Kurt Cobain died in April of 1994 twenty-one days before I was born. We look for patterns everywhere. When he died it sparked a conversation about his age, twenty-seven, because fans noticed it was the same age that Jimi Hendrix, Brian Jones, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison were when they all died within two years of each other over two decades earlier. My favorite picture of Kurt Cobain is one of him wearing a crown of pink roses. For some this might signal some spiritual connection to that earlier age in rock history when hippies adorned in flower crowns could be found at festivals like Woodstock. For me though it’s a reminder of how Cobain was vocal through his whole career in his support of the queer community—going so far as to tell any potential homophobes who bought his album that he hated them if even they liked him in the liner notes. And a reminder of how Cobain spoke openly about questioning his own sexuality in adolescence and used to go around Aberdeen, Washington spray painting God is Gay. When Amy Winehouse died of alcohol poisoning in 2011 it brought back public interest in the supposed twenty-seven club. Since then the club has been expanded to include not just musicians but actors and other celebrities who also died at that age. This expansion really serves to undermine the idea that there’s some tragic cosmic force at play here. What started as an observation about a coincidence among the age of musicians whose lives were cut short then expanded to include other famous figures in order to create more data points to point to and say see, there’s really something to this. It’s motivated by a desire to make meaning out of events that we can’t understand or accept. But I’m not really interested in patterns or how are brains are trained to look for them. I’m interested in the same thing as everyone else I guess, death. I used to sit in my room as a teenager and scream along with Kurt as he’d yelp out You Know you’re right over and over. For sure there was some over dramatic teen angst in this picture of me in my room, feeling overwhelmed by things I’d be able to see in a few years as trivial. But there was more that made me feel connected to Cobain then other angry singers I’d scream along with. I didn’t know I was queer yet, and didn’t know about Cobain’s defense of the queer community, but I could sense in his voice and his lyrics a kind of softness made jagged by a harsh and hateful world. There was something else I felt in him too. The reason twenty-seven seems so significant isn’t just because of the coincidence of multiple public figures dying at that age—if someone noticed a bunch of musicians all died when they were eighty-one nobody would talk about an eighty-one club—twenty-seven is young, to many people it’s incredibly, tragically young. But when I would sit and listen to Cobain’s pained voice as a teenager, knowing he died in his twenties, I would wonder if he too spent his whole life with this sense that he wasn’t gonna be around for long. I wonder now about all the members of the twenty-seven club—whether they took their own lives like Cobain, or died from overdose, or even sudden accidents—if they struggled to imagine themselves as old or even middle-aged. I wonder if twenty-seven ever sounded very young to them at all. In a bit of serendipity, as I approach my twenty sixth birthday in two months, I’ve just recently discovered a song that was written over three years ago. Anymore by THICK. Lately I’ve been singing along to it every day I’m twenty-six / so sick of this / I’m not a kid / anymore. DT McCrea is a trans anarchist poet living in Akron Ohio. Their work can be found at Honey and Lime and Taco Bell Quarterly. In their free time DT enjoys contemplating the nature of the universe and plotting the downfall of capitalism.
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malady and melody
features staff writers from Flypaper and select music critics invited to review projects and write guest articles. To be released sporadically. Jay Jolles- Just To Boogie With You
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