Loose Reflections on Courtney Love

The issue of Courtney Love has always been a VERY emotional one for me. I was fully traumatized by the amount of hate that I saw online towards her in the NIRVANA fan scene. I have defended her in previous versions of the documentary and made a big statement, but today it doesn't seem necessary to defend her. The thing is, I'm more of a professional defender now, of Marilyn Manson especially, as well as Jared Leto, and I have to admit that all the crap I see around against Courtney is obviously fluff — it just doesn't hold any real weight. So, in a more formally well versed perspective on defence, I admit it seems to require no response. I can't justify investing my energy in responding to haters if they have nothing compelling to argue against Courtney in the first place, but I'm very emotional about this. 

That all said, I sometimes wonder if all the hate towards Courtney has been the subtle intuitive reason why I haven't felt ready to speak of her art yet on my website and in ongoing FACETS. I am a deeply intuitive being — I often find after the fact that the intuitive timing I chose for my artistic actions and statements was perfect beyond my ability to have recognized so at the time. And I suspect sometimes that it's been needed to build my new website further before I can even succeed at talking more about Courtney, if the antagonisms against her are as maddeningly prevalent as they are. I suppose maybe just having stronger foundations built first — for example, having been recognized and appreciated by other stars I write about — could fortify my future statements about her.

Like I said, Courtney is an emotional topic for me. I feel very spiritually close to her. I have the most enormous respect for her, and for Kurt's wise decision to marry her. I can't say enough how much I think of her as the ideal wife for Kurt Cobain.  I almost cry sometimes when haters conflict with my comments on instagram saying things like that. The sexism and misogyny, foolishness, cruelty and delusion of these haters just makes me lose my faith in humanity sometimes. I just feel that she's such an iconic star (and superhero), as someone who really is the highest level professional at pissing people off and does such a great job of it that this could define her as a true master artist. 

This hate towards Courtney reminds me so much of the hate towards Amy Winehouse. For those unfamiliar, the beautiful Amy (who is associated with the 27 Club) died shortly after being cruelly boo'd off the stage many times, which really hurt her feelings. Her drinking and drug issues caused the audiences at her shows to revolt so heavily against her that she apparently retreated into drinking binges alone as a result — which theoretically caused her death. That tragic story is an example of the cruelty in the public, and sadly, serves to sober us up about how harmful and murderously stupid the masses can be. But of course, as we all see, Courtney is so admirably strong. 

As a "true fan" of NIRVANA, I really am punk. Punk, half the time, is just about my middle name. It's a type of blood that runs through my veins. That's why I appreciate, very deeply, some stories of Courtney Love such as the day that she became angered at her audience and said something like "That's it people — I've fulfilled my contract". I laugh regularly about those iconic words "I've fulfilled my contract", meaning, she's technically executed the show even though this was a short performance, and she's feeling bitter towards the audience, so her intention has only been to carry out the minimum in order to get paid and get out. That's the kind of show I would have rather been at than others. 

I have a lot of long stories about my amazing direct interactions with Courtney. If anyone were curious to learn about me, I sense that Courtney might be the best person for them to talk to if they could be so lucky. She understands me better than I understand myself, in perspective to my art about Kurt Cobain. It's a gorgeous story how she was able to convey that to me so well, in such a way that only became apparent to me (as to what it had demonstrated), after years of experience in the band world. She's definitely a genius, but one who knows deep secrets and higher mysteries of the music culture. It's just that I don't project these stories necessarily, because I do feel they would fall on deaf ears until I have a better volume of powerfully meaningful art created and introduced about her, to contextualize the depth. 

When I say that I think Courtney is intelligent, I think anyone more familiar with her work would know what I'm talking about. From avidly following her instagram in previous days when she was posting often, I noticed that her captions are very dense. This density inspired me to read deeply into the many information rich emojis and little vortexes of storytelling throughout each sentence. I eventually noticed this comes from a seriously geeky frame of mind towards high volume information delivery — and this was confirmed for me when I saw her casual interviews which were not as much for promotional reasons, in which she showed how extreme intellectual pursuit was a major passion. This comes out to a ripping sense of humour — she could be a professional comedian. The thing is, those are two things she and I have in common. "Could have been a comedian" in the most brainiac kinda way, is something I say also of myself. 

Probably the most exciting thing I've seen posted on her instagram was a huge campaign of protest against the Sackler pharmaceutical company which promoted opiates as prescription. I loved how she picked up the campaign message "SHAME ON SACKLER" as I feel that addiction harm reduction and recovery is centred against shame on addicts. She went a long way promoting that campaign, which is more than unusually vocal in controversial protest topics. That was totally featured along with my views in the previous version of the NIRVANA ◊ Kurt Cobain Is Alive documentary and it's one point that will certainly have to make a comeback someday on UNITY LIFE. In that way, I honestly can't tell you how much I relate to her as an artist-activist.