Madrona

From "Rearview Mirror: Travels in Seattle, real and imaginary"

After leaving Charles Peterson’s house he walks down the hill in a daze, replaying the conversation over in his head. Most of the other interviews he’s conducted have been semi-structured, with some form of an article in his mind before he presses record. He usually spends the minutes afterwards shuffling answers in his head, coming up with some sort of basic structure and highlighting the important parts, the snippets that could make pull-out quotes, the answers that build into a narrative. Not here. He deliberately didn’t have questions, just topics. He didn’t shape or force the conversation, just let it be as natural as possible and it had worked. He’d had a long, free-ranging conversation with Charles about his memories of the nineties and his place as the main visual chronicler of the times.

He was on a high, even as the suburban residential road began climbing quite a steep hill. The heat had picked up while he was in the basement and he was already sweaty and sticky when he realised that in his daze he’d gone in completely the wrong direction. He checked Google Maps and saw that there was a bus stop at the top of the hill. Without much of a plan until the in-store at Easy Street Records that evening, he figured he’d catch a bus downtown and get some lunch. He made it to the bus stop and after a minute of trying to work out which side of the road would take him in the right direction, he sat down to wait.

Looking at the map again, something about the neighbourhood rang a bell. Madrona. Apart from sounding like Madonna, where had he heard that before? Without WiFi he had no option but to sift through the garbage dump of trivia he carried around with him. There was something on his list in Madrona, a grunge connection. He’d thought Madrona much further from Capitol Hill so hadn’t considered it for today. What was it?

Then he remembered. This was where Kurt Cobain lived. Where he died. Kurt and Courtney’s house was around here somewhere, next to Viretta Park, where there was a memorial bench. The bus came around the corner in time to see him abandon the stop.

It’s a nice neighbourhood, obviously, but nothing like he’d imagined it. Back in 1994, when Kurt took his own life, he watched those reports again and again and again. The vantage points the cameramen got, up in trees, standing on cars, corners of the garden snatched through bushes. It looked like a big house, surrounded by a high fence and gates, outside the city, a big empty road running by. It is nothing like that. It’s another narrow residential street, other houses crammed around; big, but not isolated.

From his direction you come to the house from above, from behind. The land must have been carved out of the hill once. He passes numerous other mansions on the way. People out in the garden having a barbecue. They eye him suspiciously, someone unknown, someone obviously looking for one house in particular, fucking tourists. In the trees there is a sign for Viretta Park and he follows the path down some steep stairs, through the trees, and out into what can only just about be described as a park. A scratchy piece of grass with a couple of benches, a road on one side, trees lining the other. There are about a dozen others there. From the road, the house is the first to the right of the park. He recognises it immediately, the gable end etched into his imagination. He knows that roof better than the architect.

The guidebook says that the new owners are tolerant of fans paying pilgrimage but only if they have respect. It isn’t a tourist spot; it’s a home. He moves around, jumps up and down, but he can’t see the garage where Kurt died. The trees have grown—have been allowed to grow—and block out those old camera angles now.

‘If you go up that path, you’ll get a better view.’

A man about his age with a Spanish-language accent points at a worn route into the bushes.

‘Thanks.’

‘No problem.’

He takes the path, which winds back up the hill, giving some elevation over the fence. It’s better but still, he’s basically just looking at a bit of wall, roof, and trees. What did he expect to see? He takes a few photos and comes back out.

The main attraction, the thing that justifies being there in a residential area, are the benches. They were presumably there already when Kurt and Courtney bought the house. Low, wooden benches, once coloured perhaps, now dirty, slightly rotten, green mould in places. You’d think twice about sitting on them in even half-decent clothes, but no one sits on them now. Over the years, fans who have come to this spot have left messages on the bench: “Kurt Forever”, Nirvana and Hole lyrics, quotes from interviews, a single pink rose, notes on paper, notes on cigarette packets, the squiggly smiley face, stickers, even a handkerchief tied to one of the struts. The messages are in many languages, showing the extent of his influence, the distances people have travelled. Bottles have been left in the lee of a nearby tree, reminding him of the saké offerings at shrines in Japan. He recalls the pictures of the funeral, the park full of people crying, hugging, singing. This isn’t just a memorial to Kurt, it’s a time capsule, the remembrance of a generation, a monument to the connections they all made.

‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’

He steps out of the way so the Spanish guy can take a photo without his shadow in it.

‘It is,’ he says. ‘I’m glad they haven’t done anything with it. Back home someone would complain about the mess and the council would take them away, replace them with plastic ones you couldn’t graffiti.’

‘Yeah. Same.’ He puts a hand on his shoulder. ‘Have a good one, man.’

‘You too.’

He stays for a few more minutes, takes a few more photos, wonders for the millionth time what he’d be like if Kurt hadn’t died, what music we’d have got.

In 2011 the Guardian ran a poll of readers on which was the greatest Nirvana album. They asked fans to champion an album and write a hundred words on it. One for each album would be picked and published, then everyone would vote. He chose In Utero and wrote that it was clearly the best not just because of the leaps he had taken in songwriting, but that it hinted at a future, a direction he was moving in that we never got. His piece was chosen and published in the paper. Kurt said in an interview that he was thinking about doing an Automatic for the People type album, but “You Know You’re Right” showed he was still writing hard, heavy, angry melodic rock. In Utero isn’t Nirvana’s last album. In a parallel universe it’s a transition album into the next stage of Nirvana. He often wonders what that album would have sounded like. In Viretta Park he felt he could almost hear it.