This was written the day after Robin Williams' suicide. Like many other people, I live with depression, and to see another one of us fall hit particularly close to home.
THEY ONLY FIND RESPECT FOR YOU
IF YOU GIVE UP THE FIGHT
Sadly, I don't think Robin Williams' death will change anything.
Depression will be a buzz word for a few days on social media, people will say something needs to be done to raise awareness of mental illness, and celebrities will come out in support of anybody living with depression.
Depression took this lovely, wonderfully talented man away from us.
Don't let it take you away from the people who care for you.
And then, probably just before or just after Robin Williams' body is lain to rest, they'll have forgotten all about it, and will go right back to watching Big Brother LXVIII, or the new football season, or whatever other meaningless shit they occupy their minds with to keep themselves from thinking about anything that actually fucking matters.
I don't know what I expect people to do, but I do know that I expect more. In a day and age where we know so much about mental health, I can't believe somebody as beloved as Robin Williams felt he had nobody to turn to, and that's why this insidious disease is so horrible. Even a cancer patient has the will to fight, but depression robs a person of even that.
And to the Daily Mail readers who express shock and, believe it or not, anger that Robin Williams did this "when he had all the money and fame in the world," I can only label you grasping, dreamless ciphers with no poetry or romance in your souls, if you honestly think that money can solve all a person's problems.
As for Robin Williams... well, he can't do any more damage around this popsicle stand. I'm gonna miss him.
Dear Sun "readers", Doesn't it bother you how the Sun talks down to you? Doesn't it bother you how the Sun assumes you're a braying moron whose only interest is telly, tits and tackles? Are the football results really all you look for in a paper? Speaking of football...
Just one reason to hate the Sun—as if you needed reminding.
Doesn't it bother you how the Sun habitually prints lies, slander and baseless, incredibly offensive allegations simply to sell papers, then takes a quarter of a century to fart out a half-hearted apology? Doesn't it bother you how the Sun, as in the example above, insistently uses the word "cops" to describe police officers? I thought the Sun was the last bastion of All Things British. Doesn't it bother you how the Sun clearly despises its readership and regards them as one rung above amoebae in the brain department? All you have to do is read the thing for five minutes: it's written in such base, uncomplicated English that even a toddler could understand it... and they market this paper to grown men. I haven't seen such open contempt for one's readers since Mark Twain's Christian Science essay (and that, mark my words, is the only comparison between the Sun and Samuel Clemens you will EVER fucking see) Doesn't it bother you how the Sun acts like its frothing, barely-disguised racial hatred is, according to them, a perfectly normal English trait? Doesn't it bother you how the Sun has always made an enemy of trade unions, when it's (sadly) the working men those unions protect that make up the Sun's core audience? Doesn't it bother you and make you squirm in hot, sticky embarrassment when the Sun refers to the England football team as "our boys", or the British Army as "our lads" (they might be yours but they're not fucking mine)?
Another reason to hate the Sun, because "GOTCHA" is not an appropriate response to the loss of over 1000 human lives, regardless of whether there's a war on or not
Doesn't it BOTHER you how the Sun INSISTS on putting RANDOM words in every SENTENCE in COMPLETELY unnecessary BLOCK CAPITALS? (because it DRIVES me up the FUCKING wall) Doesn't it bother you that, with every page of the Sun you turn, you're adding to the already-ungodly power of Rupert Murdoch, billionaire tyrant and the closest thing this planet has ever come to a real-life Skeletor?
Doesn't it bother you how, despite not even being from this country, the aforementioned billionaire tyrant Rupert Murdoch uses the Sun to influence British politics in his own devious favour?
Doesn't it bother you that you're laying your money down for an oxymoron (that is, a newspaper without news)?
Doesn't it bother you that the Sun is the print equivalent of ITV: written and produced entirely for thick people?
This trash is what passes for news to Murdoch's minions. And to think: journalism used to be a respectable profession.
Doesn't it bother you that the Sun is Britain's biggest-selling newspaper? And doesn't what that says about Britain bother you even more? Doesn't it bother you at all?
Let me know, because I just can't understand how this brightly-coloured, anti-intellectual, anti-progress, anti-anybody-who-isn't-white bumwad sells two million copies every month.
Last month marked the 20th anniversary of Kurt Cobain's untimely death. In my relatively short time on this earth I have already been alive longer than he was.
I'm not going to get all sappy here, but Nirvana was the first real rock band I heard and the first I loved (there had been Oasis, yes, but as a youth in northern England in the mid-1990s I was contractually obligated to listen to Oasis. Besides, this was stronger stuff by far). I was eleven years old in autumn 1997, and when I heard "Smells Like Teen Spirit" for the first time, it was like entering a different world.
Terrible American dad-rock embarrassment Bruce Springsteen once described the snare shot that heralds Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" as sounding like somebody had "kicked open the door to your mind", and I could say the same for myself regarding the albatross around Cobain's neck. The moment the guitar's tone distorted, I was changed for life: I had found my brand, so to speak. Having no real disposable income of my own, its parent album Nevermind took the form of a Christmas gift, and the Christmas that was soundtracked by three noisy longhairs with personal hygiene problems was a happy one indeed.
I think Kurt just found out about Miley Cyrus covering "...Teen Spirit".
That Nevermind was packed with great songs was merely a bonus. To me, the disc was less an album, more a sacred artifact: one to be worshipped nightly and heralded as the finest achievement in human history. Indeed, for a long time I had no interest in finding out if there were other albums in the world: I was tragically unhip as a lad. I didn't even know where you'd go to find them. I knew record shops existed, but had no idea where to find them, or indeed if I was worthy to enter them*. Eventually I dove into practically all forms of music with the zeal of a burn victim leaping into a swimming pool filled with ice cream, but for a good few years there I lived and breathed every word Kurt Cobain yelled on that album.
I said earlier that the album changed my life, and I genuinely believe it did. If I had never heard Nevermind, who knows? I could have grown up to be one of those hapless imbeciles who cares more about who they vote for in The X Factor or I'm a Fading Pseudo-Celebrity, Get My Publicist on the Phone than who they vote for in a general election. I could have grown up to be the kind of person who listens to Top 40 radio and believes it. I could have grown up to be the kind of person who doesn't like music but likes the idea of music, and therefore buys three albums a year: Coldplay, Katy Perry and Robbie arsing Williams. Given that I hail from Wigan, where the glory days of the Casino and its effervescent Northern Soul have long since passed, to be replaced by a truly execrable form of dance music called "donk", these are all very real possibilities.
But because of Nirvana and Nevermind, I didn't. And the reason for this goes beyond the 'shock of the new' I experienced, beyond the great songs and beyond even the tired old 'voice of a generation' bumf that probably drove Kurt Cobain to suicide. The reason I didn't grow up into a musically-apathetic, Top 40 radio-listening cow-person is because of a song that isn't even listed anywhere on the album's sleeve.
NSFW
"Endless, Nameless" is a seven-minute noise jam that grew out of a failed attempt at recording future hit single "Lithium", and consists of Nirvana slowly deconstructing the concept of rock music at a volume loud enough to make pregnant women miscarry. It was appended to the album as a hidden track after the first pressing, beginning some ten minutes after the end of morose album closer, "Something in the Way".
The first time I heard the song, it frightened the daylights out of me. Beginning with a pulsing, bassy guitar note and immediately exploding into distortion and pounding drums, I thought there was something wrong with my stereo. Then I thought there was something wrong with my CD. Then I realised something truly remarkable for a kid whose first CD–another Christmas present, natch–was the chart compilation Now That's What I Call Music 35: I was enjoying it. I could hear on-the-fly songcraft, I could pick out a tune through the chaos. And by the end, when Krist Novoselic plays a merry, folksy melody on his bass followed by the song sputtering to a halt like a dying motorcycle... I wanted to hear it again.
I wanted to hear more of what I would later see Lester Bangs describe as "horrible noise", and my ears would never be the same again. From "Endless, Nameless" and Norwegian black metal, through Iggy & The Stooges and Big Black, to free jazz andMetal Machine Music^, I have always found comfort in horrible noise.
And for that, Kurt Cobain, more than anything, I thank you.
* Worthiness and my own perceived lack thereof has been a recurring theme throughout my life
^ One of only one-and-a-half good albums Lou Reed ever made
