Pisces Season, Kurt Cobain, and the 27 Club

I’ve been taken by music lately. I don’t speak of any particular genre. I get lost in the spirit folk music as much as I get carried away by the sounds of nu-metal rock. Nu metal raised me. Hip-hop inspired me to write. Country music penetrated the core of my heart - I am still in love.

At some point in my life, I decided that music was a waste of time. I listened to podcasts and audiobooks, I read physical copies of the same tomes, and when I wasn’t absorbing, I was creating. I can’t create music. I lack the skills that make notes come together into sounds. It’s not that music was a pointless pursuit for other people, but I didn’t see how it could have been useful for me.

Somewhere in the middle of my research down the rabbit hole about the mysteries that fill the air of any cocktail party conversation, I found myself face to face with the stories of the 27 club. The infamous 27 club. The long list of talents, mainly legendary musicians, that didn’t see the day they turned 28 years old. The miracles of the human race who were able to achieve virtuosity with their music and spread the word about it all before they reached their 30s. I like a good mystery. I enjoy a captivating story. What could be more intriguing than an array of musical geniuses who faded away, leaving behind melodies that changed the world? What could be more tragic? Could these stories have had a different outcome, or maybe when you are that brilliant, it is truly better to burn out than to fade away? Would the members of the 27 club have been as legendary if we watched them grow old, or is it part of their mythos to have burned in our memories as forever young and forever dazzling? As Janis once said, “The more you live, the less you die.”

First, I met Jimi. I picked up Charles R. Cross’ “Room Full of Mirrors.” Does art happen if you are not obsessed with it? Jimi was obsessed with one musical instrument from the moment he learned about it. We all know which one, right? If you have ever listened to Jimi Hendrix, and I am sure you have, even if you don’t know you have, Hendrix’s love for the guitar is hard to miss.

There is a theory proposed by Malcolm Gladwell on 10,000 hours. To achieve mastery, one has to spend at least 10,000 hours in the repetition of that one thing. Obsession is the path to insanity and great art. The inability to tell yourself to stop is a walk across the thinnest ledge between lunacy and genius. That’s where the art lies.

That is Pisces. The thin line between insanity and genius. The ancient formula to art.

Then there was Kurt. I am embarrassed to say that I wasn’t a Nirvana fan before. I did like their songs when I heard them, but I suppose I never sat with the lyrics. The way Kurt married his words to the sounds was transcendental. Kurt Cobain is still considered one of the greatest songwriters of our time. And that voice. That voice flows through your eardrums right into your soul. That’s where it lingers. Kurt had this incredible ability to match his sound to the most sensitive part of the human being.

On the days that some of us struggle to find words to understand how we feel, you can put on Kurt’s husky drawl, and there it is; that is how my heart hurts too. Or has hurt before? Or will hurt one day. There is unity in pain. And pain is a catalyst for art.

That is Pisces. Saving the muse, who is bleeding and broken, with something beautiful that comes from the depths of our Souls.

Maybe it’s impossible to live with that kind of pain that resonates with millions of people. Maybe when you carry that many scars and bruises, the countdown to the end of your days is shorter. Maybe it’s for the best. It’s hard to tell, but we can debate forever. It is a mystery, after all. May you forever rest as one of the most loved and condemned Pisces in recent history, Kurt. Thank you for your music.

And this is Pisces.