nirvana the t-shirt company

ten hours. most of it on the new clauseo agent, the unreleased one, context engineering stuff from my last post. the part of building i actually love. the last few hours on the billing system. easily my least favorite part of making anything. the part where you take what you poured yourself into and figure out how to charge money for it.

then i ended up watching the mtv unplugged nirvana concert. i don't know if it was random or subconscious. probably subconscious.

i can't fool you, any one of you

there's something about kurt cobain. every time i hear his voice, every time i see him through some grainy footage, he feels like one of the very few people who genuinely wasn't performing. one of the only people i've ever watched on a screen where i believed that's just who they are.

the unplugged concert is exactly that. i didn't feel like i was watching an artist perform. i felt like i was watching someone play his sorrows out, half-heartedly, because this was a commercial thing he had to do. not because he wanted to. half out of disinterest. and yet something about it was so raw that it didn't matter. the pain was real. the music was real. nothing was for the camera.

he wrote about this. in his suicide note.

"when we're back stage and the lights go out and the manic roar of the crowds begins, it doesn't affect me the way in which it did for Freddie Mercury, who seemed to love, relish in the love and adoration from the crowd which is something I totally admire and envy. The fact is, I can't fool you, any one of you. It simply isn't fair to you or me. The worst crime I can think of would be to rip people off by faking it and pretending as if I'm having 100% fun. Sometimes I feel as if I should have a punch-in time clock before I walk out on stage."

a punch-in time clock. before walking on stage.

i just spent my evening on a billing system.

"they're cheap and totally inefficient and they sound like crap"

he played a 1959 martin d-18e at that concert. it became the most expensive guitar ever auctioned. six million dollars. for the guitar of a man who hated everything those six million dollars represent.

but the last guitar he ever played live was a fender mustang. the sky stang I. a cheap, beat-up piece of shit. his words: "they're cheap and totally inefficient, and they sound like crap and are very small."

that's why he played it. he didn't give a fuck. i love that man.

my teenage angst has paid off well

serve the servants is playing and it hits me that he knew.

not just that he was anti-establishment. he knew how futile it was. he opens the song with "my teenage angst has paid off well, now i'm bored and old." the rebellion worked. it became a product. the moment it became a product, it stopped being rebellion.

he knew. while it was happening to him, he knew.

colour: black/nirvana

that's h&m. right now. "COLOUR: Black/Nirvana." nirvana is a color option. 4.6 stars. 1395 reviews. add to cart.

people are wearing that shirt right now who have never heard a nirvana song. the anti-establishment icon got mass-produced and hung on a rack between a friends hoodie and a rolling stones tongue. the establishment took the face of the guy who hated them the most and turned him into merch.

and it sells. it sells really fucking well.

the animals i've trapped have all become my pets

anti-establishment doesn't work. it's only anti-establishment until the establishment figures out how to profit off of it. and they always do. the house always wins. even when you beat the house, the house still wins. they put your face on a t-shirt and sell it in the lobby on your way out.

the system wins. to put something into the world you have to play the system anyway. you have to build the billing system. you have to put a price on what you love. kurt had to clock in.

something in the way is playing. "the animals i've trapped have all become my pets."

i'm just sitting with it.