I do feel the need to put a warning before this post – it does imply or mention depression, suicide, drug use and such like. It may not be warranted but well, it’s here.
Today was my birthday (yay!) and I had a fun day and some gorgeous pressies. One of the pressies was the Kurt Cobain documentary Montage of Heck. I’m not sure I could say I enjoyed it as such, as it was quite disturbing in places and actually pretty sad but it was very good. Unusually it was also a fairly honest look at the person rather than a gushing tribute. So I would say, if you were into Nirvana at all it’s probably worth watching.
As you get older birthdays, as well as being a celebration of yet another year on the planet, do also have a tendency to thoughtfulness and reminiscing. Obviously watching a dvd involving a band which were at the forefront of your personal soundtrack during your youth doesn’t help :)
I could relate a lot to much of the documentary, I had a similarly disjointing childhood (though in a different way) and part of me watched his spiral of self destruction knowing that it could easily have been me. Well except the fame and success part obviously. I was lucky though, drugs education did do its part and I never stepped onto the harder drugs as I had read the physiological changes that take place on these drugs and just thought nope. So I didn’t and the fear of an increasing heart rate (cocaine) or a bad trip (lsd) was enough to deter me even whilst very drunk. I had the chance to sort myself out before anything majorly bad happened fortunately, though I did have quite a wild youth.
One of the major differences was that, according to his family and friends, he needed to recreate his family unit whereas I decided to never be dependent upon anyone again and just wanted to wander on my own. I’ve since relaxed quite considerably and I’m glad I have. The strange thing is that listening to ‘Where did you sleep last night’ just brings it all back, even though the MTV appearance happened after I’d started getting it together.
Moral of the story kids? Don’t write a blog post on your birthday listening to this video and having drunk too much wine ;)
oh and last reminder that yes these photos are photos of photos as digital cameras, faceweb and the like didn’t exist back then! (thank fuck!)
and to end on a slightly cheerier note – one of my favourite scenes from Withnail and I
