Browsing the page I got to Kurt Cobain's last words in his suicide note:
I was shocked....this is from a Neil Young song, and also just seems wrong to me. Who thinks that its better to burn out than fade away? Where does this sentiment come from? Is this part of a self-flagellating strand of rock that is historically unique? Wiki says this about the Neil Young song:I don't have the passion anymore, and so remember, it's better to burn out than to fade away. Peace, Love, Empathy. Kurt Cobain.
A lyric from the song, "it's better to burn out than to fade away," became
infamous in modern rock after being quoted in Nirvana frontman Kurt
Cobain's suicide note. Young said that he was later so shaken that he dedicated his 1994 album Sleeps With Angels to Cobain.
It just seemed to me like an incredibly depressing rationalization by someone who had already made up their mind...or maybe it is somehow perversely related to machismo? Is there some veneer of honor associated with not playing it out through your twilight years? Isn't that the opposite of honorable? It seems to me that he took the easy-way-out, the coward's route.
My immediate repulsive reaction to Cobain's words were not simply an outgrowth of my distaste for suicide, but was also stimulated by one of my favorite speeches of all time. The last section of MacArthur's speech before Congress after Truman fired him:
I am closing my fifty-two years of military service. When I joined the army, even before the turn of the century, it was the fulfillment of all my boyish hopes and dreams. The world has turned over many times since I took the oath on the plain at West Point, and the hopes and dreams have long since vanished, but I still remember the refrain of one of the most popular barracks ballads of that day which proclaimed most proudly that old soldiers never die; they just fade away.
And like the old soldier of that ballad, I now close my military career and just fade away, an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty. Good-bye.
Old soldiers never die; they just fade away...
That's honor in spades.
3 comments:
I am struggling to understand why this is the first post on the blog, but it is meaty so why not?
It is better to live life like a shooting star than while away your days in boredom. I don't think it has anything to do with suicide though, just living life to the fullest involves risk and being a boring douche bag is the safest thing in the world.
As for Macarthur he almost burned out in a big way by starting a war with China.
Hey, I was just thinking about this when I got your invite for the blog. I don't like putting too much thought into blog structure...just get everything out there.
This is a classic MAR blog post. Be ready for more of these. Let's see here, so for some reason I do not understand, you decided to compare Kurt Cobain--a mentally unstable, heroin addict of the grunge era--to General MacArthur--no elaboration necessary.
As a man principle and history and honor, of course MAR identifies with MacArthur. I would argue, though, that these last words aren't as dissimilar as MAR makes them out to be.
The idea of burning out rather than fading away is powerful, especially in light of suicide. Without justifying Cobain's decision, I think he somehow realized that he had reached some sort of pinnacle and that they only way to go was down.
While MacArthur's last words seem to contradict them, I detect in them a distinct tone of lament. After all, he was a self-promoting narcissist who was ultimately dismissed for insubordination. MacARthur hadn't been to the US in eleven years--his life was defined by his role of being a soldier and a general. If I can take the liberty of assuming that almost everyone has some component of romanticism in him, then let's think about what it means to be a soldier fighting a war. Isn't dying at war, for the cause, for country the most romantic way to go. As someone who built his life upon being an expert at war, I can only assume that some part of MacArthur lamented his not having made the ultimate sacrifice. For a soldier, especially a dismissed and disgraced one, fading away must be the ultimate fall from grace and power.
I would argue that Cobain died the way that, deep down, MacArthur maybe wished that he did. Not that he would have chosen to die, but even Dylan, king of romantics, said he often imagined himself dying in some far off heroic battle somewhere.
A side note--we haven't delved into some of the best last words. The most notable I came across was John Adams saying "Thomas Jefferson still survives" on his death bed on the Fourth of July (of course, Jefferson had died earlier in the day). If this was the symbol for the dying days of our founding fathers, I started to wonder what a fitting close would be as the US eventually fades away. Perhaps George W. Bush dying on 9/11 and saying that Osama still lives since each of them owes the other their infamy.
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