And then suddenly the news was everywhere: one of our own was dead, and though never had we met beyond the loud sharing of our pain, nevertheless he was a daybreak boy: imperfectly, indisputably, overwhelmingly. Angry, yes, but more, oh so much more than angry: intelligent, heavy, fierce.
As rock stars of the past had assumed idolic roles for both he and us, he was to us an idol, an image of perfection in our less than perfect lives, however unwillingly. His unwillingness, we knew, was merely a rouse to ruffle the feathers of the vulture media, and besides he knew that thrusting crowns away only makes those who would bestow them more resolute.
He sang his confusion; his fury calmed us. Hang in there, Kurt, we would say to his frown on television when perchance we glimpsed his angelic form. We love you. We need not know you to love you and this you never understood. Our mass adulation dislocated you even further, for which we apologize. We were not naive enough, oh no, to try to heal your wounds with our applause: we were with you, man, but the performer/audience dynamics prevent communication otherwise. You were handsome. You had wondrous, deified eyes, cool blue luminous magnets, fire that soothed, and the lyrics you wrote were shattering, elevated, a gift from genius, articulating our mania with poetry and grace.
Of course we would love you, perhaps even in a way no one else had previously. Our adulation was not phony, not programmed, because if a label make the people, then we are Generation X, the latest in a long line of Fuck You Sayers, and your Fuck You was the loudest, the most venomous, the most seductive. But never did we think you would say Fuck You to us and lollipop the barrel of a shotgun.
Never did we think our sorrows could surpass our ecstasies, but suddenly the news was everywhere: the mighty Kurt Cobain was dead. Our reluctant god. Not do or die but do and die. Fuck You, Beautiful.
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