Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Calling Out the Neighbors

Mixtapes came up twice today, so I am making it a thrice, laying it down on a trifecta while I nostalge over the Nirvana Unplugged (from those so often lamented days when MTV played music and weren't wuss-assed pud- nut wankers).

Don't know why I feel the animosity, probably Cobain's voice (I forgot Cobain wasn't spelled with a K for a second. And this bothers me. I'm nearly 28, and you all know when he died. I don't know why that down-the-middle split should be affective, but I feel something considerable in mulling over this, in mulling over the album, often lamented for its soul and seriousness so soon before his death, and coaxing the CD off the stack it's been relegated to, a spare black spindle once carrying blank cds during the intervening moves following fires and job loss, the arrival and departure of loved ones, the elements of life that are too easily blurred by the ever-growing tumult of it all. We're on the last song now, Polly, and I have to admit, I am not entirely removed. I never have been. Something about the line "I'm going where the cold wind blows" has always tacked itself too me like I was a donkey sans a tail and I have often let my own voice reach into its horse octaves to the shivering of the chorus, letting it carry out over the false sephira and drop, falling, down to where Kurt himself found himself one too many times.
We call him Kurt I think, as inevitably as the sun rose the morning after he died, because he gave himself to us. We were the 13 year olds of In Utero, the 11 year olds of Nevermind. Those numbers alone meant we would always be there, listening to the songs, sitting with them.  Had we read enough, had Moore written Promethea by then and explained enough, and if The Sandman had finished before that, well things might have been different. We might have known it rather than felt it, we could have looked more closely at what swirled around us, known where the edge was, but as I said, it was inevitable.
But knowing now, with the lingering strain of that place, where the sun don't ever shine, we in our turn cannot help but shiver the whole night through.)

Here's the mix, it's from a while back:

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