Rest in peace, sweet prince.

This past year or so has been a really rough one for the deaths of truly iconic people, and I haven't really commented much on any of them, partly because there are so many and partly because I just didn't feel that I had much to say. There were those that I was sad but unsurprised to see go (Norman Mailer, Irving Penn, Dominick Dunne, Howard Zinn & J.D. Salinger just recently), and the big gone-way-too-soon shockers that nobody seemed to see coming (John Hughes was a big one for me, and, of course, Michael Jackson.)

But when I heard that 40-year-old fashion designer Alexander McQueen had died this morning, I knew that this was one upon which I would have to reflect and work through. I was actually a little surprised by how much it had affected me, and I'm still not entirely sure why it did. Suicide in someone so young and so unbelievably talented is always tragic, no matter who they may be, but I didn't expect the oddly visceral feeling of personal loss that the news brought me.

It's always odd and intriguing to me to see how people react to the deaths of famous people - people they knew in a certain way, people to whom they feel a personal connection, but who they didn't really know. When a person feels really affected there's something proprietary about that, claiming that person and their affects on the world for oneself. That's really how I feel about Kurt Cobain - even though I was only four years old when he died, I definitely feel a sense of possession and even a kind of ownership, a way in which I take him for myself.

And as someone who loves the world of fashion, who believes in the power of its art and artifice, of the creativity and its reflection on the world - and how the world appropriates it back again - I am, in a way, claiming the the innovation and genius of McQueen for my own. Maybe that's why it's hitting me hard - that this is a world I really care about, and know that while other people certainly share that, not everyone does, so there's a kind of necessity of appropriation there. Bottom line, I know that McQueen, and his incredible impact on the fashion world, will never be forgotten.

And I know I will never forget the day of his death, either.

I've been so verklempt and generally out-of-commission mentally and emotionally lately that I totally spaced on the 15-year anniversary of Kurt Cobain's death this week. I seriously can't believe that I forgot this year.

Two years ago I had a radio show scheduled on the day of his death, so I got my rotations all out of the way early on in the show and then played nothing but Nirvana, no breaks, no commentary, for the next 30 or 40 minutes, or however long it ended up being. I think my follow-up hosts were a little late that day, for which I was grateful, since I got to play even more.

I think the ten-year anniversary was the day I wore all black to school. I got some strange looks, since it's not something I usually did. When I explained, a lot of my classmates didn't even know who Kurt Cobain was, which kind of made me want to tear my hair out, to be honest.

I guess it just goes to show how far removed from him I've gotten that I didn't even remember his death this year - it wasn't till I was on the phone with my mom earlier and she told me about hearing it on the radio (and talking about the "27 club" in conjunction with that), that I remembered. Back in my really, really dark days, he was this weird symbol to me that held stronger significance than I've ever been able to explain or even understand. It was more than the music, more than the icon - something about him struck something in my young, depressed, anxiety-ridden, severely sleep-deprived self that felt a personal connection and held on tight.

I still have that, to some degree. There aren't many people in my generation who have such a closeness with him, which gives me a kind of protectiveness and possessiveness about him, a kind of appropriation of him as my own. My mom and I were watching something on the greatest hard rock songs of all time (why, I'm not sure; it was probably a lazy Sunday night or something), and "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was, of course, #2 or #3 or something. And all these 80s hair-metal guys were talking about how great Kurt was, and all I could think was, "You know what, fuck you. He couldn't stand you, and you couldn't stand him right back." And who could blame them? This bratty, scrawny little upstart who invalidated everything on which they had made their fortunes and had been playing all these years?

The truth is that there are so many facets to the image and icon that is Kurt Cobain, and the truth is that I don't just love the one of the tortured artist. I love the bratty snot-nosed punk that he was, too, with the childish lyrics he wrote early on and his obsession with bodily functions (seriously, it's kind of creepy.) The husband and father that he struggled to be in his past years, the scared and uncertain kid that he was early on. And the part of him that was conscious of all the fabrication and reveled in creating it; the part that wanted to be famous, god damn it, and the part that hated it. I connected with all of it, and I still do. Even though I don't need him anymore. Not the way I used to.









Forever.

Hello Satan, I believe it's time to go.

Welcome to my blog, ladies and gents. (Though I suspect this blog is viewed mostly by ladies. Women's college and so forth.)

So I'm creating this in the wake of giving up on my xanga. I've had my xanga since...tenth grade, I think? Therefore it is rife with over-personal crap such as my unending depression (real, actual clinical depression, not emo-kid depression) health issues, and lovelorn drama. Oh, and a few really crappy poems, I think. If you want to read any of that (though I don't know why you would) you can head over to: xanga.com/eclectictsunami Sure, some of it is embarrassing, but hey, it's part of me, too.

So while I was thinking about this during my interminable classes today, I realized that I could possibly say that History of Rock is the best class I've ever taken at Smith (or at Colgate, or in high school, though that latter part should be obvious.) But that's not really entirely true. The truth is that the best class I've taken is American Sounds plus History of Rock - I took American Sounds last spring, a history of strains of American music including blues, country, folk, and Latin music, with offshoots of each. Not because either of them isn't great, but because they really connect and inform each other. While they can certainly stand on their own - and I highly recommend taking both - they're really even better when you take both of them. And they're closely related, and I don't just say that because they're both held on the same days of the week, in the same time slots, in the same classroom, with the same (awesome) professor, and I've taken both of them in the spring.

Okay, so that probably has a lot to do with it. But they're both mad awesome and I just can't separate them for Best Class at Smith status. Just not happening.

Well, I was thinking about this in class - my mind was wandering, which is actually really rare for that class, so it just goes to show how exhausted I am today - and we're talking about Jimi Hendrix right now (woot) and reading this amazing book for it - Crosstown Traffic by Charles Shaar Murray - and there was this passage where the writer talks about how much of the myth of Jimi Hendrix is in his early death. Not to discount from what he accomplished, but that always informs a myth like that. And I got to thinking about so many artists who died young. There's the talk about the "forever 27" group - Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, and Kurt Cobain - but there are so many more.

Jimmie Rodgers, Robert Johnson,  Jimi Hendrix, Buddy Holly, Otis Redding, Eddie Cochran, Ritchie Valens, The Big Bopper, Hillel Slovak, Ian Curtis, Kurt Cobain, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Tupac Shakur, Biggie Smalls...and I'm sure I'm forgetting plenty of others - all were under 30 when they died. Jeff Buckley was 30, John Bonham was 32. John Keats, who we just read a lot of in my English Literary Tradition class, was 27 when he died of tuberculosis. Edgar Allan Poe was 40. And there are countless others.

I wonder, not for the first time, if I'll be among them. I guess at least I can hope that I'll achieve some small fraction of what they have before that happens. Such fucked-up lives a lot of them had, too - depression, poverty, violence, drug addiction. And in some cases, just terrible luck. Can you imagine the differences our cultures might have had if these people had all lived to a ripe old age? For better or for worse. Their great artistry may have been done when all of them died, but we'll never know.

It all comes back to death, I guess. Death and sex. Whether you're talking about literature, music, art, history, or even fucking biology, it all comes back to sex and death.

That's as good a place as any to end this blog entry, don't you think?