Buy Kurt Cobain’s T-shirts, Feel All The Feelings
Maybe it’s summer, maybe it’s Mercury’s outro-grade, maybe it’s just that it’s been so dang hot, but I’ve been feeling all the nostalgia feelings lately, the kind of summery-Lana-Del-Rey melancholy that brings memories back in brain floods. I’m remembering an old boyfriend, the first person who ever introduced me to Nirvana and Kurt Cobain, a wiry-surfer boy I met in college who played guitar in a band that used vacuums as mic stands, performed at parties in basements and had one really good song about apples falling from walls. We dated for a year, until I was restless and bucking, and gracelessly ended all the things. One time I drove 5 hours to try and win him back. I still can’t listen to any part of In Utero without feeling like I’m choking with guilt over my carelessness.
And I’m thinking a lot about Kim France, a woman I’d obsessed over and idolized as a kid reading Sassy magazine, who became my boss and who I still love-until-it-hurts today (if you don’t know Kim, you should definitely read this). Kim taught me everything about writing, editing, discovering cool things and generally how to be successful-but-not-conventional without letting anyone eat your soul.
Kim was also the first person to introduce me to the rad site Worn Free, which sells replicas of t-shirts worn by rockers. (Seriously who can resist Blondie’s Camp Funtime t-shirt? Not I.) Worn Free recently added a handful of tees worn by Kurt Cobain, which brings this whole post full-circle and allows me to tell you to: buy at least this Sounds Magazine shirt and, if not, this still-awesome-after-all-these-years Daniel Johnston one; to buy it a size too big and tie it at the waist and wear it with cutoffs or a pleated black skirt; to live your warm-weather life to the magic-fullest, and to create memories that you will eventually reflect on with maudlin and slight-crazy as some future summer you.
