Gen X

I tried to read Coupland's book. Everyone did, but I found it a terrible snore. Frivolous, is what I would call it now. I felt obliged though, since he was a Vancouverite and was writing about my 'generation'. But the rubbish he was spouting just seemed, if you'll forgive the word, irrelevant.

But Gen X I am indeed. Raised on Saturday morning cartoons (Go Speed Racer!), the "Divorced Kids" encounter groups at the Y ("Share with the group how it made you feel when your mother told you she was getting divorced..." not kidding), indoctrination in sexual perversion (anyone remember "Free to be you and me"?) pop-psych group therapy and Cold War night terrors.

I've been listening to Nirvana all afternoon while doing the LifeSiteing and I've just noticed something. Kurt Cobain (remember him?) was my age, or a year younger. He was raised in almost exactly the same circumstances and grew up a hundred miles away from where I did.

Wiki:

Cobain's life changed dramatically at the age of seven when his parents divorced in 1975, an event which he later cited as having a profound impact on his life. His mother noted that his personality changed dramatically, with Cobain becoming more withdrawn. In a 1993 interview, Cobain said, "I remember feeling ashamed, for some reason. I was ashamed of my parents. I couldn't face some of my friends at school anymore, because I desperately wanted to have the classic, you know, typical family. Mother, father. I wanted that security, so I resented my parents for quite a few years because of that." After a year spent living with his mother following the divorce, Cobain moved to Montesano, Washington to live with his father, but after a few years his youthful rebellion became too overwhelming and he found himself being shuffled between friends and family.

He was just a kid when he killed himself (yes, he did, and who could be surprised) and so was I. I remember it pretty well. I was living in North Vancouver and working at the North Shore Studios doing short-term wardrobe work and trying to get off the damn IATSE permitee list (never managed it...everyone wanted to be in that union and it was deuced difficult). I was spending a lot of time wondering what had happened to us all. I recall thinking that something appalling had been going on and no one really knew what it was.

It seems absurd to talk about a rock star as an "icon of a generation", absurd even to talk about rock stars as if they matter, but the truth is that his life was a kind of TV miniseries of what happens to people when they grow up the way we did. This is what the sexual revolution hath wrought and the kids don't seem too happy about it, if you ask me.



This is what happens when you do to people what has been done to the children of the late 20th century.

I had a brief conversation with a chap in BC today who does pro-life political work there. He's about twenty years older than me and gets on my nerves. He's a typical BC ex-hippie convert, still trying to be cool while being Christian (Catholic, gawdhelpus) and every time I talk to him I want to yell at him, "Look, just shut the hell up will you? You people are the ones who did this to us."

Every generation needs an angry young man who commits suicide and cuts off a promising artistic career, if only as a warning to parents.