Existential Nirvana

In today’s society, the dark, depressed content of rock band Nirvana’s songs is sometimes criticized for expressing disillusionment. I disagree with the view-point that places them as misguided or childish; Nirvana’s songs aren’t the result of immature whining or inflated notions of self-cross-baring. These songs simply express a philosophical viewpoint on what life is. This perspective is known as existentialism. Existentialists see life as a meaningless & pointless lot, where people are essentially children, where life can never be fully satisfactory and human nature should be accepted for what it truly is. One aspect of Nirvana that may immediately garner criticism when I seek to call them existential is the ‘I hate myself’ doom & gloom outlook of their songs. Many say that existentialism is not equitable with teen angst and that it can be a positive belief. This is true, but this aspect is not absent from Nirvana’s catalogue. The first track on their debut album, a song called “Blew”, is a roaring metal groove that depicts a sloppy, slacker-type and expresses the views of a protagonist who is cruelly self-effacing and highly critical of the social scene. At the song’s conclusion, the same line is repeated eight times with fierce repetitive strength – “You could do anything. You could do anything. You could do anything …”. Although the notion of one being able to do anything is somewhat in line with the Renaissance humanism of Pico della Mirandola, the presence of an existential optimism is obvious. One occasional aspect of existentialism is the notion that we are at best when fighting against our nature and that we have the power to make life better (but not best). Blew’s final line is a comment from the first-person protagonist to the slacker that had been depicted, and what it suggests is that he could improve his life. It may even go as far as to suggest that it’s unproductive to be depressed when you feel that life has no meaning because if life itself has no value then there is almost nothing that anyone in this world can do to you, and therefore you can do absolutely anything you want -- if they try to put you in jail you can just kill yourself, it doesn’t matter. That, to me, is the ultimate existentialist perspective (though unfortunately in life we tend not to be bold enough to go so far and reach true existential freedom). 

                Artistically speaking, existentialism, as expressed in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting For Godot, is absurd, revealing, dark, realistic, poetic and sad. Nirvana’s music is also these things. Absurd? Yes indeed. If Godot’s settings and plot provided the absurdity for the underlying meanings, then Nirvana’s musical style was the absurdity that held the underlying themes, as they played with a ridiculous gritty style and sometimes swerved off of convention completely with strange-as-heck songs including “Hairspray Queen”, “Curmudgeon”, and “Tourette’s”. Nirvana displayed absurdity with weird phrases like “When I was an alien, cultures were opinions. Never met a wise man, if so was a woman” (Territorial Pissings). At the same time though, Nirvana is expressing opinions, like the underlying themes of Godot. “Territorial Pissings” implies that culture is a personal notion instead of a collection of inborn differences, and that the people who are supposed to be wise aren’t wise, if anyone at all is a wise. Similarly, due to the dirty production and sludgey heaviness of their album Bleach, few people focus on any of the underlying content, but it is there. On “School” Kurt Cobain uses just a few short sentences to effectively articulate his disillusionment with Seattle’s scene and note the apparent hopelessness of life, saying “Won’t you believe it? It’s just my luck, no recess” (School). On “About A Girl” he ponders his desires and details the obstacles that stand in his way. One quintessential aspect of existential art is irony, and Nirvana does not lack it.  In “Smells Like Teen Spirit” Kurt mocks “I’m worse at what I do best, and for this gift I feel blessed,” scoffing at the typical old folk’s view that the life of a youthful person is nothing other than gum-drops and rainbows. In another song, “Come As You Are”, Kurt displays irony and the existential notion that human nature should be accepted for what it is. “Come as you are, as you were, as I want you to be. Take your time. Hurry up. The choice is yours, don’t be late.” He’s saying that although the ideal of ‘come as you are’ is a beautiful notion, it doesn’t work out in our society. We want people to be comfortable and to be themselves, but we also demand that they do what we want of them. I’ve been in situations were people have claimed that they only want me to do something if I truly want to do it, but I know that actually they’ll be devastated if I choose against them, so what can I do? They want you to do what you want, and they want your desires to coincide with their own. He also sings in the song “come doused in mud, soaked in bleach, as I want you to be” which is a clever jibe at the pre-torn-jean culture where you get scoffed at if you don’t look dirty and raw but at the same time you’ve gotta look good because if you’re really dirty and smelly then people won’t like you. Kurt isn’t necessarily pointing blame at anyone, just saying that this is how we are.
           Sad, revealing, poetic, entertaining, Nirvana’s music mirrored the artistic strengths of Waiting For Godot while expressing many of the same themes. In Godot, Vladimir wakes Estragon and Estragon laments “I was dreaming I was happy” (Beckett, 103). Clearly Estragon has such little hope and confidence that the only place he can be happy is in his dreams. Earlier in the play, Estragon returns to Vladimir after being away and Vladimir says “I missed you… and at the same time I was happy” (Beckett, 64), to which Estragon replies sadly “You see, you piss better when I’m not there” (Beckett, 64). These quotes demonstrate the dark style of the work and they reveal personal character traits. Vladimir has a better grasp on what’s going on than Estragon (or at least he thinks so) but he still fails to comprehend life. For some reason, he felt in slightly better spirits without Estragon there, even though he missed him. Estragon, on the other hand, reveals some lack of confidence and a level of insecurity. In the song “Sliver” Kurt Cobain portrays himself as twisted and fragile. He reveals himself as being immature, afraid, and weak. In the song “Dumb,” Kurt depicts a view of the human condition, placing drugs as our main escape, placing woeful passive-aggressive blame on our social custom of ostracizing people who are different, devalues the human soul & spirit, and tops it off with some self-loathing. The smooth, sad, contemplative, poetic nature of the song strikes me as being extremely similar to the slow, thoughtful style that covers much of Waiting For Godot.
         Important to ponder is the question of whether the philosophy known as existentialism was consciously and purposely put into Nirvana’s music by Kurt Cobain, or if its presence there is nothing more than the expression of Cobain’s honest, solemn world-view. Even Nirvana’s album covers occasionally showcased existentialist values. The album cover for Nevermind is a picture of a baby going after a fishing hook with a dollar bill as bait. The baby represents society and how we are raised to be obsessed with the accumulation of wealth and selfishness. This connects to existentialism because a baby is representing society, and existentialists often believe that adults are essentially just selfish children who learn how to hide their downfalls. Despite that, I’ve never heard of Kurt Cobain being a reader of existentialist writing, or in fact a reader of anything at all. However, it is entirely conceivable that he might have been a ‘closet-reader’, so to speak. In the underground scene of the early 90s and in pre-popularity Seattle especially, there was a significant movement of peer pressure dictating a code of conduct for what it means to be cool and acceptable, with people like punk-rock band leader and radio show host Calvin Johnson laying down rules which define what can and can’t be done or thought in the ‘indie’ world. Kurt Cobain certainly submitted to this regime despite secretly going against it (by liking REM and U2 for example, since he wasn’t supposed to view any popular music as being relevant or good). Nirvana’s music is filled with concepts and ideas that are also applied to the artistic works of existentialists. When Samuel Beckett’s characters in Waiting For Godot discuss the notion of hanging themselves as ideal and even worthy of causing an erection, one might see fit to recall Nirvana’s lyrics such as “look, on the bright-side is suicide,” (Milk It) and “If I die before I wake, hope I don’t come back again,” (Even In His Youth). In these songs (another notable example is “Rape Me”), a pure lack of any faith or hope is expressed with avengence, as moral boundaries get spat at and death is begged for. As Kurt chants “Rape me. Rape me again. Rape me. Waste me, my friend” he is asking for the complete destruction of boundaries and the degradation of his self, since society has led him to nothing but pain and he doesn’t believe life has anything good to give him. Is it too much of a stretch to equate this kind of a sentiment with getting an erection from suicide as described by Beckett? My personal hypothesis is that these same kinds of dark feelings and outlooks which characterize existentialism are consistently reoccurring throughout generations and situations, and that despite the highly personal nature of these philosophies, the feelings people have actually manage to remain somewhat typical and identical between peoples. This suggestion accounts for the similarity between Nirvanian philosophy and that of 1950s existentialists. This also might explain why highly personal music can emotionally reach out to thousands of different people, the way that Nirvana’s and countless others’ did. Some might argue, though, that the phenomenon of personal music being mass-comprehensible is due to the typical nature of song lyrics being intensely poetic and open to infinite interpretation. My belief that existentialist philosophy contains some uniformity among its various members throughout time seems to contradict the experiential aspect of existentialism, but in defense of experientialism, I certainly would claim that although our feelings are similar, the ridiculous wealth (or curse) of differing experiences and desires significantly separates all human minds from one another.