In Search of Nirvana
This week marks the death of a man who started a movement. Kurt Cobain, lead singer of the band Nirvana, shot to fame in the early Nineties then, 10 years ago on Monday, shot himself.
Nirvana's alternative rock was known as 'grunge', and the band became a reluctant voice-piece for a simmering culture of despair.
Millions were drawn to songs such as 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' and 'Lithium'; and although the lyrics were sometimes hard to decipher and interpret, the singer's brooding angst - combined with his sullen good looks and often beautiful, bruising melodies - meant that an iconoclast became an icon.
Tragically, this cross was too great to bear. Now, Cobain is hailed as the last 'true' rock star - following in the wake of an illustrious band of musicians who also died aged 27: Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison...
Of course, fans wish he was still alive; but his wasteful death, in some perverse way, lent authenticity to his life of pain and isolation, and led many to identify with him further. He was, at least, 'for real' within a shallow, seafoam culture. "I wish I was like you," he sang: "Easily amused."
Another death will be marked this week, too - of another young man who surrendered his life. Of another figure who dealt with our universal sense of pain. Of someone whose death, at the time, seemed like the greatest waste of all, yet proved to be the most valuable.
It would be wrong to compare Cobain to Christ. And yet, people still reach out to both. If some find greater solace in Nirvana than the Church, it's because they can identify more readily with Cobain's honest melancholy than the Church's (sometimes dishonest) triumphalism.
On Good Friday, churches will do something they seldom do throughout the rest of the year: lament. They will express sorrow, alienation, bewilderment. And it's the one time of year they will express disbelief, too. How could anyone do this to Jesus? And how could Jesus possibly do this for us?
Sunday is coming. But first, it's right to embrace the darkness of Friday. To face the void. And to remember that Christ was in tune with the dislocation and abandonment - expressed by Cobain and appreciated by his followers - more acutely than anyone. He's been to hell and back. But somehow he's lived to tell the tale.
Brian Draper
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