16:00
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. No, and it's interesting because, again, with psychogeography, like where where he's sort of spending his time and his life, where' just living his everyday normal life, is going to obviously influence, you know, the the music he makes, the things he writes, his attitudes. OK, I'm going to send you the correct link. You don't need to read this now. This is a Gillian Garr article. It's very good. That'll be in the show notes as well.
00:16:21
Speaker
So Kurt moves to Olympia, Washington. i believe it's about 60 miles south of Seattle. It's sort of the kind of bottom of Puget Sound there. That's 100 kilometers for our Canadian listeners. That's right.
00:16:33
Speaker
It's confusing. I said kilometers last time, and then I'm switching to miles. Because the sources I was reading were American, I believe. We're Canadian, and we will switch is between metric and imperial ah in the most baffling of ways. You're going to have to deal with it. Because I certainly know my height and feet, my weight and pounds, but I do not know the temperature in Fahrenheit. No. People would tell me in Europe that their their height would be 170 centimeters.
00:16:56
Speaker
I'm like, I'm picturing a... That's the height of a cat or dog, isn't it? No, that's like a full grown human. Because its centimeters, I'm like, you can't be that tiny. Because I think, yeah, I'm a Canadian, but it's feet and inches is what I understand. So the centimeter thing I had to get used to. so Okay, so he moves to Washington.
00:17:16
Speaker
like Again, another Tracy, Tracy Miranda. They met sort of in the punk scene in Aberdeen. So you have Aberdeen, Tacoma, Seattle, Olympia, very, very close by. lot a lot of towns, heavily populated areas. there's ah There's a good punk scene in the town, so in in this general area. So Tracy, they bonded over their love of pet rats.
00:17:35
Speaker
Which is very cute. In general, I won't talk about her too much. She's a private individual who's still alive. She seems like a nice person. I'll talk about a bit ah more about her later, just because she was pretty much one of the key individuals who helped Nirvana become what what what it was. but Let's talk about Olympia, Washington a bit. Have either you guys been?
00:17:56
Speaker
think we talked about this. No. I was there in 2012 and then last summer as well.
00:18:02
Speaker
It's bigger than Aberdeen, very different culturally. So think of, I don't know, maybe Calgary and Edmonton. So the different kind of, you it's cuter than Seattle, I think. It's nicer than Aberdeen. It's a kind of little bohemian town, has more of an art scene.
00:18:20
Speaker
So Evergreen State College, it's one of those gradeless, you know, make your own curricula schools. They attract a lot of students, liberal artist types, hippies kind of thing. So you imagine it's quite the contrast to redneck Aberdeen. And I say redneck, and this is how Crickabay describes Aberdeen.
00:18:36
Speaker
Macho, redneck, homophobic type of backwards place. So Olympia is very different. It's the opposite in a lot of ways, culturally. Bohemian, yeah. I think that's the word to run with there. Yeah.
00:18:48
Speaker
It's also the state capital. um Again, I, I, in 2012, I was there by myself. I thought it was a cute place. Again, creepy vibes. Now that could just be, again, my own bringing my baggage. I'm thinking about, you know, the Green River Killer and stuff.
00:19:03
Speaker
So. And, you know, all these grunge guys with tragic fates. So you could be bringing, I'm bringing my own stuff to it too. But again, same thing. They don't seem to want to put it put a lot of care into necessarily the infrastructure.
00:19:15
Speaker
Very crumbly. not The roads aren't very good. Kind of a lot of wooden bungalows. A lot of the homes are, again, similar to Aberdeen, these sort of one-story bungalow type houses. Yeah.
00:19:26
Speaker
it's It's nice, nicer than Aberdeen. And he spends about three years in Olympia writing music and developing his ethical sort of stance. And this city plays a huge role in his ethical and political development. So in high school, Cobain has said things like, oh, I thought I was gay or I wish I was gay. He's very anti-homophobia. He's very interested in justice.
00:19:47
Speaker
ah He has this seed in him in high school already. He's sort of an outsider and he's you know wanting to sympathize with the underdog. He feels like, and again, I i mentioned before, like he might not have been the entirely miserable, bullied person. like He was funny, he had a sense of humor, he had friends, but he's struggling too with feeling like an outsider and you know feelings of family rejection, things like this. Well, and also if you like graduate and then go immediately into inhalants and suicidal ideation, ah teenaged or not, ah that's actually not a sign of somebody who is super healthy. ah Even if the ah the mythology i is going to create this sort of archetype of the miserable loner, which isn't quite true. But I think the miserable part probably Well, that's why it's tricky. he didn't and And, you know, when you go from not graduating high school, right, dropping out, ah he did even work.
00:20:45
Speaker
And I don't know if this is true or myth. I believe this is probably actually true. He did work as a janitor for a while at the high school he dropped out of. So that's going to sting, right? You know. And he he started he's he's a very contradictory character, though, because obviously like he is an outsider, and but he really wants to be a famous rock
Formation and Rise of Nirvana
00:21:02
Speaker
star. like This is the thing. He does. Oh, that's interesting. interesting yeah that actually And that's very contrary to the Nirvana mythology, even though, yes i will and again, you'll get into ah eye his relationship to fame and all that, I'm sure, in great detail. But the notion that he wanted the fame pretty early on is something I did not know about him.
00:21:23
Speaker
No, he did' he wants to be a rock star. you know He wants people to listen to his music. and you know that's who he's idolizing. It's a way to get out. And it's a kind of thing, if you're a bullied kid, it's like, oh, show them. you know I can see that's part of that. So he goes to Olympia. Olympia does have and had back then a very active indie music scene.
00:21:42
Speaker
So again, this could be a whole podcast itself. There's a website, the olympic sorry the Olympia music History Project. This documents the bands that were active in the city from 1980 to about 2002.
00:21:54
Speaker
So there's a ton of bands. They're mostly indie. These dough these do include, of course, Riot Grrrl bands like Bikini Kill. That's what I associate. i'm I'm jumping in. But yeah, I associate Riot Grrrl, which is a genre I love, with Olympia Washington.
00:22:09
Speaker
Yeah. And you're right to do so because that's where it came from. I personally don't like Riot Grrrl as much just because I like a more melodic sound. But I appreciate what they're doing. And I am a fan. So Kurt lives in Olympia for three years. He was dating Tracy almost the whole time. Towards the end, he breaks up with her and he starts dating people like Toby Vale.
00:22:28
Speaker
So she's a member of Bikini Kill. um He's friends with Kathleen Hanna, also of Bikini Kill. He's getting absorbed into this scene that's very feminist, punk rock, the anti-corporate sort of anti-sellout ethic of a scene. So kids today don't care about this because we're in, I guess, get the bag culture. But being a sellout used to be a big thing.
00:22:51
Speaker
It was like everything in the 90s where yeah because the notion of advertisements being everywhere was a very 90s thing. And then corporate sheen was something that you had. Like every stand up comedian was wearing a leather jacket, smoking on stage and then talking about how they'd never sell out.
00:23:11
Speaker
And ah the notion of using your music in a commercial was considered like that's what broke up the dead Kennedy's. Oh, yeah, that's right. yeah it was a levi commercial it was more complex than that ah but that was ah speaking of mythologies but that was a a big part of it and ah and nowadays because advertising is threaded into literally everything we deal with with very few exceptions The notion of appearing in an advertisement or engaging in advertisements as a form of selling out is something you only do if you're really, really difficult and stubborn because they're just everywhere all the time and there's no escaping them. Well, think about it. If you're a band now, your records are on streaming. you not making any money from record sales.
00:23:59
Speaker
So, okay. yeahp I got to get paid somehow. So, okay, fine. I'll do whatever commercial. There was another band too. I think that broke up over a commercial. was that Who did Blister in the Sun? Oh, Violent Femmes.
00:24:10
Speaker
Yes. They licensed it to Wendy's. and Oh, I know that was. like wendy Yeah. Yeah. Is that that, I think? Because they I believe they broke up over that, too. Well, they got back together. They're still touring. ah But I would not be surprised. I vaguely recall something like that. yeah And we're not going to Google anything ah so because it's fun to sometimes be wrong about something. But I think that was... Blastrow in the Sun in a commercial is and controversy is something that...
00:24:37
Speaker
clicks around in my head but yeah the 90s counterculture i'm not a sellout and anti-corporate ethos was so so strong and a part of this one of the reasons why i love riot girl it was a very masculine thing uh because when i think about those anti-corporate comedians you know bill hicks for example uh exactly Dennis Leary who ripped him off. you know Absolutely. But Riot Grrrl was this anti-masculine and and anti-corporate thing. And Kurt ah was always strongly anti-toxic masculinity in these concepts. and Again, one of the reasons why of all the grunge music I listened to when I was a teen, I think I still like Nirvana the best. or By the way, formal pronunciation. You're the expert. Nirvana or Nirvana? Nirvana.
00:25:29
Speaker
Nirvana. Got it. here's a, colloquially, I believe people would say Nirvana. Like, Dave Grohl would say Nirvana, but grammatically, it's Nirvana. I say Nirvana.
00:25:40
Speaker
Okay, fair enough. Huh. I think they're like, I i could hear Kurt saying Nirvana, right? Pronunciation. Yeah, huh. I believe either is okay, but I say Nirvana, I'll do the Canadian thing and switch pronunciations every word then. That's fine.
00:25:53
Speaker
Yeah. One of the reasons why ah Nirvana ah still holds up for me is there was just a very deep sense of earnestness about that kind of thing. yes And I love some earnest ass me. Me too. Yes, they are. Because they are. like he he was writing songs about his experience, like we said. you know And he is writing punk music. And he it was even and you can see in Bleach, there is this conflict with the sort of the the masculine like heavy metal grig grunge. A lot of it is like sludge metal, which I don't love either. But you see him with songs like about a girl.
00:26:26
Speaker
moving into a more jangly pop, pop punk aesthetic too. So he's kind of trying to, you know, be able to express himself in more creative ways too. Cause again, I would say toxic masculinity is constraining to your creativity as well. yeah So yeah, but you're right. Exactly right about that anti sellout culture. So he's, sort sorry. Sorry.
00:26:47
Speaker
I said lot of S's there. Let's cut that. Olympia sort of represents Cobain's ethical and musical growth. His move away from Aberdeen to a more cosmopolitan town or a place that would be more accepting of him. Right. So as he's moving away from Aberdeen, he's growing, moving away sort of maybe musically, psychologically, all this stuff. Although, again, he he died 27, so he didn't get that much chance to grow as a person. And when you're on heroin for a long time, that also hinders that. But we'll get into that. So Tracy and Kurt, they are together. They move into a three-plex in Olympia, Washington. Again, I've been here. It's a little duplex.
00:27:23
Speaker
It's... cute. She looks fine for now. um with Tracy Miranda. She deserves a medal. Or she deserves a cut of the royalties. ah Some recognition. I believe she was there whent or sorry when Nirvana was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Because she is the reason why Nirvana existed, I would say.
00:27:41
Speaker
kurt was Tracy was working full-time, basically. And Kurt stayed home and he would paint. They said his day was he'd get up at noon, eat some mac and cheese,
00:27:52
Speaker
you know, watch TV and play guitar and write songs, maybe do some art. Later on he'd be touring a lot with Nirvana. He's only basically able to do this because Tracy is supporting him financially.
00:28:03
Speaker
So this house in Pear Street, it's the blue one, blue little blue house. You can see that in some of the pictures I sent to you. He could not have written. so he wrote basically all of Nevermind in this duplex.
00:28:15
Speaker
This is the album that's going to make him famous. He writes it all in this duplex. And basically it was because he wouldn't have been able to do this if Tracy was not supporting him financially. So eventually, after a couple of years, they are going to break up. Kurt and Tracy will break up. I believe he breaks up with her, but there was issues mutually. And Dave Grohl would eventually move into this apartment as well, be Kurt's roommate.
00:28:37
Speaker
All right. So that's just the story of his Pear Street residence. I'm going to back up a bit to ah where Nirvana is as a band. So he's in he's moved to Olympia. It's 1987. At this point, the core of Nirvana is Kurt and Chris. oh Speaking of pronunciation pronunciation, I thought it was k Chris Novoselic for like 30 years.
00:28:58
Speaker
It's Chris Novoselic. It's the correct Croatian pronunciation. Novoselic. Yes, the ah the at the end of like the last two letters are T.S. I imagine. Right.
00:29:11
Speaker
See, that's right. Oh, no, there it's C, but it's C, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry. My mistake. I was confusing the T.S. and the C because I'm brain dead. Anyways, I'm a big Chris Novoselic fan.
00:29:21
Speaker
Yes, you know what? Me too. Nice guy. He seems like nice guy. 6'7", something like that. Very tall man. Giant, looming, very deeply ironic bass player, but he's my favorite Nirvana member.
00:29:34
Speaker
Yeah, he seems like a nice guy. So at this time, you know, it's Kurt and Chris. They're going through a lot of drummers. I don't want to name all them. One of them is named Aaron. One of them is named Chad. and i don't want to disrespect them, but I couldn't go into that much detail. Okay. So they're playing a lot of local gigs, building a reputation. And they're building like house parties, small like Legion halls, this sort of thing. And they're sending demo tapes to record labels. Kurt is nonstop wanting to get a record deal because...
00:30:02
Speaker
He wanted to be a rock star. So skipping ahead a bit again, I'm i'm going to elide details here. But so essentially they save up some money. They record and release their first album, Bleach, in 1989.
00:30:16
Speaker
It's released by sub pop Sub Pop Records. One word, Sub Pop. Sub Pop's an indie label out of Seattle. They formed in 87. They're brand new thing.
00:30:27
Speaker
Pavitt and Poneman, they're very famous. Yeah, they're one of the huge, and they're one of the like record labels that defines a moment a movement in music kind of record labels. Yeah.
00:30:39
Speaker
Exactly right. So they've they've released albums by Mudhoney, Soundgarden, Green River, I believe, at this point. So um during this time, they've, you know, doing local gigs. Nirvana is touring locally.
00:30:51
Speaker
So they are building a following in the Pacific Northwest. And then they eventually go on tour in Europe as well. So they're touring Europe and the UK by 1989. So let's assume you remember, like he's this... Imagine coming from Aberdeen, and then two years later, you're doing gigs in London or in Germany. That is pretty fast. And again, that is tying in with...
00:31:11
Speaker
Right music, right time, right band, and everything's just sort of hitting correctly. That's right. And speaking of hitting correctly, Grohl is the final piece. He joins the band in, I believe, 89 or 90. And then this is when Nirvana sort of really gets their sound together.
00:31:29
Speaker
Right? Dave Grohl, incredible drummer. They eventually sign to a major label, Geffen Records. So again, can't go into that in too much detail. It's an interesting choice, though. So Sonic Youth is on Geffen Records.
00:31:43
Speaker
Sonic Youth probably deserves their own episode, like I'll say for everything here. But they're not. So they've signed to Geffen. It's a major label with sort of little bit more indie cred. They give Sonic Youth quite a bit of freedom to release the music they want. Sonic Youth, of course, if you're familiar, out of the New York's punk art scene in the and 80s.
00:32:02
Speaker
So they're basically a band that they're on a record label, but they get to do whatever they want. And they have a large following, but nothing massive. They're consistently pulling in a lot of people to their shows, but they're not huge. Right. This is kind of and i I believe this is sort of the level Kurt Cobain kind of aspired to. And I think he said that somewhere else where he kind of wanted to be as big as Sonic Youth. Right. That sounds like.
00:32:26
Speaker
i That sounds ideal in that they, Sonic Youth, were ah again, had a successful career. And they're a band that are known, but were never like regularly top 40. Exactly. And they they still have the ethic, right? Like they come out of this DIY art scene in New York City as well. So, right. But but you do see now they're on a light label. They have managers now. They have...
00:32:49
Speaker
assistants They have all these people in their in their sort of in the background on a management team. Right. So this is yeah sort of where the business aspect of the music scene is clashing with the ethics. So it's a bit of a foreshadowing. So let's skip ahead to 1990.
00:33:06
Speaker
They signed with Geffen Records. They record Nevermind with Butch Vig. I believe they record it in the Midwest somewhere. ah Milwaukee, or I think. But yeah, you know, it's a regular album. ah Later on, they think it was cleaned up too much. and They didn't like the recording he did. But anyway, nevertheless, Nevermind is a perfect album, essentially.
00:33:25
Speaker
The video for Smells Like Teen Spirit is filmed in LA, and the record is set to be released on September 24th, 1991. So remember, this is still... their point they They do have a pretty loyal following in the Pacific Northwest, and they're they're they're touring in the States and Europe a bit, and people do like them. yeah But everyone's like, yeah, we'll probably sell 100,000 copies.
00:33:43
Speaker
They head to Europe to go on tour. And then while they're away, Kurt was ah evicted from his apartment in Olympia. no. So...
00:33:52
Speaker
He's homeless on tour. And while they're away, of course, in America, the video for Smuzzled Teen Spirit is getting a ton of airplay on MTV. MTV is a huge thing. It's playing their video a lot. They're getting a lot of requests for it. Record sales are rising quickly. Nobody expected this at all.
00:34:11
Speaker
Nirvana didn't expect this. Nobody on their management team expected this. Nobody. They come back from Europe. Go ahead. And you're in Europe. This is ah pre any kind of internet that people would regularly use. And so information travels slowly unless they're spending time to take a phone call with an eight hour time difference. So maybe they get a little bit of a hint that it's doing well, but the intensity of it, I i just can't imagine.
00:34:40
Speaker
yeah What were you two doing in 1991? I was nine. i was nine I was 11. I think about that. Playing in the yard. What were you doing? I was in the Netherlands. I'm jealous. Yeah. That's right. You were, yeah. I lived in Limburg for a year. Yes. Nice. You may have cross paths with Kurt Cobain sometime. Amazing. They probably toured through there.
00:35:00
Speaker
yeah No, 91. Yeah. i I was nine years old, just into horses and... Running around the yard, riding my bike. Beautiful. Yes. yeah Yeah. Good times. Kind of. Okay. So Nirvana, yeah. It's fine. It's fine. So, yeah, they're in Europe. They have no idea what's going on. And they come back from Europe and they're like oh, no, you're like the biggest rock band in the world now.
00:35:19
Speaker
So they'd found that some of the shows they'd booked in the year in Europe and the States were just at wildly small venues because they're huge. And what is fascinating when you think about it in hindsight is how quickly everything just goes off the rails. Right.
00:35:34
Speaker
So this is a man, he's 20, what years is he? He's, you know, 24 years old. He's going to be dead in two and a half years. That's so weird to think about it that way. Yes.
00:35:45
Speaker
Because i I've been a Nirvana fan since i was about 12, 13. I came to it after he passed, of course, just because I
Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love's Relationship
00:35:52
Speaker
was a child. And my older brother got me into Nirvana sort of later on. But...
00:35:56
Speaker
So in hindsight, it's very shocking. So I can't imagine sort of being pop, like being older and being conscious of this. Like if I'd been a Nirvana fan since like 1990, what a shocking thing. Like in in in two years, he's gone basically.
00:36:10
Speaker
It's shocking, but also if you know what's going on in his private life, maybe not. so this is So this is where we have to talk about heroin and about Courtney Love. So I'm just FYI, I'm going to just show you my t-shirt I'm wearing. I'm wearing my doll parts t-shirt and I'm under a table in my podcasting den. So it looks kind of creepy.
00:36:27
Speaker
But basically, it's a comic book cover. i think similar to yours, Dave. Amazing. It's doll parts. It's Courtney Love, her bandmates. She's being menaced by a man with a knife and her legs are kind of floating like she's been busted. That's a hell of a t-shirt. I love that. Yeah, it fucking rips. Yeah, what a great shirt.
00:36:43
Speaker
Scotland for some reason, randomly this summer, so... Yeah, random find. Nice. Anyway, it's delightful. Okay, so we can cut that or we can keep it in as much as you like. But okay, so ah she's a complex, Courtney Love is a very complex person, right? I'll start talking about her. So the she's part of the music scene in general as well, sort of based in Portland sometimes, LA sometimes, Chicago. She's kind of floating around this music scene in the 90s. They meet at some point in 1990. A lot of people say, it was at a But Whole Surfer's concert.
00:37:12
Speaker
It's hard to say. So recollections vary. Kurt is also using heroin at this time, too. And I'm going to get into when he started that a little bit earlier, but or a little bit later, I mean. But yeah, so Kurt's using heroin. He's touring.
00:37:24
Speaker
He's in the scene. He's single. So he dated Toby Vale for a while. She's one of the Bikini Kill founders. She's very into non-monogamy. So he wrote Lounge Act about her.
00:37:34
Speaker
Oh, really? I'll keep fighting jealousy till it's fucking gone. Yeah. So he tried. Yeah. He tried to be a non-monogamous guy. Had a hard time. and So he gets together with Courtney Love and they sort of immediately begin a mutual slide into heroin use and melodrama.
00:37:49
Speaker
So Courtney is a very complex cur person, as is Kurt. So as a teenager, I was a huge fan, right? And what what is cool about her and Kurt as well is she introduced me to feminism. Like she, in in Rolling Stone interviews, she would name drop like Susan Faludi.
00:38:05
Speaker
So I'm reading Backlash and I'm 13. Like, hell yeah. Like, That's so cool. Urban and Courtney Love were hugely influential on, you know, the kind of my ethical development and the person I sort of turned out to be.
00:38:15
Speaker
Like I was already drawn to sort of ideas of justice and things like this, but having names and things to look at, books to read was very, very useful. That's really cool. Yeah. And she's a smart person. She had a very difficult childhood, though. And I do believe she would be very difficult to live with.
00:38:30
Speaker
Right. i ah yeah. and As in the in ah the first part of this, I planted my flag as a giant Courtney love fan. ah But this is not to say that she was a flawless or easy to deal with or even pleasant person. No. and who's who is, right? So she was a little bit older than Kurt. I believe she was born in 64, so she's about three years older. Her dad is a huge piece of shit. He was really into the hippie scene in the sixty s Apparently gave gave her LSD as a child.
00:39:02
Speaker
Jesus Christ. What? And you can read... Yeah, and you kind of get wonder if it's true, but you read Joan Didion. And I think Joan Didion kind of hates hippies, but she she does portray in her journalism hippies in the 60s, Hyde Ashbury giving their kids LSD. No, I find that completely unsurprising, actually, yeah because there was a ah speaking of mythologies, this magical new drug, ah people are going to give it superpowers.
00:39:28
Speaker
Yeah. And look, I have never tried LSD. One of those ones that I would like to try, to be honest, because I think it can be actually helpful. Hallucinogenics, I think. Don't give them to kids. You do those when you're an adult and you're in a safe spot where you can, you know, use it to enhance your lifestyle. or You know, it it probably has a lot of psychologically beneficial aspects. You're not giving it to four year olds for no reason. Like, it's horrible. Yeah.
00:39:52
Speaker
Yeah, so she's raised by abusive parents. She has lot of issues. You know, boarding schools, traveled all around. She's, you know, worked as a stripper. All these things, which again, no judgment. She's trying to survive. She's part of the music scene, too. She also is very ambitious, wants to be a rock star.
00:40:08
Speaker
Okay, so she's in the scene. She's dating other people. And what also drives me crazy... is people talk about, oh, she's wild. oh She gets so much criticism and hate. The things she did, compared to what male rock stars, she maybe, okay, what? She slept with a couple other rock stars. Ooh, she dabbled in drugs. Ooh, big deal. Like, she wasn't keeping groupies. Oh my God, you mean she was a musician in this hot music scene where like, all the musicians are hanging out and doing drugs all the time?
00:40:38
Speaker
And they had sex yeah with each other? oh my word, she's to blame for all of it. It's just fucking nonsense. it is It is total nonsense. like the The crap that she gets for not really... behavior And we'll talk about some of the drug use later, but the the bullshit that she has that's been thrown at her is very unfair. It is obviously misogynist. She's not keeping groupies like in her...
00:41:03
Speaker
14 year olds in her closet. to You know what I mean? Like some of these rock stars from the 70s. Oh, like Steven Tyler stories or like all the insane stuff that different rock stars did. That's fine. That's fine. And also to be one story that find interesting, too. She called out Harvey Weinstein pretty early on.
00:41:18
Speaker
Why hasn't she been in a movie in a long time? Interesting. Because she was an actress. She also toured with Marilyn Manson very briefly. And I remember the press at the time was like, oh, and their their tour fell apart very quickly. And it was like, oh, k Courtney Love's just crazy. That's why oho she's gross. What a what a nasty person. She quit the tour because of the way Marilyn Manson was treating his underage groupies. Oh, wow. She was disgusted by his behavior. That's why. And nobody hears about that.
00:41:43
Speaker
And now it's revealed, OK, this guy's a piece of shit. But she called people on pretty early. She called people on things pretty early on, too. So again, again extremely, but extremely awesome person. Just again, one who, of again, like one who ah I would say wore her flaws as strongly as her strengths, but her strengths are admirable. Yes, that's a good way to put it. I like that.
00:42:08
Speaker
Thanks, Dave. Yes. Or where she's alive. and she's Yeah. Yeah. Well, there's a thing. Oh, yes, she is. Yes. And I, you know, wish her well. You know, ah interestingly enough, i don't know if you are aware of this. Maybe Dave is, but Tracy. So Kurt Cobain and Tony Hawk share a grandchild. Oh, I heard about that.
00:42:29
Speaker
Yeah. So Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love get married in 92. Frances Bean is born in 92. And she eventually, i think last year, married Tony Hawk's son. so I mean, this is so again, the kind of Nepo baby, everyone's related kind of thing. But it is interesting. I'm like, oh, good for them.
00:42:44
Speaker
Well, and I mean, if you're ah Kurt Cobain and Courtney loves kid, you're going to be hanging out in places where a kid of another famous person is present. Yes. Like, that's just how it works. Oh, yeah.
00:42:55
Speaker
Just kind of interesting. It's like, who'd have known? So, yeah, Kurt and Courtney seems like they really do love each other. you know, you can see interviews with them. You can see pictures. But I would say they both had unaddressed psychological issues.
00:43:09
Speaker
Extreme codependency. So again, they're young people, they're kids. When they meet, they're like 24, she's 26, 27, 28. Like they're young, right? They were raised by sort of absentee parents, don't seem to know how to regulate their emotions. So their relationship does seem genuinely tumultuous.
00:43:30
Speaker
They've fought and argued a lot. I believe their fights became physical. It's hard to say. It seems like slap fights. Courtney Love is known to have punched people. So she she punched Kathleen Hanna in the face.
00:43:41
Speaker
Lollapalooza 95, I believe. Yes, she did. So yeah, they're very... You have two a heroin addicts with too much money yeah who both have like severe ah psychological issues trapped in and having known enough people who, like particularly when you're on junk, if you are tied at the hip to somebody else who's using with you, you just like grab each other and then twirl in this toxic spiral downwards. It's a pattern you see in a mip million people.
00:44:15
Speaker
That's right. Yes, that's right. So they both use heroin, but seems like Cobain used way more heroin than Courtney Love did. And he started using drugs, of course, before he ever met her. Because that was a rumor early on, too, is that she got into heroin. that's In fact, the opposite is more likely true.
00:44:33
Speaker
like Courtney Love did heroin as well, but she wasn't an addict at that point. So what ends up happening in their relationship over the sort of the two and a half two two two and a half years they're married is she kind of takes over the business aspect of his life.
00:44:45
Speaker
And he's just drifting further off into heroin abuse. So he probably started using heroin in 89 or 90. So while he's living in Aberdeen, Olympia, or when olympia he's living in Olympia, I believe, at this point. So he kind of was doing it casually, is my understanding.
00:45:00
Speaker
But already by 1991, by the time Nevermind is released, he's a heroin addict. He's a full on heroin addict by 1991. So by the time he's famous, heroin addict with the entire time. So he claims now this is where he going to get speculative and where we might talk about some personal stuff to a degree. So Cobain claims that he was using heroin because he had mysterious stomach issues.
00:45:21
Speaker
No doctors could solve it. And oh the only thing that fixed his stomach pain was heroin. Oh, yeah. I heard that too. Yeah. Buzz Osborne, who's the lead singer of Melvin's, very close friend to Kirk of Baines, you know, introduced Dave Grohl to him, I believe. He claims that this is a lie. He's like, no, he was lying about his stomach pains because he wanted to use heroin under a cloud of sympathy.
00:45:43
Speaker
And honestly, i'm going to get a bit honest here as somebody with addiction issues myself. I'm like, yeah, that tracks. Oh, yeah. That's perfect sense. And i yeah I mean, maybe he he had.
00:45:55
Speaker
But yeah, the that is the most plausible thing I've ever heard in my life. It's just. I know. up And also it ah it it gives you the cloud of sympathy and it also gives you your rationalization um where and again, like the psychology of it could be part lie, part actually believing a lie and hype. And, you know, how how you know, you might just kind of locks into things like that. and You're telling everyone the same thing all the time. So that that just tracks so hard.
00:46:25
Speaker
Yeah. And it's the mythology, too. Oh, his burning, nauseous stomach. He does reference that in his suicide note. Right. And I don't want to make fun of him. he probably had anxiety and was stressed out. Oh, you know, unfortunately, well, like it or not, his autopsy report is on Internet
Kurt Cobain's Psychological State and Addiction
00:46:42
Speaker
Archive.
00:46:42
Speaker
Tellingly, no normal stomach, no issues. So that just a little bit, little bit more evidence there. So again, i'm going to skip over some details of his life a bit just to kind of look at the psychogeographical sense of things. Again, mapping his psychological state to where he lives. We kind of went over this. He grow grows up in this depressing, backwards, macho culture of Aberdeen.
00:47:04
Speaker
He's already rebelling against this place. And then he goes to Olympia, again, polar opposite of Aberdeen culturally, writing his music, developing an ethical sensibility when it comes to politics. ah He also, again, pro-gay rights. There is an interesting theory, which I can't speak to this because only Kurt Cobain can, that he was actually a trans woman because he loves to wear dresses. um There's a journalist, Juno Stump. Juno Stump is a trans woman herself, and she writes a pretty compelling argument that Kurt was trans. But again, nobody can say this. but And that's a whole episode in itself. But look into that. It's it's fascinating.
00:47:38
Speaker
i'm I'm just going to want critically buy the Kurt was an egg theory. Well, you... What's an egg? Oh, an egg when it ah when it hatches, a chick comes out. That's right. oh So it's like, mean youre you're you're before you come out as trans, you're kind of...
00:47:53
Speaker
Yeah, and it's a comment. Yeah, it's a term. It's a term for somebody who is either closeted or just completely unaware. Usually someone is completely unaware. And I mean, maybe he was or wasn't. But ah considering, yeah it's it plausible at the very least. I don't hate the idea.
00:48:12
Speaker
No, it adds to the, well, it it yeah enriches and adds to the complexity of him. And you can, I think Juno Stump posted a video on YouTube of Kurt Cobain. In an interview, they asked him, why do you wear dresses? He's like, well, just I wear them at home sometimes. they're comfortable, okay? And kind of rolls his eyes in a very cute way. And I'm like, or it's kind of clear. Or there's, I read somewhere else and I couldn't find this before. i I'm just pulling the top of my head. I'll i'll look at into it later. But there's a quote from somebody who said Kurt did a show and The guy, his face was full of acne and stuff, whatever. He does the show.
00:48:43
Speaker
He comes off stage, puts on a full face of woman's makeup, walks out. oh wow. She was doing that for her. yeah know what I mean? Yeah. It really does feel. And he did. He wore women's dresses all the time. You know, he felt like. And again, i' I'm not saying Courtney Love has a type. Her first husband is now a trans woman.
00:49:00
Speaker
Courtney Love was married to ah at the time they were called Falling James Moreland. Their marriage was annulled and then eventually he's or she or they, I'm not sure. I apologize. It has come out as trans.
00:49:12
Speaker
So it could be a pattern. Anyway, just a little little piece of evidence. And again, who's to say ah it's his it's his life and good for him her if they were trans or them. But I would say we don't know.
00:49:26
Speaker
I mean, that's the complexity. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. So at this time, he's touring a lot. His life isn't his own anymore. I get the sense. Because, you know, Nevermind just takes off and he's in an instant rock star. Courtney Love tells a story of them in L.A. together where he has a panic attack in the bathtub.
00:49:44
Speaker
Like, oh what am I going to do? I'm going to be a rock star. I can't handle this. Oh, wow. Because he wanted to be a rock star. But then when it actually happened, I think he freaked the fuck out. Well, it's also like you're thirsty and then you and then somebody shoots you in the face with a pressure washer. Yeah.
00:50:00
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. That's about right. So, and again, psychologically where he's moving, he's, he moves to LA with Courtney Love in 92. So again, he's not home a lot. He's on tour a lot at this time. They do take some breaks and he's now taken drugs and things and has issue being on tour, but he has found himself pretty immediately. Like this is 92. He's living in Olympia. He's getting evicted in 91, later.
00:50:25
Speaker
He's living in a house in the Hollywood Hills, the very epicenter of this music business, this showbiz corporate world he really hates. Yeah. So again, you can see picture of that house. It looks like a cute one. It's probably going to be demolished, unfortunately.
00:50:39
Speaker
It's not a glamorous mansion, right? Yeah. It's a cute place, which I'll send you a link to. I wish I could buy. It's under a million dollars because it's probably going to be torn down. But yeah, so he's not unreasonably living in a nice place in L.A. But to him, you know, you're living in a shack with turtles in the living room. And now you're in a Philip Ahn, famous actor. You're in his former house.
00:51:00
Speaker
you know what saying? Like, it's very got to be very jarring. And, you know, Courtney Love, not to blame her. she i But I believe she's ah she's more ambitious. And I don't think she cares so much about selling out. she She doesn't care. She's like, no, going to rock star. This is what I want. Let's make the money. It's what we deserve.
00:51:14
Speaker
Sure. So she's buying a Lexus. Kurt doesn't like this. There are clashes. And I believe he also, on Courtney's urging, decided to... Nirvana was splitting royalties three ways.
00:51:24
Speaker
It almost broke up Nirvana because he said, no, actually, I want more of the money because I do all the songwriting and I take more of the heat from being famous, which isn't wrong. but But it's also a decision yeah it it's also what decision you make before you get ah before the money comes in not after. that's right. i you you you do you And also, like I mean, come on, there's enough money. But i I get exactly why he'd think that, and anybody in his position would. But i you... ah Oh boy, yeah. yeah what ah What do you do about that, right?
00:51:58
Speaker
Yeah, that sucks. Yeah. That's a very tough one. And I see what you mean about the house. It's ah it's not an ostentatious ah ah sort of celebrity mansion. It is a large, very modern for that time, nice looking house. Yeah. Okay, yes. So again, not ostentatious. it's a cute house. They it's a mixture of the craftsman style with Japanese influence, which is Nice. It's cute. Okay. So they don't live in this house in L.A. for very long.
00:52:23
Speaker
They're there from 92 to 93. Frances is born in 92, I think in the summer. This is the house she's taken to. Again, very tragically, I think, or very sadly, you know, there were rumors about Courtney doing drugs while she was pregnant. And this is because, very famous, infamously, a Vanity Fair article came out.
00:52:41
Speaker
In which she was smoking while pregnant, which is not great. My understanding is that she was using heroin. She found out she was pregnant and then quit, which that seems legitimate and reasonable. But what people took this as they said, well, no, no, she was using heroin while she was pregnant. So... So potentially, potentially technically true, but also ah not Well, again, this is like, is it true or not? Well, yes.
00:53:07
Speaker
Comma. ah She quit as soon as she found out. And ah I mean, do you give her the benefit of the doubt knowing she's an addict? In the end, it doesn't really matter, but it does. I think what matters more is the narrative of the, ah I go back to the Roman narrative of how the wicked stepmother is behind all the assassinations. Yeah. And how all good bands are destroyed by evil women. Yeah. The Yoko Ono myth. Yeah.
00:53:31
Speaker
Yeah. No, it's, that's totally right. Yeah. And women just get more of the blame. Like it's more of the criticism. And cause yeah. And then for, yeah, like Francis was taken away for a couple of weeks and, by CPS. She was living with family, I believe, Courtney's sister.
00:53:45
Speaker
But that's a terrible thing to do to a young family. Like, you know, very and very publicly in the spotlight. So he's dealing with all this, too, immediately. Like, you know, he's a kid from Aberdeen. Like, that's what blows my mind. Again, you have to look at this. It's human terms.
00:53:58
Speaker
Okay, so he's in this house in the Hollywood Hills. He's doing a lot of drugs. He's writing in utero, and he's hanging out in the closet, mostly. So he's writing in utero in a closet in the house in the Hollywood Hills. seems I won't be one to judge. I know. As I'm currently recording this from a closet.
00:54:16
Speaker
Well, and I'm sitting under a table with blankets. like i I'm in an office. I'm in a grown-up fort right now. Yeah. Oh, you okay. Well, looks great. You're the most grown-up of us all. You look very cozy, Jen. Oh, thanks. You do. I am, except for like the leg situation. I need to figure out about not, you know, my circulation getting cut off, but we'll... I'll sweep that up between episodes. Yeah. Yeah. So this house on Google Maps is called... It's listed as in utero house. Yeah.
00:54:42
Speaker
Which, if you didn't know who Crooker Bane was, you'd be like, what the fuck does that mean? ah yeah In Utero House. Okay, so In Utero was their third album. It's my favorite Nirvana album, personally.
00:54:52
Speaker
It's the best. yeah It is. It is their best one. um the More true to the sound they wanted, I think, at the time. Great, great songs. They recorded in Wisconsin in 93. Yeah. released in the fall of 93 as well. You know, you look at the lyrics and the general vibe of In Utero. This man is struggling, right? This is a bleak-ass album.
00:55:12
Speaker
It is. He's struggling with his wife, with fame, being a parent, with fame, frustration at being the voice of a generation. fame. Yes. he Well, yeah. He wanted to be famous.
00:55:24
Speaker
But he didn't want like, oh, no, I'm the famous rock star now. You know, like, he you like donuts, huh? Have all the donuts in the world. Yeah.
00:55:37
Speaker
yeah More. I guess that's Courtney love. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. There you go. Yes, exactly. More. That's Courtney. Yes. She she wants all of this, I think, which again. whatever when men want it it's fine yeah it's like get the band if a woman's ambitious yeah don't like it so again markets parks in last podcast on the left they again do a really good series debunking the murder conspiracy but he's he points out like all apologies he's screaming like married buried over and over again yeah So i would say the relationship is not going well. Again, there's probably verbal abuse on both sides. We said physical altercations. Apparently during the recording of In Utero, Courtney was very abusive physically or verbally towards him.
00:56:21
Speaker
Again, not great. Well, and again, we have... ah It's mutual....two psychologically damaged people. ah yeah Assuming Courtney is clean at this time, she is pregnant.
00:56:34
Speaker
Kurt is locked in a closet all the time she she while his wife think is pregnant. She has a child. right mean Yeah, Frances Bean had been taken away and then brought back. You're right. but ah So she might be using again. But the point is is that I don't think anybody would expect ah them to treat each other well at this point. There's nothing healthy about this. No, well, that's exactly so. Yeah, there's not. And and if you think about the situation from her point of view, is so she has a band herself. Hole was more famous than Nirvana at first, in the UK especially. She is recording an album. She's dealing with her trying to, you know,
00:57:10
Speaker
write songs for songs. Oh, sorry. She's writing an album. She's busy. She has her own, you know, band to promote. She wants to tour and she's a child. And this man, her husband is just on heroin, nodding out all the time.
00:57:23
Speaker
Yeah. Like that's what he's, when you're on heroin, you're not like, Oh, up and about and having a good time. No, he's just sleeping. Like you're nodding off. oh So at this point, he yeah. And so, again, with Courtney Love and Francis. So Francis is born again, just to recap. She's totally healthy at birth. Totally fine. There's nothing wrong with her.
00:57:43
Speaker
There's no impact for any drugs that might have been in Courtney's system. It's whatever nicotine, whatever. Francis is totally fine and healthy. She still is. Again, she has her own kid now. She's doing great.
00:57:53
Speaker
Okay, so at this point, though, 93, Cobain's dealing with a lot. The last six months or so of his life, though, this is like chaos. This is terminal spiral here. So by 93, he's using an estimated $400 worth of heroin a day. Like, ah look, I haven't tried heroin yet, but I'm to understand that this is an insane amount of heroin to use.
00:58:17
Speaker
Jesus Christ. Yes. ah Last Us Cousin left, they source, they note that Courtney maybe used $20 worth of heroin at her at her worst. She's dabbling, right? She's dabbling in the drugs kind of for street cred is their interpretation, right?
00:58:32
Speaker
but and Because, ah you know, maybe they're fun. She's dealing with she's self-medicating, too. But $400 a day of heroin is crazy. OK, he's a huge addict. OK, but still in uterus comes out in fall of 93. Nirvana records MTV Unplugged, that session in November 1993. He was shooting up right before the show, goes on stage, kills it.
00:58:53
Speaker
yeah, that's probably one the most famous, best live album ever recorded.
00:59:00
Speaker
And yeah, it absolutely set to look like a funeral. There's flowers everywhere. so Fun fact, you i ah I learned to play guitar by just learning the entirety of Unplugged in New York.
00:59:11
Speaker
Really? Yeah. That's amazing. I learned to play guitar by learning a lot of Nirvana songs too. like ah The first song I could ever play was about a girl. yeah oh Great. E minor to G, baby. What was that?
00:59:25
Speaker
E minor to G. I know. Yeah. E minor. dan I know. Got to memorize, man. Yeah. Yeah. And that and the come as you are riff. yeah Yeah. That is the first thing any guitarist in the 90s learned how to play was the come as you are riff.
00:59:39
Speaker
That is hilarious. That's exactly right. That's exactly what my friend showed me the first time played guitar. Same. So but Tracy, you play Bella Laika. That's like a guitar. oh No, I don't. Oh.
00:59:50
Speaker
Tracy plays lead instruments, yeah clarinet, saxophone. that's awesome. I can't. So there you go. And guitar is overrated. Everyone plays guitar. Banjo's where it's at.
01:00:01
Speaker
yeah, that too. It's not ukulele time anymore. The time of the ukulele hipster is done. Okay. It is fast. So again, back... Yeah, it is. Back to Cobain's Downward Spiral.
01:00:13
Speaker
um So January 1994, Kurt and Courtney purchase and move into their mansion in Seattle on Lake Washington Boulevard. This is sort of infamous mansion...
01:00:24
Speaker
yeah Again, you can see pictures of it. It's cute. doesn't Again, it's not like ostentatious. It has like wood shingles on the side. it's kind of i don't know what style you'd call it, but it's not like a glass box. It's pretty modest. has a little garage and a greenhouse in the back, too. And it's next to a park.
01:00:42
Speaker
I've been there again been there twice. It's not that ostentatious. You can't even really see it at this point. they They put up a gate in front and a big fence. You can't even really see the house. You can kind of like see the roof.
01:00:53
Speaker
and you know whatever Not much to see there. It's a nice location. It's beautiful view. its so as far as um mansions go, it's ah not particularly mansion-y. Yeah, again, he's trying to, you know, stay reasonable, you know. can I respect that. Yeah.
01:01:07
Speaker
But again, his small, mundane, normal, private life is done, right? So he's, again, what I would kind of call a terminal spiral with mental health and addiction. So again, i want to get a little bit personal because, again, it's part of psychogeography. It's part of what we bring to our travels and our interactions with mythologies and with people. So I've struggled with addiction to alcohol.
01:01:27
Speaker
And in my experience, things can be sort of going along pretty steady and normal in a bad way. but then they will spiral out of control very quickly for various reasons. In my particular case, again, not not to be too but to reveal too much, but yeah, I had an alcohol addiction and it spiraled out of control when I started taking benzodiazepines with that.
01:01:49
Speaker
Oh, benzos and alcohol are a bad mix. Yes. I had a really great doctor who just gave me an unlimited refill for those. So oh that, yeah, that's sort of when for me, things are going off the rails really quickly. Right. um And this happens with Kurt Cobain, too. Not that he's given benzos, but just things are spiraling out of control for a couple of reasons. So, again, they do their unplugged show. They go on tour to promote in utero.
Final Months and Death of Cobain
01:02:16
Speaker
But this is a pretty disastrous tour. Honestly, most of Nirvana's tours seem to have been kind of hit or miss.
01:02:22
Speaker
Because they have they're very notorious for having wild shows where Kurt's smashing his guitar, they're jumping they're jumping into the drum kits. there's all these You can see a lot of live shows, like live videos online. They're quite quite raucous shows. and you know That's also going to be hard on your health. But they're canceling his shows a lot because Kurt is sick.
01:02:40
Speaker
Oftentimes, he's just overdosing. He's overdosing on heroin a lot. So very frequently the last six months of his life, he's overdosing on heroin quite regularly. And Courtney's around. She tends to be the one who's reviving him.
01:02:52
Speaker
With various, again again, I'm not an expert on this, various drugs and counteractive remedies. i'm always think of Pulp Fiction, you know. oh yeah we need yeah. With the adrenaline. they Whatever they had in 93. Yeah.
01:03:06
Speaker
Whatever they were doing. And again, very sadly, Chris Neveselich, one of his, again, basists, close friends, he see says that Kurt just wanted to be unconscious all the time. which, uh, not good.
01:03:20
Speaker
Yes. Very sad. So here's where things again, kind of start spiraling a bit. He's, you know, under a lot of pressure. there's a 96 article called the Kurt Cobain suicide crisis perspectives from research, public health, and the news media.
01:03:33
Speaker
Very interesting article. It was written by some public health experts, psychiatrists, and a journalist. They probably needed the rock star, the rock aspect of it, pop culture. So I'm going to read this because it's a pretty accurate sort of pithy account of his last sort of three weeks alive, last month or so. So on March 14th, 1994, they're on tour in Rome.
01:03:53
Speaker
Kurt Cobain overdosed on champagne and tranquilizers. Clearly a foiled suicide attempt. His overdose was was reported publicly as an accident. Nirvana canceled their European tour and Cobain returned to Seattle to recuperate.
01:04:05
Speaker
Less than two weeks later, on March 16th, 1994, he locked himself in a room with his guns. The police were called by Courtney Love to intervene. On March 28th, after an AA-type intervention by Courtney Love and friends, Cobain reluctantly entered a drug treatment center near Los Angeles.
01:04:22
Speaker
He stayed less than two days, then disappeared. So he just walked out, basically. Damn. Yeah. He hopped over a wall and took off. He was not seen again. he was, but not by anyone who kind of knew him. it was not seen again until his body was found on April 8th by an electrician. Cobain was sprawled on the floor of a garage apartment at his home, dead of a shotgun wound to the head.
01:04:43
Speaker
He'd been dead for three days and a suicide note was left. Toxicological analyses revealed high levels of heroin and valium in his blood. And that's basically it. So, yeah, that's a quote from that article. I appreciate the pithiness.
01:04:55
Speaker
ah Gets to the point, makes a chain of events very clear. Yeah, there is a very clear narrative here of, hey, this extremely suicidal addict kept trying to kill himself and then eventually succeeded. Yeah.
01:05:08
Speaker
I mean, pretty much. Yeah. um Misses out on some key details that I'll get into. um And I think these details are sort of where the conspiracy theories about his death kind of come from. And again, the conspiracy theories are, this is the kind of thinking, especially, well, not especially, but in this case also, again, it's totally divorced from the mundane and the everyday. it is not anchored in physical reality or the reality of like actual human behavior.
01:05:35
Speaker
Right. So I think, you know, you go to visit these places, you read about people, you got to watch videos, you you look at things from their point of view. You bring people's humanity to the fore and you really realize like, OK, how plausible. So you think about, you know, you have these a bunch of heroin addicts in their twenty s And one of them is a rich rock star. Yeah, his wife's going to get it together to find somebody with a shotgun who's going to sneak into their garage or rather shoot Kurt with his own gun, sneak away, never be found ever.
01:06:06
Speaker
Yeah. Leave no evidence behind. All these heroin addicts, all these drug addicts there. And Courtney had relapsed while Kurt was missing because she's freaking out. So they're all like, this is just not ah plausible and and not within the realms of reality. Frankly, it's a thing about, and I love the term conspiracism, which is the ah sort of the bent towards believing conspiracies at the narrative about how the world works because horrible things occurring.
01:06:36
Speaker
can be ah explaining them in the terms of there is a malevolent actor who took this from you is so much more psychologically
Conspiracy Theories and Personal Reflections
01:06:44
Speaker
comforting. And it also makes you feel smart as opposed to, no, just a bad thing happened.
01:06:50
Speaker
And again, we are in a world where conspiracy theories are... as mainstream as uh you know the truth by media which is as you know well but the nature of truth is another episode but uh the wonder camera goes into the nature of truth itself jesus but i think conspiracy conspiracism and conspiracy theories would be interesting But um the it's so much easier to believe the folktale of the evil woman did it because in the folktale, the heroes are only ever undone by villains rather than themselves. Ah, yes, that's a good point, because a lot of this is what it's all to degree what he's done to himself, which I think is very interesting. Yeah. so it's it's also missing out on sort of what what his last days were actually like. i don't know if you've seen the film by Gus Van Sant, Last Days.
01:07:49
Speaker
No. No. Gus Van Sant is a film called Last Days. It seemed actually kind of accurate to what his life was like in this last few days. This film is basically a man, i believe his name is Blake. It's clearly supposed to be Kurt Cobain. He's just wandering around, doing heroin, playing guitar, writing a note, buying drugs.
01:08:06
Speaker
That's all the movie is. it's very he's There's barely any dialogue. It's just this guy wandering around. It's really, really well done. And i I feel like it's very evocative of what his final days were probably like, right? So he leaves LA. He flies back to Seattle.
01:08:20
Speaker
People can't find him. They're trying to they cancel his credit card. They're trying to you know locate him in some way. They're trying to find out, going to his dealers, right? Check out his dealers' houses, right? He's buying a lot of drugs, right? So very bleak couple days. I'll talk about, it's such a very creepy, weird situation. So when he's back in Seattle at his mansion, he wasn't alone in the house. And this is a very bizarre character. So Courtney Love had hired this guy, Callie DeWitt. His name is Michael DeWitt. They call him Callie.
01:08:50
Speaker
He's from California. Charles R. Cross calls him the Cato Kalen of the Cobain household. So this guy is supposedly a nanny to Francis Bean. Francis is with Courtney in L.A. She's not in the in the house.
01:09:03
Speaker
It's Callie and his girlfriend who's on spring break from boarding school. I'm like, did I read this? So this is a man in his late 20s with a girlfriend who's maybe 17.
01:09:15
Speaker
eighteen Just hanging out at Crookobane's house. Apparently, the they had no heat and no food because they're just on heroin and nobody's getting groceries and dealing with like the heating oil situation or whatever this house has, or older house.
01:09:30
Speaker
So you have this heroin addict, so-called nanny and his underage girlfriend just hanging out in one of the bedrooms on heroin while Kirk Bain's wandering around the house in and out with a gun and doing whatever. Like, it's a very bizarre situation. Apparently, Callie thought he...
01:09:46
Speaker
Yes, he saw Kurt Cobain and thought he was hallucinating. so So again, Courtney, she's frantically trying to locate Kurt. She's relapsed and gone back into rehab. His management team, everybody's freaking out. trying to And these two people are like, oh, yeah, well, just hang out, cuddle in bed and do heroin all day and nod off because it's too cold and there's no food. Like, it's very, very bizarre.
01:10:07
Speaker
Right. Things are quite dire. And again, ah some people have suggested that Callie's in on the murder. Like, no, this guy And OK. And again, this morning, i I can't resist going to deep dive sometimes. i'm going to show you I've never if you're physically recoiled from a photograph. oh And again, this is potentially libelous and mean. But look at this.
01:10:29
Speaker
This is Kelly. Yes, this is Callie DeWitt and his new wife. hu Physically recoiled from that photograph. So I and again, I couldn't resist digging into Virginia Rand. She graduated high school in 2011.
01:10:45
Speaker
So this is this creep. Apparently, he also is an artist who worked with Kanye West. So this man is a pervert. Like anyway, i don't want to get into it. I don't want to get sued. This man's a pervert. He's living in the house. Kurt's wandering around. They're on heroin.
01:11:01
Speaker
This isn't the same woman. You know, obviously he yeah his other boarding school girlfriend, I guess, got too old. So now I guess he married a woman. i guess she's in her 30s. So whatever. But anyway, this guy is a pervert. But no, he he helped mastermind. He helped kill Kurt. Right.
01:11:16
Speaker
genius left no evidence cleaned everything up because what they say the police walked in on that scene and they're like oh this is suicide it's just yeah this is this is what it is uh but anyway that's this creepy guy so very bizarre situation Let's get to what actually happened final days. So Kurt's wandering around Seattle. These weird people are in his house.
01:11:37
Speaker
Nobody's communicating very well. Callie had left a note. Oh, were you in the house and I didn't see you? Probably because at this point, Tom Grant, and investigator Courtney Love hired also a piece of shit.
01:11:48
Speaker
He's investigating um him and again, i'm going to talk about this guy too in a bit. ah So Courtney Love calls Tom Grant, private investigator. He goes to Seattle with Dylan Carlson, another ah interesting person we'll talk about. And they couldn't find Kurt anywhere. They didn't look in the greenhouse. Kurt was already dead by the time they got there.
01:12:07
Speaker
Right. But they had found a note that Callie had written. So there's some confusion about this. Tom Grant is the one of the people who has started the conspiracy theory that Kurt was murdered. Yeah, I know. He's kind of central in it. Yeah.
01:12:19
Speaker
He's a piece of shit. And now here's where I will criticize like Marcus Parks from last podcast on the left. Great researcher. Don't agree with everything he says. He's like, well, I think he says, i think Tom Grant's on the up and up because he left the LAPD in good standing. Right.
01:12:36
Speaker
I'm like, buddy, no, no. You mean the police department that's famous for police gangs? Yeah, no, this guy saw, oh, this guy's dead.
01:12:48
Speaker
I probably fucked up. ah She did it. And I hate this woman because she's annoying. And and she she bugs me for some reason because she reminds me of my bitch mom. Who knows what's going on with this guy? But this is what starts sort of the whole thing, too. But the idea, like, it's very... i don't want to get into Tom Grant either, but this is where a lot of the conspiracies come from.
01:13:07
Speaker
People who want to be part of this story and want to... Want to make their you know make their name and make money from it. So again, last couple of days, nobody can find him. Yes, he shoots heroin and ends up shooting himself. Just horrible, sad, kind of ultimately meaningless.
01:13:25
Speaker
So what what I would say now, getting a bit serious, myself with addiction issues, I ended up in rehab for ah self-harm, essentially. Tried to harm myself as well. Had been hospitalized a few times i because of the alcohol and prescription medication.
01:13:42
Speaker
So when you are on that sort of lot of drugs, and again, he's on $400 worth heroin a day, right? key's You're not thinking straight. And when you're in this mess, you've made a mess of your own life.
01:13:54
Speaker
You're not in your right mind if you're you know in your addiction and you're using... So sometimes the idea of ending everything is, it's like the best idea in the world because you're like, oh, I've made a mess. How else do I get out of this?
01:14:06
Speaker
So again, he sees himself, I'm sure, painted into a corner, right? I also want to get into a bit more. So again, with myself, just to be clear, totally sober. Again, if you are struggling with addiction, suicidal ideation, just get help, right? It seems like a good idea at the time. I'm sure to Kurt it did as well, but it's not, right?
01:14:25
Speaker
You just... Yeah, just destroy your family. Again, a little bit serious here. OK, so again, how did he kill himself? And this is another detail that article missed. It clearly states his guns were confiscated. but Then he shot himself couple weeks later. Well, what happened?
01:14:40
Speaker
OK, so Courtney had these guns confiscated, which, again, if you want your husband to die and he's suicidal, yeah, take it take his guns away. Again, how does this doesn't track with human behavior? You know,
01:14:53
Speaker
OK, but again, his friend Dylan Carlson, he's a musician. he also is the subject of the song In Bloom. OK. You know that song? He likes all her pretty songs. He likes to sing along. He likes to shoot his gun, but he knows out what it means. Yes. Very critical. Kind of you can see he's kind of a redneck guy. Means well. Well, he's the guy who buys Kurt Cobain, his shotgun, buys him a brand new one.
01:15:15
Speaker
The day after Kurt's intervention. So again, I believe this is March 28th or so, end of March, 1994. He has an intervention, his family and friends. He reacts very violently.
01:15:27
Speaker
Him and Courtney, they're fighting a lot. There's talk of divorce, which, yeah, of course, this is typical. um The day after the intervention, he goes and says he asks his friend to buy him a shotgun for him. Which he does. So you wonder how that guy feels, you know, probably shitty. He's still alive. He ah still has a band.
01:15:44
Speaker
Again, I don't know who this person is and I don't want to judge because he was a heroin addict as well. But goddamn, like yeah he said, i had no idea Kurt was suicidal. Well, you'd say that, right? Yeah. He knows not what it means. Right.
01:15:58
Speaker
So very tragic. And again, you don't see people blame him the way they would. Like, nobody knows this guy is, really, in the general public. Everyone says, oh, Courtney Love killed Kurt. Well, nobody talks about this guy. People who are into the real conspiracy theory freak stuff. Yeah, they'll say, oh, he wasn't involved because obviously he bought him the gun.
01:16:16
Speaker
This is just related. Right. And everybody is a malicious actor who's working according to a plan. And of course, the more people you add to the plan, the more secret it is. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, it's just it's just ridiculous. Like, these things are all out in the open. This is just clearly what happened. And again, to have orchestrated any of this while they're all on heroin is just, come on, people. All right.
01:16:38
Speaker
So again, backing up, you know, into my own insights, you know, why Kurt started using heroin, what ultimately led to this kind of stuff. So yeah, I think, you know, he's self-medicating with heroin, of course, but I don't think it was for stomach issues. Yeah.
01:16:52
Speaker
Like he's been using drugs for most of his adult life, all of his adult life. like I don't know if Kurt Cobain was sober from the day he turned 19 for a single day. You know what I mean? Like he pretty much was using drugs all the time. Yeah. You know, he people said, oh, when he was with Tracy Miranda, Olympia days, he was focusing on the band using drugs less.
01:17:12
Speaker
But when they break up and Nirvana hits a big, he's just into heroin like immediately. And again, he was into heroin well before he even became famous. right So yeah I'm kind of like, this is kind of funny. Again, I want to talk about again don't make it about myself, but I can offer insights to human behavior. Did you ever see that Tim Robinson sketch, I Used to Be a Piece of Shit?
01:17:31
Speaker
I have. I think you should leave. i was watching with my brother. I can't remember if how that happen. I think my brother-in-law turned to me and was like, hey, you used to be a piece of shit.
01:17:41
Speaker
I think that's what happened. Oh, thank you. yeah In you know the nicest possible way. So basically this character is a man who loves to tell everybody he what a piece of shit he used to be. I used to be a piece of shit. I'm not anymore, though. He's telling a baby he used to be a piece of shit. got the slick back hair.
01:17:56
Speaker
He looks at another man. He's like, oh I can see your piece of shit. That hair would slick back real good. So anyway, I felt personally attacked by that sketch because I do, as a person, used to be a piece of shit. It is fun to tell people about how you're not a piece of shit anymore, but how you used to be a real piece of shit. But yeah, so you know, i was a piece of shit in mainly, you know, when you're an alcohol abuser, you just lie a lot.
01:18:17
Speaker
So I just lied all the time. Any excuse to drink or to relapse, I would take. Again, people will be critical of me and I go, wow it's going to make me drink even more. Like, it's bad behavior. It's shameful. And I felt and i felt bad about myself and it's very destructive, right?
01:18:32
Speaker
So with Kurt using heroin, that's even like, I don't judge people for their drug use. Again, I don't know if drugs are bad necessarily. Like I think it depends on the drug. Personally, alcohol is a very harmful drug. Marijuana is barely a drug, right? Like I feel like they're, you know, the hallucinogenics have psychoactive and, you know, healing healing properties. They can be used to treat psychological issues too.
01:18:57
Speaker
So drugs are every not the problem. Everything you can get high from has medicinal use. Like, yeah, exactly. ah It's just ah dosage. And yeah. Yeah. And the thing about drugs, good or bad, is more to the point that they're here and we have to deal with. Yes. Well, exactly. Like, personally, my personal opinion is like, literally, like, legalize everything.
01:19:20
Speaker
And make sure when you do that, though, you have a very robust public health system and strong education around drug use. And you regulate it and you make it like but I feel like I should be able to go to the store, like go to a dispensary and buy acid.
01:19:35
Speaker
yeah Because I don't think it's that harmful. And again, you can dose it out correctly. you can give people advice. like you can do it again this is Or like MDMA, things like this. Heroin is way different.
01:19:46
Speaker
Prohibition doesn't work is the big thing. And ah if it did work, we wouldn't have an opioid crisis and several friends of mine who have died from overdoses, right? So like, yeah, it yeah it it it doesn't work.
01:20:03
Speaker
And... People get into this very ah flying my leftist flag liberal idea. And I mean, like, liberalism is a big tent, not just like liberal versus conservative. yeah of yeah Well, you don't want to endorse it. And because somehow that endorsing something is as bad as actually doing it. And you hear, well, are you endorsing this as something that happens in political arguments a lot?
01:20:28
Speaker
And it's a nonsense concept, right? It it just doesn't mean anything. What does endorsing drugs mean? ah like Like, okay, ah all right, everybody, become heroin addicts. I endorse this.
01:20:40
Speaker
Okay, that was a politically meaningless statement. It's changed in nothing. So ah anyways, I'll get off my high horse about that. he That's a pun. Hi. Hi, horse. Yeah. um high horse But yeah, ah drugs are here and we need to look them in the face and recognize that drug use is to varying extents horrifying and awesome all at the same time. And just, you know, it's just a part of human experience. So they're not going away. So let's just deal with it.
01:21:13
Speaker
And a lot of them are fun. Like, honestly, people honestly look at the news. People love to get high. People love to get high. They've always loved to get high. We need to alter our states. And frankly, like I'm on psychiatric medication. I'm not raw dog in the world. No way.
01:21:28
Speaker
yeah I don't know how anybody does. Our brains have not evolved to cope with our modern life. I believe that literally, like in terms of like things like anxiety, right? We are primed to be anxious and looking out for things are going to harm us. If you're in a world where nothing realistically is going to harm you, your brain, my brain looks for things. Right?
01:21:48
Speaker
I make up things are going to harm me. And that's just ah sort of a function of evolution that we have nowhere to
Addiction and Recovery Insights
01:21:53
Speaker
put it. you take the medication to get the edge off. you know I cannot stress how many, like, we're just lying down, settling in to go to go to sleep, and Tracy will start just fixating on something. It's like, you just kind of needed something to be anxious about.
01:22:07
Speaker
Yes. Again, my sort of my addiction roots in severe anxiety that wasn't being treated appropriately. Right. It was I wasn't being medicated for various reasons. And so alcohol really does a good job at first of cutting your anxiety. But ultimately, with again, this is why it depends on the drug, because alcohol, you wake up the next day and your brain's on fire with anxiety. At least I did. Like it's pouring fuel onto it. Oh, anxiety is a whole thing. And the next day yeah you have panic attacks. No, it like there's a term people use hang anxiety where ah ah you are more likely to be extremely anxious during a hangover.
01:22:44
Speaker
And ah yeah, I have ah a complex relationship to alcohol because of a very strong history of addiction in my family. And I love booze. So one suggested Tracy had a while ago that I have more or less stuck to you pretty religiously is I don't drink on weekdays as unless there's like a special occasion or something like that. And I don't, and else personally, I don't drink if I'm sad. i don't drink if I'm feeling unhappy. And because of that, um, I think I have a healthy relationship to it, but it means that I need all this self-discipline about this very ever present drug because alcohol is drug. And, uh, again, alcoholism like, uh, genuinely killed my father.
01:23:29
Speaker
And it yeah is something that is ah one of the hardest drugs to quit. It's like alcohol, cigarettes and heroin are sort of the top three of when you are properly addicted. Those are the hardest to get. ah Those are the hardest to get cleaned from.
01:23:45
Speaker
Yes. Oh, yep. That sounds about like it. Yeah. um Yeah, again, it's tough because, again, it depends on the drug. like And then some drugs, like, you know, risk of my professional life. But it's legal now. I'm Cali sober. And I honestly believe, i honestly believe if marijuana had been legal,
01:24:06
Speaker
For my adult life, I would not have turned to drinking because as recently as 10 years ago, to try and buy weed, even in Canada sometimes, I'm a loser. don't have a hookup. I have to go to like the skeeziest places and like ask strangers. Like that's not, it's sketchy, right? It's ridiculous.
01:24:22
Speaker
So I would never, and you know, half the time. And so now go to, you go to the cannabis shop and it's fine. You get some edibles. Great. No harm done. And I feel like it's honestly helpful to me in a way. Like I, you know, the drug they can enhance and they can take away. depends the drug you're using. Again, alcohol too. Again, I wouldn't prohibit it. And I think it's fun to drink.
01:24:42
Speaker
And I always, car out Carl, Carl Oveknausgaard, again, he really amazing series of books about his life, but He writes about being a teenager in Norway, like I think 70s, 80s. And he's like, the first time he drinks, he's like, oh my God, this is amazing.
01:24:55
Speaker
Why isn't everybody drunk all the time? Yeah, time it's great. Being drunk is fun. ah Being a hungover is not. but Yes. and Well, and even with even with cannabis, it's ah it's an incredible anxiety spike in some people. And other and ah some folks just can't use just can't get intoxicated because they are mentally fixated on the state of being intoxicated and use and use and use no matter what.
01:25:25
Speaker
And I've known a few people like that where ah they're not alcoholics, but if they take a sip of alcohol, they will drink everything in sight because yeah they they have to get as drunk as possible.
01:25:37
Speaker
Or yeah ah I'm not going to take five ah milligrams of pot. I am going, or sorry, five grams of ah pot. I'm going to take a Mm-hmm. ah Because it's there and it's a whole thing. So health is individual, even though addiction is a social thing. It's a mix of the individual and the commun and the communal. Because it's interesting. And with alcohol, I would say, too, like I'm the same way in that or I was the same way. I couldn't have one drink. Oh, you know, that's not true. In my younger days, I again, when I was from the Kootenays, I smoked pot before I ever drank. And I didn't actually drink at all until my thirty s
01:26:15
Speaker
Oh, like wow. would have a drink here and there, and I was able to control it. After work, Canadian Tire, after work, we'd go to the bar, and I'd have like a Malibu and pineapple. You know what I'm saying? i would have one or two, and they'd be fine. And then when getting on with life, moving away, different places... Various circumstances. I became an alcoholic pretty gradually, I'd say after about seven years. It took, and then the last, again, sort of terminal spiral, I called it very dangerous, kind of last six months, was when, again, it was, the alcohol itself was bad enough, but then combining it with the benzos, where I did not know.
01:26:51
Speaker
That you literally will die. Yes. Oh, no. no and It will stop your Yeah. you rest Yeah. No idea. And so very, very luckily, i had an incident where i was I was hospitalized and I decided, like, I can't do this anymore. My parents had brought up the idea of rehab. i was very scared. i was very terrified. But again, other people, I had a cousin who went to a particular facility. I went for a month and I treated it like school, basically. Yeah.
01:27:17
Speaker
Like, I was like, okay, I'm here. I got to fix this problem. I can't do this anymore because it does become do or die, like quite literally. oh yeah. So, Crookobane, he was on this track. Like, this was going to happen if he did not stop.
01:27:30
Speaker
Right. No. And the circling back to Kurt. and I'm sorry. i ah You're going to finish your story. ah The fact that he was sent to rehab at that point and not three, four years previous is. ah And again, rehab doesn't always work for people. But no, like, holy shit. Yeah.
01:27:49
Speaker
No, I was very lucky that. And again, like you did, I stuck to the weekends drinking. But then that was creeping into every day. And then yeah the other pills and stuff too. But yeah, so it can be a tricky time and everyone reaches sort of their own rock bottom.
01:28:03
Speaker
ah Very interestingly, so a friend of mine who passed away from addiction had said to somebody else at rehab, this woman who had a drinking problem, she I don't know if I've hit rock bottom yet. And this friend of mine said, well, how keep do you how deep do you want to keep digging? right well i like to Everyone's rock bottom is different. Yeah. yeah well and a Rock bottom is only visible in retrospect, right? Everybody can get worse. it's just like that's your rock bottom it's not a universal constant of well i guess i wasn't like sleeping in a ditch you know missing a leg or something like that you know i just like had a hospital visit it's like and you know it's not competition exactly well exactly and it's not it shouldn't be because that becomes a problem again i again was not a hook i was reading a lot of alcoholic memoirs
01:28:51
Speaker
I was sort of in denial, but I kept reading like the Mary Carr. And and and I was like, oh, well, the problem with those two you read them and you say, well, I'm not that bad yet. Yeah. Right. And I've told people my stories and they've said, well, i'm not as bad as Jen yet. And I'm like, no this isn't the point I want to get across. The the point is it doesn't matter how bad it gets. You have to stop. So I was a treatment. I treated it like school. And also for me, at least I'm a professional job, very supportive family. My immediate circle of friends and family were not drinkers either.
01:29:21
Speaker
Right. This was not a social drinking situation I had where everyone's pushing me. it was me by myself self-medicating. Yeah. So, yes, it made me realize, you know, I'm in rehab with a lot of lot of, interacting with lots and lots of people with very serious addiction issues, very limited support in their life, very hard lives. And I'm like, you know what?
01:29:40
Speaker
don't have any real problems. I got to get over myself. These are issues that are, i have some issues, yes, but they're manageable. And throwing alcohol at them is just making it worse, right? So I knew I had to quit. But the the problem with addicts and people, again, like Kurt Cobain, you can't tell people to quit.
01:29:56
Speaker
Like as an addict recovering myself, there's nothing you can say to anybody to make them stop. Like, and this is an issue. this is something people have to realize as well. You can try, you can intervene, you can let people know how you feel, you can help them, or you can tell them you love them and that they need help, but you can't say to anything you can't say anything to anyone. like I wouldn't even know what to say to anybody. it has to be They have to have their own motivations to want to quit. So with Cobain, he did not want to quit. right so he died of a hero you know had of his heroin addiction and,
01:30:28
Speaker
crucially having a gun available, huge, but also just the cognitive dissonance, you know, of his life. So I'm wrapping, I'm getting towards the end here. I just want to maybe wrap up a little bit with some sort of final thoughts about what I think kind of happened.
01:30:42
Speaker
So again, this is straying a bit from the psychogeographical, but I think it's interesting anyway. So why did he become a heroin user in the first place? Well, some people want to be a tortured artist, maybe. And again, I love Kurt Cobain.
01:30:53
Speaker
i don't i didn't know him, but i love his sort of music and what he gave to us. Flawed human like everybody else, right? Heroin is very romanticized. You know, he's growing up listening to music in the 70s. Heroin was big then, right? so And he also probably wanted to, you know, escape.
01:31:09
Speaker
ah Heroin use is very rampant in the music scene in the Pacific Northwest in the eighty s and 90s. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So it was already there. He's in the system. He's kind of already like a rebellious teenager doing all the drugs. Right. you can get his hands on anyway. Some people he was a huge admirer of like William S. Burroughs.
01:31:26
Speaker
William S. Burroughs famously was a drug addict, heroin addict. Oh, yeah. time Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, people can use drugs for a long time and then have an artistic experience or awakening or whatever and then they move beyond it and they grow old or you get like lane staley you know from alice and chains just sinks deeper and deeper into it that's kind of where things might have been going okay so by the okay sorry go on jen i'm sorry and i have my speculation on uh what because i a quote i like is everyone is that way for a reason
01:31:57
Speaker
And i it is something i always remind myself of if I'm dealing with somebody who is ah just, you know, making me miserable or being difficult or antisocial or whatever, where I don't always necessarily have to tolerate bad behavior or put up with it in my life. But I can always in the back of my mind recognize everyone comes to where they are from some kind of place.
Pressures from Fame and Industry
01:32:19
Speaker
And when you look at this combination of a depressed place like Aberdeen and you have what is likely the malaise and intense boredom of being a teenager ah from this, ah like, again, broken home and heroin is everywhere.
01:32:37
Speaker
And if I'm right, he was bipolar as well, as well. Right. That I don't know. Okay. My understanding is he was bipolar. I don't know how intensely bipolar he was, but it's very likely that, and again, there's a reason why not everybody from his background ends up ends up as Kurt did. But if you have an underlying psychological issue that self-medicating works for and you lack the social supports, and infrastructure to support that.
01:33:06
Speaker
And then you add in, everyone's doing heroin. Heroin is cool because I associate it with Lou Reed and Willie Burroughs and other figures like that. yeah All of these different factors come together to make it the sort of obvious and sort of inevitable outcome of this. And because like, how would you kind of not end up as a heroin addict if you were Kurt Cobain? That's a good question. Honestly, it is. Like people, yeah. Yeah.
01:33:32
Speaker
That's actually a very good point. Yeah, I've never thought about that because, yes, kind of inevitable and given who he was and how his childhood went and just, you know, yeah, who he admired. Yeah, excellent point. And I just think about, like, the bored teenagers in, like, the depressed little city kind of deal, which is... ah Such a huge deal in how us ah like punk music came out of the UK was ah this like alienation and boredom and misery with this world when you're in this depressed time. So all of that, that soup that he comes from, is going to taste like heroin.
01:34:12
Speaker
Sure is. That's quite the metaphor. Which I... ah I like my metaphors mixed, like i as mixed as much as I like my soup mixed. That didn't work. right Carry on, Jen.
01:34:23
Speaker
You okay? You what? It was mixed. You mixed reviews on that. That's okay. But no, it's true. um It does feel a little bit inevitable. I mean, I think people ultimately, again, I'm not sure the extent to which I believe in free will in the sense that we're all a combination of nature, nurture, ways we can't even comprehend. Right.
01:34:41
Speaker
But i I believe we have free will in a limited context. Yes. Yeah. We are helpless about our context, but we can't make choices within that context because an individual decision that could go one way or another has changed history in multiple occasions. And I don't think those decisions were inevitable. However, the point that you came to that decision was a result of that context. But yeah, anyways, it's, it would be exceptional for Curt not to be a heroin addict considering all of the factors at play or an alcoholic or some, ah or just falling into addiction generally. Yeah.
01:35:14
Speaker
yeah That's right. Pretty, pretty normal, actually. So again, he's very famous, having trouble dealing with all this. So Rome, what happened in Rome was they quit their tour um in Europe, the end of their tour in Europe in March. The last day, and Courtney go to a hotel in Rome. He overdoses. We heard about this a bit. Was a suicide attempt pretty obviously again. so by this time, though, there are a couple of other factors that I think really might have been a tipping point.
01:35:43
Speaker
OK, so the time of his suicide attempt in Rome in 94, he had it come to hate touring. One of the reasons he hates touring is because it's really hard to get heroin overseas.
01:35:55
Speaker
Like, legit. that no no, no. I completely believe that. Of course it is. You're not going to know who your who your hookup is in Prague. No. So, he yes. he so he although oh Speaking of Prague, you know what's really funny? I shouldn't tell you this, but like this is a long time ago. Statute of limitations, if there are any... Early 2000s, well, mid-2000s in Europe, I was traveling. I literally Googled where to buy weed in Prague, and it worked. oh They gave you instructions. oh'll go to this bar, walk down this hallway, et cetera, et cetera. And I did it. It was stupid, but it worked.
01:36:28
Speaker
The internet is amazing. to the public. Yeah. Yeah, but I wouldn't do that again. i i was stupider in my less responsible days, let's just say, as you can tell by some of my life choices. Okay, anyway. so So yeah, he's not doing good. He's having a suicide attempt.
01:36:43
Speaker
They're trying to intervene. But here's what's going on in the background, too. So people in charge of Cobain's affairs, his managers, his wife, of course, is taking on a lot of his business responsibilities, even though she has her own band to deal with, right? He has record label handlers, managers, all this stuff. They want him to quit using too, right? And there's ah i think Danny Goldberg, one of his managers, wrote a memoir about Kurt. It was very nice. He's like, we all loved him.
01:37:07
Speaker
We all wanted him to stop using. But it seemed like they wanted him to stop using because Nirvana was supposed to headline Lollapalooza 94. This is what I think is what might have been one of the tipping points, right? Lollapalooza is a massive tour. Massive, especially in the ninety s If you're not you know old enough to remember like I was, i always wanted to go to Lollapalooza. But I was too young and it didn't work out i had a cousin who saw Green Day at Lollapalooza 94.
01:37:33
Speaker
And was like, God damn, like I missed out. I was a little bit too young for some of this stuff, but they want Nirvana to play Lollapalooza 94. They're going to make millions and millions of dollars. So this is March and he's overdosing. So, okay, they're not tying into what I said before about asking people to quit drugs, telling people to quit drugs. They have to want to quit.
01:37:50
Speaker
You don't get an anti-corporate rock star to quit drugs by saying, hey, get clean real quick so you can go on tour and make us a bunch of money. And this is what they were doing. This is what they were essentially asking. He overdoses. ah He's suicidal. He's overdosing on heroin all the time.
01:38:06
Speaker
He goes into rehab. When does Lollapalooza start? May, June? Yeah. You're not going to kick your $400 a day habit in two months to be well enough to go on tour. Like it's, this is what they're asking. and This is what I think. Yeah. And somebody in Kurt's position who is smart and cynical and hates this corporate bullshit is going to see them using him and be even more defiant about not quitting. Exactly. Yes.
01:38:32
Speaker
Even myself. Like, OK, when I was drinking, I never pull the old old Elon Musk. I never hurt anyone physically. i didn't. But I was hurting my family because I was hurting myself and I was putting them through a lot of shit at a certain point. Like if they but if but if they had tried to do an intervention on me, i would have been like, fuck you. i'm going to drink more because that's what you do when you're an addict.
01:38:54
Speaker
also right yeah not making good decisions okay so he's in his what courtney also is encouraging him to get clean you know she does love him nobody wants him to die like he is a child right this is again human look at the human behavior here right yeah so they're not saying get clean so you can get like what they should have said was okay quit music you know yeah take a break Quit. Let's just do whatever you need You can hang out in a farmhouse for a while. Be with your family. Get help. like He's wealthy at this point. You hire nurses. Get through it and then see what happens. Yeah, vanish from society for three years so that your fame dies down. Yes. And then come back. When this is done, I'll do my little speech about, I'd say, the most helpful discussions I've had with addicts. Interesting. where being a friend can be useful without just telling them to quit because that's not helpful. Yeah.
01:39:47
Speaker
Hmm. So, yeah, in this case, yeah, they're basically like, get clean to go on the Lollapalooza tour because you're going to make a shit ton of money for everybody. Right? So what he's seeing, he's so anger at his sort of, he's seeing now k Courtney is quite controlling.
01:40:04
Speaker
He says nasty things about her, nasty things about his management team during the intervention. People said he was very mean. it wasn't like him but because he's an addict and they're he sees them as controlling, right? So the only people who don't push him away or don't control him are his fellow heroin addict friends, right?
01:40:21
Speaker
This is where we get back to Dylan Carlson.
01:40:25
Speaker
Buying a gun... Like, he yes, this man bought drugs and guns for Kurt Cobain, his rock star friend. Like, very not not really with it. But he's giving him whatever he wants, right? So there's this too. Okay. So the money is not a good motivation for Kurt Cobain to quit, right? and you have cognitive dissonance too, right? So he's absorbing this anti-corporate ethic, totally at odds with his actual commercial success. Again, and he worked really hard. Like you don't start a band and do demo tapes and go on tours nonstop because you don't want to be famous or you don't want any success, except he became the biggest rock star in the world, which is probably not really what he really wanted. So you can't really reconcile this, right? So he's in this position where, again,
01:41:11
Speaker
descending into depression, addiction, feeling trapped. Him and Courtney aren't getting along, probably heading towards a divorce. Or at the very least, they needed to take a break from each other and like get cleaned up, both of them, right? get Get some treatment and stuff. But you have to think, you you want to be a rock star, and then you get there, and then what? What's the point, right?
01:41:31
Speaker
He wanted this so badly, he worked so hard, and now he's in his mansion, right? basically alone and miserable so what else do you do right yeah so yeah so again he didn't really let anybody know where he was after he escaped from rehab ends his life and again you can't help but see that as symbolic like in his mansion you know this must be like a sanctuary but nope that's just you know the kid from the little yellow house in Aberdeen ends up in the mansion in Seattle and that's where it all ends because
Reflection on Cobain's Impact and Support for Addicts
01:42:06
Speaker
well
01:42:08
Speaker
Again, what did we learn? so what did I learn? So just real quick, I'll just wrap my part up. So i yeah i visited Kirkobain's house. Again, the mansion, you can go there. There's a nice park. It has a bench with all these like nice letters and flowers and stuff I've been there a couple of times. is interesting both times.
01:42:27
Speaker
Worth it to see. Again, i don't think I learned anything from visiting there necessarily. Again, I feel going to these different places Really helped me understand his music, appreciate it more, appreciate him as a musician and as a human being.
01:42:42
Speaker
But I feel like my takeaway is that he was just a vulnerable human being who may have died because he couldn't reconcile his wealth and fame with his ethics and morals.
01:42:53
Speaker
And because he couldn't take a break for his mental health and because he owned a gun. Right. There's a lot of factors at play. um Really quick shout out. Sarah Marshall does an episode on the Kirkbane copycat suicide myth.
01:43:07
Speaker
Because in fact, there were the moral panic. Yeah. The moral panic about that. Again, I was I was 14 when he killed him. 13, actually. But, you know, about to turn 14.
01:43:20
Speaker
And I was a really gormless kid. And at that age, I knew nothing about music. I started getting into music when I was like 15, 16. But yeah the shockwave that went through my little rural Albertan high school ah and the intense fear of copycat suicides where all of the kids were like, washed like a hawk and we had assemblies and this entire idea that there would be this like wave of teenagers killing themselves all over the country. Pure moral panic.
01:43:51
Speaker
It was quite a thing to live through at that age, particularly. ah Yes. I vaguely remember that because when i he was I was 12 when he passed away. But yeah, yeah it is it was a huge moral panic. And the fact is that article I quoted earlier about the copycats, there weren't that many because they actually did a very good job. They said that the news media in particular and the way people in Seattle reacted to it. And again,
01:44:13
Speaker
There's video. You can hear Courtney Love reading his suicide note. It's heartbreaking. Yeah. You listen to her read that note and know, yeah, she killed him. Like, come the fuck on. Honestly, there's video of her in the park next to their house in the days after he died, like talking to fans. And she looks devastated because she was.
01:44:30
Speaker
Right. So this these are human beings. This really happened to him. Horrible. Didn't have a chance to kind of take care of himself. And again, ultimately, never answer why this happened. But again, lot of factors at play. really Again, as I was mentioning before, Sarah Marshall does an episode, I think, on yeah on the the caught Cobain copycat suicides, debunking that. But she also does say that it was mainly the gun ownership. And people like to blame Courtney Love because they think you can just save somebody, right? And you kind of can't, right? So ultimately,
01:45:04
Speaker
he was in a tough position. if it had been handled better, he probably. A lot of things would have had happened a lot earlier. and And I mean, a lot earlier is key. Yeah, that's right. So we can now appreciate the music that he left behind and remember his life and appreciate that for what it is.
01:45:22
Speaker
But yeah, addiction. It's a tough one. Take care yourselves. And yeah, Dave, I'm curious about what i have found. I have a hard time with advice. Well, and the thing is, is that when you are friends with somebody who is an addict, which I have been many times throughout my life, and I've kind of taken my lumps and learned. Thanks for being a friend. Hooray. And like, if you are, if you are in the situation of someone who is supporting someone who is, who is an addict,
01:45:48
Speaker
ah The big thing to do is, although you can, of course, make your beliefs known, which is you're an addict and I want you to get clean and I want to help you get clean, is to recognize that hectoring somebody doesn't work and they'll just isolate themselves from because you make things uncomfortable and they're trying to get away from the discomfort into their addiction. But what you can do is listen, validate, and also get them to talk about their addiction and get them to freely discuss it with you. Because if they are open and honest with you about something they tend to hide or not confront, and you are nonjudgmental and validating, which is, ah you know, I see i i see the kind of shit you're dealing with and why you're coping in this way, I understand. It's not healthy, but I understand.
01:46:38
Speaker
When people start discussing this in a safe manner, they're confronting their addiction. And by confronting it, it gets them in the headspace where getting clean becomes more appealing. And they can then make that decision for themselves.
01:46:52
Speaker
And being somebody who is safe to talk to about these difficult things without jumping down their throat and being difficult about it can... can be an ingredient that helps because you also, as a friend, your job is not to save people. And if you want to be a friend to somebody, be a friend. Your job is to be their friend, not to be something else or to be a friend in the hopes that the sober one of them is the person you'll get to like get from that. No, this is the person in front of you and love them for who they are. But being validating and allowing them to be honest with you safely is huge. And I think that at least a couple of people have told me that's helped.
01:47:33
Speaker
So something to keep in mind if you're in the position of being a loved one or supporter to somebody who is hopefully wanting to or will want to get Yeah, that's great advice, Dave. Because before, when I said, I don't know what to say, i wouldn't know what to say. That's true, but that doesn't mean say nothing. Yeah, but you absolutely should. And I think my family, with myself, too, um they did the best they could.
01:47:57
Speaker
They were the kind of like you say, Dave, they're they're very supportive. They wanted me to quit. They made that clear. they They made it very clear. I would try to quit several times. They made it clear how relieved they were. hmm. one thing they didn't do they didn't tell me quite how stressed out they were and they didn't reveal to me sort of the actual fear they had for me which i was oblivious to and kind of didn't care about myself anyway so if i wouldn't have admit i don't know if it made a difference i i just wish because later on they they told me some things that i was like oh if i knew that i'm i'm so sorry right i didn't know what i was doing to them oh yeah emotionally you know you don't want to don't hector people but guilt does work guilt works but it does honestly yeah and again for me confrontation never worked and people frankly cutting me off didn't work right so you know again but it's again i don't judge people for doing that i think tracy and i have a solid relationship built on a foundation of guilt yeah hey good hey it's yeah i love the way you said that
01:48:59
Speaker
yeah sorry i'm not mocking you tracy it's just oh i am okay thanks steve anytime sweetie so that was uh yeah kirkabane i appreciate the taking the time to let me talk for two episodes about this i'm hoping it was also very overwhelming to write because i have so many sources the next one will be for me will be much more straightforward looking forward to this is a great to talk about could talk about kirkabane all day but i'm glad to kind of move on now and It is a wonderfully freeing sense when you finally get to record one of these and you're free of the curse of having to obsess and research that
Conclusion and Future Topics
01:49:33
Speaker
last item. And you can move on to a next one because I need to be free from mine now as I'm doing the next episode, but it will come soon and it will be a delight. It always is looking forward to it. And with that, that is the wonder camera part two of the Kirkabayan tragical history tour.
01:49:51
Speaker
We'll be with you again in two weeks. And bye, Dave. And bye, Tracy. Bye, Jen. Bye, Jen. Not to the listeners, though. You don't get a goodbye. Yeah, to hell with yes. Okay, we're done.
01:50:03
Speaker
Thank you for listening to The Wonder Camera. Find us under The Wonder Camera on Blue Sky, YouTube, and Instagram. camera