Static Live Magazine January 2020

“It is a wise father that knows his own
child” (The Merchant of Venice 2.2.73)
Hey! Kurt, are you listening? It’s me, your
father-in-law; you know, the old dude who figured he
could help. But then you died. Kurt, you are a stupid
ass, a genius and a typical rock star pulled along by
your dick. You are also a political firebrand, and you
are the father of my third granddaughter. Sorry, there
are two others.
I loved you even though we never met. When you
died, I cried for two weeks, but so did everybody else,
except your widow… well, she cried, but only for the
cameras. We never had a chance to meet, did we?
Your music coaxed millions of young people into
direct action, and you were uncompromising in that
pursuit. You weren’t 100% sure about your politics,
but you had a vision. You rejected unearned wealth
and abstract power. You made chumps out of people
who don’t like being embarrassed by kids from the
sticks. We have a lot in common. Like me, you didn’t
trust big shots. For this, you were assassinated
Potheads and junkies don’t usually hang around
together. That’s why your music was so hard for me
to grasp at first… but you weren’t always on smack
when you wrote your songs or played your music, so I
listened and finally, I heard it. You were a savant, like
Mozart. You felt smart, but in our post-punk world it
takes time—to “come out.” At first, you wrote music
for sixteen-year-olds prancing around in slightly beat
Land Rovers and the Hondas they inherited from their
folks. They listened, they danced and moshed and got
stoned, but only a few heard your deeper mantra.
About two months before you died I discovered
that Linda Carroll, née Lou Linda Risi (Courtney’s
mother) was going to write a book for Doubleday
and that she found her biological mother
in Brooklyn, who turned out to be the late
Paula Fox. Great-grandma Fox was, by
the way, a genius and a highly decorated
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TEXTING COBAIN
author of several best sellers.
When you married Courtney,
and especially when Frances
was born, I thought, “Oh boy,
my son-in-law is a savant
too; now we have a whole
family of gifted people.” I was
delusional with hope, but so
what? It was a hopeful vision.
That was my state of mind
when you died. Then reality
struck, then silence. You have
a really big DNA-linked family
now. I mean step-relatives and
half-brethren and so forth, but
still real family; you know, the
ones who tolerate your bullshit
because they are your family.
In 2008 I found my lost
biological son, thanks to
Facebook, so my heart goes
out to Courtney. I know how
she must have felt knowing
her grandmother was a major
genius and not Italian. I feel
the same about my son, who
turned up with one of the most
amazing jobs anyone can
have, a really nice wife and 4
kids. Funny how that works.
One day you are looking at
old age and the next day you
pop up with five grandchildren
waiting for Christmas.
I have been around mock stars
and rock stars for most of my
adult life. I had no choice. My
college chums all became
rock stars, and my kid felt it
was her destiny to follow the
trend. So, when you came
along, I had tools with which
to judge you fair and square
just by observing you in the
media, I could tell you valued
money about as much as you
valued Monopoly tokens. It
was a game, a boring game.
To you, money was the chump
change of life—you needed it
to do good things, but it had
an ugly side and you saw that
too. Just remember, kicking
money to the curb is OK, as long
as you live in a cave. I could tell
you saw the greedy people at the
altar of power and fame, and to
them, both things flow from the
same rusty pipe. But you were a
public figure, a real star, and an
easy target.
Big shots worship money, to them
it’s GOD. But if you were here,
if I knew your current address, I
would tell you to be careful when
you show disdain for the money
god, the one Ginsberg called
Moloch. Remember, Burroughs
was born into money so he didn’t
give a shit about it either and it
was Burroughs who told your fans
that you were the next Beatnik
king, a real poetic blue-blood. Not
your wife dude, not your wife; she
was jealous of you, although she
was a blue-blood of a different
kind. Sadly, she blew that heritage
when you died.
That’s where you went off the
track—you not only disdained
money; you found it empty and
shallow. You wrote poetry and
music and made videos about
the corruption of power. Like a
post-industrialist painter and the
muralists of the WPA, you joined a
union of mad hatters and drooling
dogs, flightless vultures that had
no use for precocious children and
wunderkinder unless they could
earn big money.
Just remember; kicking money
to the curb is OK, as long as you
live in a cave. But you signed a
contract with mongrels on a bone
and you bought houses - Kurt,
booby! You projected images
that continue to grab people, and
in this society, if you do that, you
get a big target pasted on your
back. In the warlike world of 21st
Century America, you have to beat
the shit out of your opponent and
scribble at the same time. It isn’t
good enough to get published
or put out albums; you have to
cripple the other guy. America
doesn’t want pansy poets
anymore; they want Sunday
Punchers like Norman Mailer and
Jack Kerouac; tough machismo
boys who can write things down
in blood, other people’s blood,
Truman Capote notwithstanding.
Kurt, you were a true warrior
poet until you saw a deeper truth.
You realized Hollywood was just
stupid! That’s when somebody
decided you needed a short
course in murder. You were
assassinated, plain and simple.
Whomever it was got away with
it a quarter-century ago, but
they made mistakes; ghoulish
errors left behind like crumbs in a
Hansel and Gretel tale.
Your “suicide note” was not a
good-bye-cruel-world letter. It
was a note to your fans saying
you needed to go into hiding, that
a succubus was stalking you.
This letter was addressed to an
imaginary friend from childhood,
an elfin figure named Boddah.
Because that’s the world you
lived in. From the beginning,
slushing through crash pads in
Olympia, you didn’t care much
about anything—a classic beat
existentialist. But as you grew
into your fame suit, you realized
you could do good things. You
turned against your mongrel
masters and you amassed a
huge following of independent
fans. Hell, even me. So, from a
strictly reactionary perspective,
you had to be neutralized, just
like the Kennedys, Martin Luther
King, and John Lennon. You
are the greatest rock star of
your generation and you will be
respected forever.
By Hank Harrison
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