To the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah.

Congratulations you have won
It's a year subscription of bad puns
And a make-shift story of concern
And to set it up, before it burns
My opinions.

Have you ever been fortunate enough to know one of those people that just continues to surprise you with their depth, their range, their capacity to continually surprise you, even if you've known them for years? No? That's too bad. I have had the exquisite pleasure of recently reuniting with an old friend that has precisely this quality. In spades. This is a blog about a dream I recently had the pleasure of realizing--a dream I've held close to my heart for some twelve years. But it's also about the woman that made it happen, a woman I never could've imagined would make my dream her own. So excuse me if I'm about to get medi-emo on your ass.

My 20th birthday was not the greatest I ever had. Mere days beforehand, I'd gotten the news that Kurt Cobain's body had been found in his home in Seattle. To say this news put a damper on my birthday would be an exercise in supreme understatement. Plenty of shit's been written about Nirvana--some of it real, some of it made-up; some of it accurate, some not--and punk revivalism, grunge culture, the voice of a generation, the alternative revolution, etc. "Whatever, nevermind." To me, they were just a great fucking band. They didn't reinvent the wheel; if I wanted innovation, I could (and did, and do) listen to Sonic Youth. If I wanted rock, I listened to Nirvana.

Their music was authentic, like Buddy Holly or the early Beatles. It was an uncomplicated expression of the blues (Ralph Ellison's definition: the wedding of the near-comic and the near-tragic), like Johnny Cash. It was powerful and raw, like the Ramones or Led Zeppelin. Then there was the scream. Something about the futility of it, the self-loathing, the underlying dead-end inferiority complex spoke to the kid who'd struggled so much (I thought) to get out of a small town in the armpit of Texas.

I was hooked on Nirvana.

I never once got to see them in concert. I had an opportunity to see them once at the infamous Trees show in Dallas, but I passed it up for reasons I can't recall. They were my favorite band and I didn't go see them. Go figure. All I remember is thinking, I'll see them next time. Although they eventually came back through Dallas, I missed that show. Then there would be no next time. Ever again.

When Michael Azerrad published his Nirvana bio, Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana, I devoured it. It became my bible for a while. I read it and reread it. For me, it's still the definitive story. I learned that Kurt had come from a small town, too, and it only helped me understand him a little better. Azerrad goes a long way toward romanticizing Aberdeen's dilapidation and implosive, expected-failure mentality. Its backwardness. Its cultural depletion. Nevertheless, I always implicitly understood that Azerrad was romanticizing all this stuff that is, by its nature, not romantic to anyone who's come from a shithole town where everyone knows your name and from which so very few ever leave.

It was that same month that Kurt died--the month I turned twenty--that I first concocted the idea of journeying to Seattle for the express purpose of a spiritual journey, a pilgrimage, to Aberdeen to connect with my fallen hero. I didn't expect to see anything I hadn't seen before; what could really be that different between Aberdeen and Mexia? Gray skies vs. oppressively blistering Texas sunshine? Logs vs. cows? One backward-ass, repressed, shitpot, redneck town is pretty much like another. So why bother? In Kurt--or at least through his music--I'd found a kindred spirit: an artistic soul born, fortunately or unfortunately, into geographic mediocrity. The fact that I never saw Nirvana live except on TV drove me to bond with my hero in some kind of way. I wanted to see this place that Krist Novoselic--in Azerrad's book, no less--once described thus: "It's cloudy and rainy. There's mud in the streets from all the trucks. The buildings are all kind of dirty. It's like an East German town or something. Everything is so damp down there that the wood just gets kind of soft and things fall apart."

More than anything else, I wanted to see and absorb the holiest of holies, the bridge over the Wishkah where Kurt lived during a brief homeless stint in his "home" town. Could there be any better icon of his malplacement? For artistic, creative people (dare I say it? Like Kurt and I), there's nothing worse than small-town existence. It should come as no surprise that he was living under a bridge--so symoblic of transition and mobility--and not in a home.

Underneath the bridge
The tarp has sprung a leak

You know how this shit goes, though. The best-laid plans of mice and men, all that. I never did make the trip. Until now.

I should tell you about Karen now. I met her in August of 93. Kurt was alive, the laments for his death, "1995" (Mudhoney) and "Junkie's Promise" (Sonic Youth) were years away. She was a great friend, an amazing listener to a young man who needed someone to listen to his self-obsessed, neurotic, and self-loathing diatribes. Judas Priest, was this really me? Yes, I'm afraid it was. Musically, however, we didn't exactly see eye-to-eye. Her tastes were more Edie Brickell than Kurt Cobain. [see footnote/disclaimer below.] So I could not have been more surprised when she suggested to me--no, insisted--we go to Aberdeen.

Wait. I should back up.

I had lost touch with Karen after she moved to Seattle in 1999. Before, truth be told. When we reconnected earlier this year, we started talking about a trip to Seattle. She was actually one of three friends who went there only to return with the news she was moving there. All three of said friends did within six months of their respective announcements. This was going to be my opportunity to see what it was about this town that had such appeal. Aberdeen was not on my agenda.

Karen was awesome at coming up with ideas for things for us to do during my stay. Shows to go to, art exhibits to take in, happy-hour friends to meet and carouse with. But she kept asking if there was anything I wanted to do.

--No, no. I leave the planning to you, I told her on the phone one night when she was being particularly persistent. If I come up with something, it would be touristy, and I don't want to do that. I don't want to see the Seattle the rubes see. But she wouldn't stop. Wasn't there something I wanted to do?

--Alright. I'd always said that if I were to get the chance to go to Seattle, I'd make a trip out to Aberdeen to soak up a little of Kurt Cobain's youth. Take in the atmosphere, y'know? But forget about it--I'm not going to drag you into my geek hell. It wouldn't be fun for anyone but me anyway. Anyone who came along would just have to put up with a day of me geeking out. So no. Forget it.

The next day I got an email from her with link to a page called, "a walking tour of Kurt Cobain's Aberdeen" and a note that read, "we're doing this. No. Shoosh. I WANT to do this."

One baby to another says,
"I'm lucky I met you."

So it was that I somehow found myself standing on Karen's balcony, looking out over the tops of funky, modernist wet dream, ivy-covered Capitol Hill apartments in the direction of "disease-covered Puget Sound," appreciating the bloated, heavy skies so apropos for this pilgrimage into the redneck heart of darkness upon which I was about to embark.


Aberdeen, like many small towns, has a public face and a private face. The public face is the first thing you encounter when you come into town. It's also likely the only thing that most people passing through will ever see. There are brightly colored flowers in front of new businesses situated along the main drag. Large picture windows reflect the glare of the leaden skies but give the impression of openness, of welcome. This, as any small-town resident might honestly tell you (under, say, the influence of sodium thiopental) is bullshit. Outsiders aren't welcome except for the gossip they provide. And the money. Venture even a block off the main drag and you see the real Aberdeen: building after vacant building with signs like the above plastered on them. These buildings are caving in; Aberdeen is caving in; small-town America is caving in.

The sense of corruption and rot is palpable, the small-town paranoia evidenced in the streets, too narrow for two cars to pass each other. There are no curbs; lawns run right up to the black top and send out desperate runners. The houses look as though they were all designed by someone who enjoyed trailer living too much to let it go: They are all long and narrow with depressing mudporches leaned against the fronts. They have few windows, as if in tacit acknowledgement of the fact there's nothing to look out on or to look forward to.

Karen and I had bonded over Azerrad's book in the weeks before my arrival. We discussed the story in detail, we emailed each other Nirvana songs and commentary. It became a secret we whispered to each other as we walked the streets Kurt once walked under the same ashen skies. She was like a guerilla photographer, amazing me with her determination as she strode right up onto what was once Wendy Cobain's lawn to snap this one:


The way that fucking house just looks like it's sinking into the overgrown lawn says it all for me, somehow.

Even in his youth he was nothing.

Mapquest sucks when it comes to directions, so we found ourselves winging it a few times. We found Krist Novoselic's old house on top of Think-of-Me Hill by intuition; we found Maria's Hair Design, where the band used to practice, just by putting together several scraps of evidence. We wandered into Hoquiam (if there's a more depressing place in the Pacific Northwest than Aberdeen, it's Hoquiam). A more gray and dismal place I cannot imagine.

And I've been to Galveston, so trust me.

Neither Karen nor I knew where to find the bridge over the Wishkah that Kurt had lived under. We thought we'd wing it. We happened upon the merest piece of evidence--that the bridge was two blocks from his childhood home--and by chance we found it.

If it seems to you that a journey 3000 miles and twelve years in the making has been glossed over too briefly here, I can only say that sublimity is, well, sublime. Aberdeen was nothing new for me, after all, and I was so deeply enraptured by the chill, damp air and low, heavy clouds over the defunct town to fully process it. It was a landscape I've only seen in my dreams: brightly pastel sheen thinly veiling a deep corruption, stagnation, and rot.

The bridge is a holy place. A quiet place. By the time we found it, the sun had begun to come out, spoiling the mood. Nevertheless, we spoke in whispers with great reverence. The messages of the living to the dead were--



--touching.

It's a solemn, somber place. We left messages of our own, then left this little town because we could.

She'll come back as fire
to burn all the liars
leave a blanket of ash on the ground

Make no mistake about it, despite my own romanticization of this hole: I would eradicate every small town in America if it were in my power to do so. Small towns foster paranoia, a defeatist attitude, mediocrity, and conservatism. They hold us back.

Unfortunately or fortunately, they also drive us forward. They foster in the few of us who are driven to get away an absolute lack of regard for others' opinions beyond what is reasonable, a desire to succeed driven by a fear of failure, and a healthy contempt for box-thinking.

One way or another, we never escape from these small towns.

But maybe, just maybe, we were never of them to begin with.

I don't know what Karen got out of this trip, but I know what she put into it. I'm in awe that, setting out to make a dream come true for me, she made my dream her own. She may have read the book, done the research, printed the mapquest directions--carefully numbered to lead us from one photo op to the next--driven us there with a picnic lunch (OK, convenience store sandwiches) for me, but it became her own thing along the way. And that's just cool.

How do I know this?

She's yet to finish the book. After Kurt's death, Azerrad added a final chapter to the second edition. Karen has yet to read this chapter, not wanting Kurt to die all over again.

Two days before my 20th birthday, Kurt Cobain was found dead. Twelve years later, Karen still refuses to acknowledge that loss.

I'll go out of my way to make you a deal
We've made a pact to learn from who
Ever we want without new rules
We'll share what's lost and what we grew
They'll go out of their way
To prove they still
Smell her on you.
------------------------------------------
Footnote: In 1995, my CD collection was stolen, right out of my apartment. The front door and the sliding back glass were unlocked (thank you very much, former roommate). I returned from a weekend out of town to discover that my CDs and only my CDs were gone. Many irreplacable, out-of-print albums were lost. My Nirvana collection--quite extensive, even then--was, however, safely in the hands of Karen when the thievery happened. Why it was there is anyone's guess. Neither Karen nor I can remember.

Postscript: You can now read Karen's side of things at her blog.

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words.

On Being a Morning Person

This is the best time of day. If you haven't been fighting insomnia all night, pre-dawn is the very best time of day: It's absolutely silent.

No lead-footed neighbor stomping on my ceiling.
No sound of traffic.
No children playing in the halls of my building.
No garbage trucks with their squeeling hydrolics and back-up-beeping.
No dogs barking.
No neighbors barking at their dogs to shut up in Spanish.

This is the one time of day when all of its opportunity, all its possibility is as-yet unspoiled. All those things that the day might yet be are still believable. I can hear myself think as I drink a cup of Sumatra black as the morning outside my window. It puts hair on my chest, that coffee. If you can't stand a spoon upright in the cup, it's not coffee in my book.

I can order my thoughts and put together exactly what I have planned for the day, and in the stillness, I can believe that it might actually go down like I plan.

No birds calling.
No people loudly sharing their half of whatever stupid conversation they're holding on their cell phone.
No interruptions.
No distractions.

When I was a kid, my parents made a deal with me: You can get up this early and turn on your light as long as you promise to play or read quietly and not disturb the rest of us. I was only too happy to comply. The thing about disturbing people in the morning, it cuts both ways. As a kid, I wanted to be left alone to play or read; now I just want to be alone with my thoughts. It's really the same thing, though. Then and now. I just want to be left alone with this wonderful, silent time when anything might yet be.

So the rest of you, just keep sleeping in.

Do me that one favor.