Today, a local art gallery is opening a “Humanities” community art show. People are invited to come, share their art, the theme being humanity.
George asked me to go and sing the song he gave to me. Oh yeah, I picked up the ukulele maybe a month ago, and I’m performing a song in public. Well, we’ll see how that pans out. I’m happy to do it, of course. I hope I can do the song justice.
Last week I found reference to another psychic blogger who spends a lot of time talking to famous people on the other side. It was really cool reading her blog and seeing some synchronicities with some things I’d heard too (the entry on Jim Morrison’s sweetie confirmed for me that this blogger seems like “the real thing”).
There’s an entry on Kurt Cobain, and I found it because John Lennon is mentioned in it, though briefly – that Kurt met John, and it “wasn’t what he expected”.
So I asked John, “What was he expecting?”
“He was expecting a guy who had it all figured out. Instead, he got me.”
Sweetie has been moving through an existential crisis in the past weeks, a lot of emotion is involved. Where I have never really been a big music fan (I have difficulty with names and bands, and I can’t tolerate loud sounds or very complex sounds like organ music or punk rock.) Sweetie, though, is a true rocker, and when Kurt Cobain died, it broke her heart.
One thing that’s been coming up consistently in her spiritual discussions with her guides and teachers is working through her cynicism, her sense of “What’s the point? Why work for a better world when we’re on our way out, anyway?” It’s a heavy creative block she’s been wrestling with, and yet she has to work through it before it can be left behind.
The past few days, when I return home from work, I often find Sweetie has been working through this on her own with her spiritual company. Despite how painful the process can be for her, she’s getting more and more psychic every week.
Last night she said, “I kind of had it out with Kurt yesterday.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah, I sort of yelled at him. I was crying, and said Of COURSE I’m cynical – my hero killed himself!”
I didn’t know Kurt Cobain was a hero of my sweetie’s.
Last night, we watched a video of Nirvanna’s “unplugged” concert at MTV. He recommended the unplugged version so I could actually listen to it. Over the course on an hour, I was drawn deeper into Kurt’s experience at this time, and he explained to me, and Sweetie, the intense depression he was enduring. I recognized the stillness with which he’d hold himself – when you’re in that much emotional pain, even certain movements hurt.
He was wearing a fuzzy green cardigan – there was some connection with Courtney and with a grandfather there. He was feeling vulnerable at the time, and the fuzzy green sweater helped him feel protected. Buffered.
As the Kurt in the video sang a song, the Kurt in spirit would send me the images and feelings he was experiencing at the time. This one song, “Drinking pennyroyal tea, still the life inside of me,” there was such a spike of despair. I asked him how much longer he’d lived after that concert and got about a year and a half. So much of his life was an endurance run, a brutal exercise and experiment to see just how much emotional pain one human being could live with.
At this point, Kurt shared with me a small part of the painful sadness he’d experienced. In the past, whenever a spirit has shared emotion with me, it’s something I can allow to run through my body. My eyes may be watering, but I’m remembering to breathe, to move it through my body. Kurt gently held my body and created a ball of emotional pain that would not run out my feet, but built and built until I said “Stop.”
Having coped with serious depression in the 90s myself, this is a feeling I know well. He was suicidal for a long time. “No one cared,” I heard him say. “If I died, there’d just be more records sold.”
This is the second time I experienced psychic exhaustion. My stomach shook inside my belly and I had a good cry myself. In the end, Sweetie made hot chocolate for everyone. It made us all feel better.
Sweetie in has particularly been enjoying talking with Kurt, and it’s interesting the slight difference in communication between Kurt and John. John never really *got* sarcasm for a while there. There’s a cynicism and a culture referenced in 90s-style sarcasm that didn’t exist when John was alive. Kurt loved the idea of Napster “Yeah, because I really give a shit if the record companies get their cut. Fuck that. After an artist dies, all of his work should be free.” I realized this was the first time I’d heard a sarcastic statement from a spirit.
In response to Sweetie’s despairing remark, “Why create art?” he responded, gently, “Because art endures.”
“But art doesn’t endure. People destroy it. They burn libraries and tear down sacred temples. They kill each other, why should I create something that’s just going to be destroyed?”
“Because it will endure for a while. That’s the point.”
Today she sent me this email:
Hey, I know you’re planning a Kurt entry, so I wanted to say something else.
I woke up feeling really sad last night, I had some crying to process.
Yesterday I realized how happy I was to have him around, and I realized that it was because I actually *really* missed him. And then I felt this huge sense of loss. And then anger, because the loss felt so unnecessary.
And at the time I couldn’t reconcile my hero being dead, so either he was not dead, or he was not my hero. I think I went from one to the other: a) he’s not dead, it’s a media hoax, you’ve all been had, I’m not crying over this shit, crying is for suckers. And then b) well maybe he never asked to be a hero anyway, maybe I and everyone else just put that on him, hero worship is for weak minds, you need to be your own hero.
So I felt sad, cried a bit, thought about Hey Jude:
“For well you know that it’s a fool who plays it cool by making his world a little colder”
I know exactly what that means. I tried to allow some of the crunchy layers around my heart to dissolve.
I went to sleep, and I woke up with Chicago’s “If You Leave Me Now” in my head this morning:
http://www.lyricsfreak.com/c/chicago/if+you+leave+me+now_20029938.html
I’m like, “…Kurt?”
He laughs.
(When I was talking to him about my Existential Crisis the other day he sang Kansas’ “Dust in the Wind” to me — badly. I’ve come to recognize it as a signature of his, using cheesy 70s AM radio ballads to dissolve tension).
http://www.metrolyrics.com/dust-in-the-wind-lyrics-kansas.html
“If You Leave Me Now” is, on the one hand a song about asking for forgiveness, but on the other hand, in context somewhat dark — a *slightly* cruel song to sing to someone in mourning. So I had to laugh.
He stretched out beside me on his side with his head propped up on his hand: “Forgive me?”
I nod. “I’m working on it”.
We love you, Kurt.
Kate Sitka 
You have this odd knack of writing things as they coming up in my mind, which is pretty cool. After reading your John Lennon posts, I’ve found myself wanting to listen to some Beatles music. But I didn’t have very many of their songs. I wondered if I should feel an obligation to actually pay for the music, despite having the same thoughts that Kurt shared — that if the artist has passed on, the music should be free rather than continuing to essentially line the pockets of record executives. In this case, my internal argument was a little moot since it was easier to buy than try to find it for free, but I thought the synchronicity between my internal discussion and your post was funny. 😉
As an aside, I was never a Kurt Cobain fan (not my kind of music in general), but I’m really glad that you’re sharing your conversations with him. I think I’d like him a great deal. (The same could really be said for your conversations with John and George — was never a fan, but feel that I’d like them very much now — but I feel a connection to the depression aspect of Kurt’s story, having coped with that myself for more years than I’d care to count. And I love that sarcasm lives on. LOL)
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Oh and by the way, I’d commented previously to John a few times about his “hobo” look – the full beard with the wild and crazy hair. So he comes in last night during the movie and says, “Why don’t you ever give Kurt shit for his hair? At least I WASHED my hair!”
It’s funny because only then did I notice that Kurt’s long blond hair was kind of stingy and greasy. It’s a classic grunge look – people put product in their clean hair to GET that look.
I tried to justify it by defining the difference between a day’s growth of beard and sebum versus a full on crazy beard that says, “I just got back from the desert island!” or “I’ve been holed up on the mountain for the past year, skinning squirrels!”
I do have to admit John has a point though. He was never a “dirty hippie”.
I have to chalk it up to generational & cultural differences.
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LOL! Totally! I too was delighted to find that sarcasm lives on 🙂
I was thinking myself today that it’s amazing how much of one’s personality can remain intact on the other side, if you want to keep it.
We were watching a documentary about Kurt last night, called “About a Son”. This is how it goes: I know nothing about a musician, I start talking to them on the other side, then I start listening to their music and appreciating what they contributed to the world. Sweetie is laughing because when I heard the tape recordings of the interviews with Kurt, I exclaimed, “Wow! It sounds just like him!”
They both thought that was hilarious. Kurt’s all, “Who’d you think you were talking to?”
I think that Kurt’s personality and sense of humour is much the same, except the hatred he carried is completely gone. He used to look around himself and see a world full of assholes. No longer. In fact, he’s really “high up” – a loving, generous guy with a kind expression, despite the sarcasm and a whole lot of foul language. And obscene gestures. He’s still rock n’ roll, you know.
He calls us “bitches” sometimes, to bug me. He still can be a shit, in a funny sort of way.
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