Kurt Cobain: Forever In Bloom, And Mental Health Awareness || Kelly Catlin

[00:00:33] How do you do? episode 42 and this is giants amongst us where we share in the unique human experience and where

[00:00:56] you're going to hear real stories that are told by real people people just like yourself if this is your first time tuning in i'd like to invite you after this conversation to go back to the archives and listen to past stories listen to past guests because it is there you're going to find people share with us their journey through trial through tribulation through challenge through

[00:01:25] testings but coming out on the other end a better person how were they able to create changes what flipped in their life was it a change in belief was it a change in attitude was there something an outsource an outlet that they were able to use as a vehicle to express their emotions explore their emotions explore their inner world and cope with loss cope with adversity

[00:01:54] where did they find their strength their resources their tools to help them navigate through the challenges and the struggles that we all face you're going to hear what worked for them this isn't a one size fits all but it's about exploring the human dynamic the inner dynamic so that we can individually create our own changes in life new experiences in life we can start to grow and mature as

[00:02:23] people from the inside out this is about that path in that journey in one's life to actualize someone's potential and possibility especially in a time of uncertainties if we're not confident in ourselves if we're not sure of ourselves if we don't even know who we are it's going to be a hard game to play we're already fighting an uphill battle

[00:02:46] so with the show it's about sharing those connections and exposing people to how others peers those just like you and me how they were able to create changes and how they were able to heal recover and come out of that dark pit a better person because i feel like when we hear these stories there's power in stories there's power in words and that could ignite a spark

[00:03:12] inside of you that could plant a seed that in time and when it's time can start to grow and turn into something unique and truly transformative in your life if you're dealing with something right now if you're going through something right now if you feel as if your life has no purpose no meaning remember after listening to these stories that you're no different that you also are capable of doing great things that the human spirit is truly

[00:03:39] resilient and it just comes down to you realizing that so with that being said welcome to the show kick your feet up and just to remind you if you're a listener and you enjoy these stories and you appreciate the conversations that we have on a bi-weekly basis if you appreciate these things something that you can do free of charge is you can go to whichever platform you listen to i'll leave links in the description box

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[00:05:01] thoughts add to the conversation all of it will be in the show notes so without further ado we are joined by callie catlin she's a writer she's a mother she's a wife she has her work in five different publications she has a new book that is out now kurt cobain forever in bloom and she joined us today and she has a story to tell so i never really thought i would ever turn into you know a career writer i actually

[00:05:31] started out as a special education teacher so when i was writing the book i mean it's look it's a celebratory book but i can't sugarcoat it it's sad because you know how it ends knowing how it ends it's difficult and i i did lose a family member walter to suicide and he was the reason why i wrote this book ladies and gentlemen welcome back to the show this is giants amongst us where we share in the

[00:06:00] unique human experience and i'm happy to have another sit down and uh bring on another guest so she can talk about her her story her passion her heart what she's been involved with and um this is to be honest this is like the highlight of my day aside from spending time with my wife it's making these connections these these heart-to-heart connections so yeah i'm really excited about today's episode let me just

[00:06:27] lay the ground very very briefly uh kelly catlin did i say your last name correct yes everybody says caitlin they throw perfect got it first shot so yeah kelly kelly catlin she's a writer she's uh her work is in a variety of different publications mixed down ranker house digest collider and she's also

[00:06:51] a mediocre guitarist how about that and um there's a a new book it is now published of hers this book is called kurt cobain forever in bloom and um just to wrap it up in a nutshell this is something that rather than focusing on the tragedy this is about celebrating life this is about celebrating his triumphs over adversity and she's going to talk more about it today so kelly thank you very much for

[00:07:21] taking time out of your day you could have been doing anything you could have been anywhere but we're having a little sit down right now so thank you and welcome to the show no thank you so much i'm so happy to be here um i was you know thrilled that you gave me this opportunity uh so i'm i'm really excited about this this is same thing i was with my family before and this is something i'm excited to be doing right now so thank you we had a very good moment of breaking the ice and um you were just

[00:07:50] laying out all kinds of information about cobain that i had no idea about and we could get into all that but just for starters do you mind talking a bit about um some of your background yeah sure absolutely so i never really thought i would ever turn into you know a career writer i actually started out as a special education teacher and i used to work with disadvantaged children and i taught in both

[00:08:15] private and public schools and um it wasn't until i became a mom that i was like you know i i want to stay home but i you know obviously i'm still going to work so i do have a background in english and i decided to start writing i started blogging and then that kind of you know turned into writing for these different online publications um you know i am a like i said kind of a so-so guitarist i used to

[00:08:43] play in bands i used to sing in bands but um i decided okay i was like well you know what what what can an old mom do that's still kind of cool and i was like well i can i can write about music and that's kind of how i got into the kind of music writing of thing you know side of things and never in a million years thought i'd ever write a book but i was just really inspired by um you know people in my life by kurt's story that i don't think we get to read enough about um you know

[00:09:12] in the media and it was just it was just one of those things i felt i needed to do i never thought i'd be the kind of person that would have the discipline to sit down and write a book and now i have a 500 page book about kirk goban and it's not like okay but a fifth of it is pictures it's got like a couple pictures it's it's basically wall-to-wall text and i'm not not praising myself for that i'm praising the incredible people that came out to help me put this book together because

[00:09:42] it is about 80 maybe even 90 interviews with you know people who knew kurt loved kurt were maybe didn't get to meet him but were you know inspired by him um different artists who were inspired by him so i'm really blessed that i was able to do that that these incredible people um and i will say one of them um was the late steve albini he was a wonderful human being i sadly do have one of his final

[00:10:10] interviews in my book we did uh get together for our interview on the 30th anniversary of kurt's passing that wasn't we didn't plan that i don't even think either one of us realized that when we were talking so i do feel blessed to have that interview in the book and as a tribute to steve because half the profits from the book do go to charity uh one of the charities i'll be sending some money to is um

[00:10:33] letters charity which was started by steve's wife and um really championed by steve so just trying to make everything kind of it's it's great what they do the the work that this charity does is fantastic with just it's um like a letter writing charity letters to santa and they get these letters from people who are just really having a hard time and they make their dreams come true around the holidays you know that's just an incredible incredible organization not to get away from the book but

[00:11:01] just to just to tail back off of the the charities i when i was going through your website i was thrown back by the workshops that you provide but the fact that a hundred percent of the profits go to charities and you have eight different charities on your websites that you're dealing directly with i do and a little bit more behind the scenes too because there's one that i didn't include on there

[00:11:26] but when um so when i was writing the book i mean it's look it's a celebratory book but i can't sugarcoat it it's sad because you know how it ends and listening to people you know recount their stories or their their memories of kurt and knowing how it ends it's difficult and i i did lose a family member walter to suicide and he was the reason why i wrote this book having to for two years tell people

[00:11:53] my story having people tell me their story about kurt just going through this kind of shared trauma together it's tough so i did go to um you know a suicide a suicide survivor support group uh when i just to kind of talk because i think it's important that we get out there and we speak about our feelings and the woman who hosts it lost her son to suicide and as a mom that really affected me so she started

[00:12:18] a scholarship fund at a local college in her son's name and i said when when the book comes out it regardless of the i said i will make a donation to that so i do want the book to help that since the book is it's out for pre-sale but it's only been out you know for two weeks now i wanted to not just make good of my promise of what i'm planning on doing but i just wanted to this book was intended to

[00:12:44] do the right thing to help people so i wanted to hit the ground running with it so last summer i held my first um virtual writing workshop and it was just to empower other writers hey whether you want to start a book whether you want to finish a book whether you want to learn about the publishing industry whatever let's do it let's get together so i think it was 10 weeks long and i gave 100 of the profits

[00:13:07] from that to camp victory in cobain's hometown of aberdeen washington they're phenomenal they offer a free summer camp to children who are survivors of sexual abuse obviously you know being a former teacher and having worked with at-risk children i've seen a lot unfortunately in the classroom and to me that's a charity that i just feel really is worthwhile and deserving so yeah so that was something i hit the

[00:13:34] ground running with right now i've been overwhelmed and inundated with trying to get the book done and out there we're you know the editing process of a 500 page book um yeah and on top of that you're you're on the beat with five different publications yeah or did you put that did you put that on on standby in hold nope i do that all and that's not the only writing i do i'm also um i'm also an seo content creator

[00:14:00] for a bunch of different websites so oh wow i get like minutes of sleep a day you wear a lot of hats i try to because i feel blessed for everything i have in my life i have a beautiful family i've been given the incredible opportunity to use my voice to hopefully do something good so i'm going to make the most of every second that i can doing these things i mean that right there like i said when i

[00:14:26] looked over the workshop that you offer and what what it entails in the fact that 100 percent we're going to charity i was like wow so this is already telling me that you're you're coming from a good place and this is sincere and genuine and you're out here for the cause not just trying to make a profit no and i post receipts on my my author facebook page we've only done the one workshop so far like i said um okay i did it over the summer i was still in the thick of writing the book because the cool

[00:14:51] thing about the book was it was never supposed to be this big it was supposed to be probably half the size of this but with every interview i did it was hey you should talk to this person or i'd get an email from from somebody hey can we throw this in and that's why it's this you know hundred and you know 45 000 word 500 page book and i am so grateful for all these interactions and interviews but it's been an all hands on deck and i i like to do everything myself i had a couple people help me with the

[00:15:20] transcription of some of the chapters just because it was a beast to write but for the most part it did everything myself so like i said you know before one interview was three days and 12 hours and then to transcribe that while being a mom while working so i was able to get you know the one writing workshop but what i do have i think i have a link on my website for anybody who wants to do a workshop i'll host them i just ask if people can come and bring a group of writers because it's it's kind of hard to

[00:15:49] like advertise the writing workshop so but if people call me and like hey i've got some people um because the one thing i i do for everybody because i want to help other people who want to write is i bring my publisher on to one of the uh one of the meetings at the workshop this way people can ask them questions how do i you know pitch your publishing agency basically your publisher so because it's takes a village you know i mean that's just i came into this with no industry connections i'm not

[00:16:17] a journalist i wanted to do something you know like i said i i have the background in english and i've been blogging for a long time that's what helped me get into the online publications but in terms of making these industry you know connections and and cobain's you know neck of the woods basically um to write this book that 100 came down to the kindness and the generosity of these incredible individuals featured in

[00:16:44] my book you know i've got danny goldberg who was nirvana's manager i've got ryan agner who was nirvana's first unofficial manager um you know when they were still starting up i've got gary lee connor from the screaming trees i've got kurt danielson from tad who toured with nirvana more than any other band i've got carlos cake nunez who was one of kurt's friends he's actually the person that introduced

[00:17:09] pat smear to the band you know i've got these really wonderful people um my forward is a beautiful letter written and sent to me by the former vp of a and r for virgin music america so i just had these incredible human beings that came out and you know supported what i was trying to do steve albini you know who um you know produced um i'm sorry he doesn't even like to be called a producer he wanted to be

[00:17:37] called a recording engineer and okay he came out and he you know he did this interview these people with these hectic busy schedules and they just made time and some people made time on multiple days how did you have the access to get to this these these people that were working with cobain was there anything in the beginning you know because like we talked about a bit before offline i told you that

[00:18:04] there's been tons of documentaries made and sometimes there's misinformation sometimes there's conspiracy theories so then you might you know in my in my eye or my mind i'm thinking that the ones close to him are trying to protect his image and they don't want somebody else to put any kind of taint or or drag his name through the mud again so was it hard to gain trust from them in the beginning how did you pierce that circle or get in the inner circle no a lot of people are are very concerned you know there's there's

[00:18:34] there are there's a lot of the rumors and the the different conspiracy theories circulating and from my experiences with talking to all these people nobody subscribes to those you know conspiracy theories everybody feels that you know their friend was depressed and there was substance abuse and he ultimately took his life but a lot of people share the sentiment that had he just held on a bit longer you know he would still be here a lot of people um i don't subscribe to that whole he was destined to

[00:19:00] join the 27 club i think that's a bs attitude and people go on the record in my book saying that's a bs attitude you know nobody is beyond repair but basically so i did lose a family member walter uh to suicide in 2017 he was a veteran marine he was a beautiful human being inside and out nobody saw it coming um he did love nirvana that's not why i wrote it not because he loved nirvana it was

[00:19:27] listening i was it was during the pandemic and um kid across the street from us was blasting nirvana and i was outside and i was like you guys still listen to this oh yeah absolutely and i went inside and i was baking cookies with my kid and i said alexa play you know smells like teen spirit and um you know trips the google feed and basically i start getting all these articles in my news feed uh kobanya this

[00:19:51] tortured artist and i remember thinking i wouldn't want walter to be remembered like that had he been famous and i thought how sad that that's all people think of this man now i went into it knowing not much about koban but i figured there must have been more to him than that so i think i want to say i started with some indie artists because i would talk to a couple of the musicians that i would write articles about for mixdown and i would um say to them you know what inspired you to get into music

[00:20:21] and there was this definite theme that they resonated with kobane nirvana yes but more specifically kobane you know just the way he was and i was like okay well what if i i was working on a kind of a different book at the time but i said what if i did this book that celebrated him and i just brought in indie artists and we talked about his impact i'm like yeah okay let's do it so i started having those you know those interviews they're obviously writing for mixdown and people seeing you know my name

[00:20:48] on this you know on this publication's website that builds trust but i want to say one of the first people i connected with was gary lee connor from the screaming trees and the reason he wanted to do it was because i told him what my plans were and i said i want to do this book for walter i want to make this book a positive book about kurt kobane i want to give you know half the profits to charity

[00:21:14] i want this to be a whole celebration and he supported what i was doing you know i had spoken i did i used to have a literary agent i had spoken to you know other people in the industry and they felt to keep walter out of it nobody cares people just want to hear about kobane and when i was talking to gary he didn't really agree with that sentiment and he was like no if you're doing this for walter

[00:21:38] include him in the book and then gary said to me go on facebook go reach out to kurt danielson from ted tell him i told him that you know you should reach out that i told you you should reach out to him so that led to my interview with kurt danielson and it's just kind of like a snowball effect it's like okay yeah you kind of you get one person to help out and to have faith in your project and then that kind of gives somebody else you know faith that okay you're doing something right

[00:22:08] the big thing from the feedback that i got was that people agreed to do this because of what i told them about walter people agreed to do this because they felt there was a lot of negativity surrounding kurt's image and people agreed to do this because they really felt it was time to have an honest discussion about mental health and suicide awareness and the other thing too was a couple

[00:22:35] you know a couple of people i spoke to were hesitant to do anything they did feel their words were misconstrued in other books i said what if i let you after your chapter because i'll get into that in a second but i said after your chapter is done you read it you approve it you make sure that you know if it's what you said i heard you properly and that that everybody was very comfortable with that and i did have some people tell me thank you a lot of people in the community won't do interviews because

[00:23:05] their words have been minced over the years so you know i'll be honest i have not read other books about kurt covane i did that on purpose i didn't you don't want outside influences or yes i also yeah i didn't want to come into something like because everybody is going to have their version of who somebody was everybody has their own specific experiences with him and obviously the people who've written about him that knew him are going to have their unique experiences and that shouldn't be

[00:23:34] something that influences my experience in this journey because i didn't know him i've gotten to you know know people who knew him i've gotten to be quite good friends with some of his friends but for me i didn't want any external influence because this was my journey not to understand kurt covane the musician but to understand kurt covane the the man and not the myth as told to

[00:23:57] me through the eyes of other people and i was afraid if i read a lot of stuff about him i might have questions that might come across as leading so really what i did was we said that's why i said one interview took three days and 12 hours because i would just sit down we would chat i would flip the tape recorder on and i would say talk about whatever you want i think some people might say i can't believe you didn't ask this question or that question people want really i'm trying to think

[00:24:24] what the right word is they want that like gritty you know information and that wasn't the book i set out to write it was never supposed to be that there's been too many autopsies autopsies of this man's life and death that was never supposed to be what it was about it was supposed to be his impact on the world on people how he saved some people from themselves you know that was the whole indie artist section the only question that i asked everybody and this is a theme you know you'll you see in the

[00:24:52] book is what was it about kurt that made him stand out what was it about him that was so special because i wanted everybody to be able to reflect on you know their friend you know kind of from that lens basically so it was really i think the best way for me to get people to to trust me enough to do this was i had to share my story about walter which was difficult because i had to talk about

[00:25:17] a very personal experience basically on repeat and then hearing people talk about when they found out kurt had died and it's not like i was in fifth grade and i remember when no this was i remember when i found out my friend had died or i remember the last time i saw my friend kurt like how awful how awful and it really um for me any any more anyway like i now when he pops up in my news feed i'm not like there's kurt cobain the musician i'm like oh there's kurt cobain my friend's friend

[00:25:46] and i just after learning about his his life and his story and how he affected those around him just what an incredible human being there was a lot that you spoke about that he was involved with that you wouldn't know at first glance like i told you that there's a for some reason i don't know why it was it seemed like the main image that they were painting was that he was a tortured soul that he had drug addiction problems and i wonder what it was about about the media at that time that seemed

[00:26:14] that that was the light that they wanted to paint him in and nothing else behind the scenes you know things that he was doing charities that he was involved with you you were speaking about some concerts free concerts that he was doing for uh cow palace when they played cow palace and now that was um spearheaded by christ but um they donated the money from that to bosnian rape victims i want to say they raised more than fifty thousand dollars um but you know just his message too and that whole

[00:26:42] and obviously it comes across in the song come as you are but really to to live i think by those values and those values and those ideals and to to be this person that i think he was so misconstrued he was i think more private probably with his with his uh you know drug use than than people realized this wasn't somebody that wanted to be this party or this rock star i mean look he got married he had a

[00:27:09] child i i really was a man that did want to settle down and it seemed like he was very it from the interviews that i would see that he was very he kept his cards close to him he was private and i think he just you know adored his family and um and that's hard to be when you're on this when the spotlight's that's a hard uh line to walk because you have paparazzi you have people that they just they they want to see you come outside and go grab a cup of coffee and they're gonna make a

[00:27:37] a headline over and your father and your husband and you want to protect you know your people and i just um it's so yes my book is very interview heavy i did make it i wanted to write it so even if somebody doesn't know much about him or isn't super interested in him they can read it and follow along and understand his story so i do have a chapter that opens up and and talks just a brief bio of him and who he was and kind of where he came from and then i do bring in some people from his

[00:28:06] hometown of aberdeen who speak you know to what the town is like to kind of understand hey this is where he came from these are his roots and then i do have so i break the book up with a couple um concert chapters and the whole point of that was to make people feel very like immersed in all things you know nirvana so what i was able to do was i i'd covered three concerts and one was writing 92 because to me i think that's a very profound concert because you know he was really getting

[00:28:34] lambasted from the media six ways to sunday did the band break up is cobain in and out of rehab is he going to show up at the show and then you know here they are they wheel him out i believe it was ever true who wheeled him out in a wheelchair in a hospital gown and you know chris okay he is he gonna make it i don't know you know and then and he's fine and it's kind of like you know flipping off the media

[00:28:57] and i really thought that was an important show but one thing i didn't ever want to do was put words in in kurt's mouth so i tried as much as possible if i felt something about him or felt he would have felt a way about something i always tried to find um a quote of his that could prove that point which is probably why i have like a five-page bibliography into the book no i was very thorough i didn't assume yeah very i didn't want to assume to know

[00:29:26] what went through his head i mean obviously when you write a book like this it's impossible not to but i did want to at least try to support my claims as best as possible and i i can't think of the exact quote but he does say something like he had no clue of the extent that the media could abuse you and had he you know known that going in maybe he wouldn't have put himself out there so much so

[00:29:50] for me look and i'm one person i'm not part of that scene i i did never got the chance to meet him what i can say is i'm hoping this book can undo a little bit of that pejorative narrative surrounding him and maybe make people say this was a human being this was a person who grew up very little who battled being unhoused who was shuffled from family member to family member to

[00:30:19] family member you know there's that huge conundrum did he or didn't he sleep beneath the young street bridge in aberdeen and the point that i drive home in my book is i think we need to stop focusing on where he slept and focus more on the fact that it wasn't at home that this was a young person who i think the stats right now are 700 000 um young people are unhoused just in the u.s this was a young

[00:30:46] person who went through what so many other people went through are going through and we need to start paying more attention i think to these larger systemic issues that really i think he's the vehicle for discussing when i did the uh concert chapters i had writing 92 cow palace and then i do end the book on unplugged i spoke with uh tony the interpretive dancer i love him and he was nirvana stage dancer

[00:31:13] and we have this really great wonderful long interview and he's talking about being at writing 92 with the band and dancing on stage and then the next chapter is the first half of writing 92 and i'm talking about you know what was going on at the concert and then the next chapter is charles peterson you know the the famous nirvana photographer who's a lovely human being and he's talking about you know his time with the band and his memories of kurt you know and the last time he saw kurt and then the chapter after

[00:31:42] that is the second half of writing because charles was you know at one point talking about writing you know and just telling new stories so i tried to bring everything full circle i wanted the book to feel a little chaotic a little haphazard because i think that was the trajectory of kurt's life in a positive way he was able to be this complete amalgam of so many different things and i think we really

[00:32:09] need to stop focusing on you know his final moments and that needs to stop because you said the media tends to focus on that and it's just and i'm i'm not giving away trade secrets this is a big theme of my book it's sensationalism in the media literature should be examining all sides of the story i think when we come at somebody and this is who they are this is their story this is their life they died by

[00:32:35] suicide it was very sad yes 100 but what about the good what about all the light and the love and the laughter you know um there's so much more to a person than just clickbait you mentioned that um i know you said you talked about it in your book and and the fact that you were speaking with a lot of people that were close to him and and asking them what it was about him yeah that they were drawn to or

[00:33:01] that that they they were enamored by and so was there was there a certain quality or there was a characteristic he was someone that was relatable he was someone that they seen in in themselves or what what do you think it was or what did you gather from all of these different conversations that you had of what it was about him that people seem to um appreciate and gravitate towards some people just

[00:33:26] felt um and this was something that a couple people said he had time for everyone he was tender heart yes he was kind he was empathetic he um you know one of his friends was telling me yeah we're behind the the scenes that i i think it was i can't think what the concert was i i usually am pretty good but with a 500 page book things tend to get a little blurred oh my goodness that's a lot of information it was a lot it was wonderful was an incredible experience but they're saying how um you know kurt's being

[00:33:55] interviewed and there's all this food and stuff like that and he's eating and one of his friends is back there with him and it's a small gesture hey you want anything to eat like something silly like that but you think people get so caught up in the media and the frenzy of being interviewed and it's like no i have to make sure my friend is fed so he wasn't mr hollywood no no i've never heard one story never never heard one story not from anybody in my book tenacious dedicated listened

[00:34:21] to differing you know opinions and views tony the interpretive dancer is telling me you know a story how um i think he was asking kurt why do you smash the guitars like like oh my god this beautiful instrument you're on stage smashing it he's tony's telling me kurt's going and he's listening to him and he's being thoughtful and yes i i understand your concerns tony and tony's going i think i've gotten through to him i think i've gotten through to him and the next week kurt's on stage smashing

[00:34:49] guitars i does it again but he's but it's a funny story and the point is but kurt was not going to tell him he wasn't going to argue with him he was going to sit there and listen and make time you know and just the creativity the stories you hear about him being on the tour bus and how he was thinking and creating and always doing you know he had a dark sense of humor just these things that you know you'd see it obviously bleed through i felt like a lot of what you saw on stage was what you

[00:35:17] got in real life and for me too just watching these interviews where you know he's been asked the same question probably a thousand times that day and he's just sitting down to to make time for these people he's not you know nothing i saw anyway there wasn't and obviously you know people are going to get you know if he was ever rude or snapped at anybody i mean look your whole life is

[00:35:41] for the whole world exactly yeah that's another thing that i think that it's not i'm not going to say it's common but you hear this story a lot say with kurt and his background and everything that he had went through leading up to his his moment of success where he was on the big stage and now it was all eyes on him but everything already that he was dealing with and going through and still struggling

[00:36:05] with and then you have the pressures of hollywood success and um i mean that almost sounds like it's going to exasperate everything that he was dealing with internally and lead up to you know something to where we we we have the final story of what what happened with with him and his situation but it like that the environment that he's around and a part of with hollywood in general is just from a

[00:36:33] lot of people people in the industry people working around the industry they say it can be a very sick and toxic environment sure and you've got a wife who's famous so it's not even like you know you're you're married to someone outside the industry and you know at the dinner table you can talk about different things i mean you have these two highly creative you know artists musicians and it's just kind of like you know this is the world that that you live in and i'm sure you know for me from my very limited

[00:37:02] you know vantage point just kind of being this outsider looking in hearing these stories it's it's overwhelming to listen to some of this stuff and you sit here and you think you know these people are reflecting on a lot of things from 30 years ago but it's like you can't wrap your brain around that can't process that and that level of fame that level of on that unprecedented level of success and even that's a lot of pressure it's it's i mean it's wild and to think of what he did with

[00:37:31] that fame i mean he could have been anybody or anything he could have been i'm gonna go drive a lamborghini i'm you know what i mean like right he breaks it down at one point i think in one of the interviews like what the band got and all where the expenses go and there's this um there's this incredible article that steve albini wrote um in 1993 um i try to think of what it's called it's

[00:37:58] in my book i can't think off the top of my head it's called the problem with music and if you look it up the problem with music it's right now i'm looking at it it's on uh the bafflers website um so steve wrote this in 1993 and it basically it breaks down what an album makes and what a band takes home and it's truly shocking pennies oh yeah pennies pennies and i think people think like

[00:38:23] the record labels are pimping them out oh yeah it's and steve was incredibly smart and to read this article it's it's brilliant and you're you're just reading it and he's so thorough in it and he's breaking down and this is what an album costs and this is how much goes to here and the manager gets this and you're like is that all it's just it's shocking but but my point was it didn't feel like and i know that nirvana you know they didn't get a chance to be famous for that long because kurt died

[00:38:51] so young but he could have been any type of way and he just was to me from what i've heard still that guy that you'd want to grab a beer with that guy that you'd just want to be friends with just a a good human being and you know the real tragedy is that he didn't see that in himself and he felt that you know suicide was the answer when it wasn't um and like i've said you know you'll see in the

[00:39:20] media or in the news or in whatever he was destined to join the 27 club and one of my favorite quotes from someone in my book is well that's just you know i won't i won't curse it just that's just a bs attitude and i was like thank you for going on the record to see that because i agree nobody is beyond repair nobody is destined to do that there is help there is hope there is always somebody willing to listen i have a whole section in my book on mental health resources there is always a way

[00:39:46] people are facing their most you know bleak their darkest times there's always somebody out there who will listen to you who will talk to you suicide is never the answer and for people to want to keep pushing this tortured artist narrative of kurt and i let me tell you something i i did get a lot of flack when i first started doing this from some people who weren't friends with him but were in the

[00:40:11] industry and you know maybe had met him you should be writing a celebratory book you know you have to be this should be depressed this was a depressed man and i'm like i'm not disputing that that there was depression there look at what happened but i'm like there was also a man who there was a lot of happiness i mean look at the pictures of him with his daughter i mean that's that's sheer happiness on his face you know he changed people and even if you know kurt's not around anymore his message

[00:40:41] helps people to this day yeah that's a person we should absolutely and can absolutely celebrate just because you know he passed away at a very young age and and did you know die by suicide doesn't mean we cannot celebrate him because his impact is far-reaching yeah imagine how that works out too like he had all this love from people on the outside but he he may have not seen or felt that

[00:41:06] love for himself the same way he was getting it from people outside but imagine the the irony and the fact that now he did end up taking his life but that one life that was lost and how many hundreds of thousands of people may have been saved and at the brink of just ending it themselves but there was something about what he was doing something about what he was representing something about the music something

[00:41:33] that spoke to them and kept them from pushing the line all the way and they're still around to this day and some of those people who knows they might be doing great things and impacting people in a positive way themselves in their circles so that's what you have to focus on and look like i said not knowing him i i don't get the right to you know obviously this isn't a memoir or anything because i didn't know him it's definitely not a biography we just were calling the book a celebration of life but not you know

[00:42:02] yeah and i don't get to say too much but i can challenge what we know about him i can challenge things that i do read online about him because it's not my experience yes maybe people can well well he was depressed and he was this maybe he was i'm not i'm not disputing that but he was other things there are it's okay to be more than one thing and he was a lot of things and there's so much that you can read

[00:42:31] about the depression the depression i'm like okay that's great let's talk about the positive that he did let's let's talk about the person who and this is a real story for my book let's talk about the person who was getting picked on and beaten up in school for being minority who didn't know what to do to help themselves who found nirvana who heard kurt's message message and had the strength to go to

[00:42:57] school and to push back on their abusers let's talk about that let's talk about those people who were able to be like i've got maybe i'm coming from an abusive household my parents don't understand me i'm part of the lgbtq you know plus community where do i go who do i turn to what do i do and they discover nirvana or they discover kurt cobain and they're like you know what i can be who i need to be that's how we honor somebody we don't need to keep harping on what happened everybody knows what

[00:43:26] happened in 1994 everybody knows that he he died let's focus on who he's still affecting because that to me is a life worth celebrating and that to me is so much more interesting than than reading about the depression and that really comes down to like how it is with the whole perspective on life and then they're there whatever you're looking for or whatever your your uh biased opinion is from the

[00:43:51] beginning you can find it in anything and so now if you're looking at it from the the other perspective like you said when we're celebrating somebody's life and this is something that i always say at the very end of the podcast that this is about uh people who've had their their own stories of overcoming adversity or knowing somebody in them live in their lives that impacted them in a positive way and it seems like this man for a lot of people even you not being a fan in the very beginning but after you

[00:44:20] come to learn about who he was as a person you you say that this is this is one hell of a human being that needs to be celebrated oh god yeah i i think he's him and steve albini are definitely my heroes um you know steve albini like i said too i think he was a phenomenal human being and the work that he did to celebrate people um i'll just say this as a quick aside when i went into my interview with steve albini

[00:44:44] i was probably more nervous to speak to him than i the most people in the book only because i made the mistake of reading something about steve and somebody called him the crankiest man in rock and i tend to be a bit of a shrinking violet and i get a little um i get flustered and he was arguably just undeniably one of the kindest people i'd ever talked to so he was the complete opposite then

[00:45:10] he was lovely he was lovely and the really funny thing well funny not funny when steve and i were on the phone we had an earthquake and it was it was pretty gnarly and i was not prepared for it at all but like everything was okay and my kids slept through the whole thing like i don't know how but um you know my i was freaked out i was freaked out you know the neighbors are outside freaking out and uh and steve's telling a story and he's laughing and i'm not saying anything and i think he

[00:45:40] he's kind of laughing waiting for me to sit and i'm steve i'm so sorry i'm going i think i just peed my pants and talk about an icebreaker with steve albini and i'm calling i think i just peed my pants the walls are shaking the walls are shaking and i'm freaking out in the phone with steve albini and he's going you want to get off the phone i'm like no my kids okay i'm good i got this i got this because it wasn't that bad but like i'm not familiar with it enough to get your attention oh my god it's

[00:46:09] it really wasn't bad like in the grand scheme of things like nothing even fell off a wall it was just um you're like it's like the world exploded but um but no he was so kind and he was awesome and after that i was like really calm and then even once i i turned the tape recorder off we talked for a couple minutes and he just put my mind at ease with a couple things about the book and i remember saying to him all right steve i'm going to send you your chapter for you to approve and he said nah don't worry about it and i said why and he said because it's your book you write what you want

[00:46:39] and there was something so profound in him saying that and also heartbreaking because a month later he passed away uh the worst thing about steve's chapter writing it was i was brushing up on some of the bands whose albums he produced and i was just kind of screwing around on wikipedia and i'm reading it's like you know steve albini is an american musician and um you know producer

[00:47:04] or it might say uh recording engineer on his wiki i forget and uh you know the next day my phone starts going off and some friends were like steve albini passed away and then you know that night the wikipedia page changed and it was awful to you know from is to to was and that was when i was like okay we need a tribute to him so his chapter is very different than every other chapter every other chapter is

[00:47:29] written like a conversation the book reads like a story steve's is an untruncated version of his interview it's basically copy and paste i took out the the earthquake part because nobody needed to really read the whole every curse word that i knew coming out of my mouth as a wolf but we have a nice little celebration for steven there uh this incredible photographer who took a beautiful picture of him gave me the photo so we do have a you know in memoriam page at the end of the book and we've got a

[00:47:58] photo of steve one of kurt one of walter who i wrote the book for and then um sadly i had to include greg hokinson so greg hokinson was the drummer for kurt's first band right out of high school fecal matter and greg did endorse my book and then actually passed away two days later and this is what i mean so people will kind of challenge me sometimes on social media like oh it's been 30 years how can you have any new information in this book and i'm like well i'm not giving away like state secrets but i do

[00:48:25] have new people i interviewed and i'm like case in point kurt lived with greg and uh for a while when you know when he was i think maybe like 19 or 20 and or maybe 18 or 19 sorry sorry and um you know you've had a lot of other writers interview greg greg has a sister who was my friend and who also

[00:48:50] lived in the house at the same time and she shared with me her experiences with kurt what she remembers of him you know the last time she saw him so look is it this explosive information about him behind the scenes at a show no because that wasn't the book i set out to write but if you want to know some sweet stories about the time that he helped somebody's you know pregnant cat deliver kittens i've got that for you in this because like i said and i'm not saying i disagree with any literature out i didn't

[00:49:18] know him i didn't have access to his you know personal journals to write these books about him literature is art and everybody has their own artistic expression my artistic expression was that let's celebrate him let's do it let's celebrate people in our lives let's let's kind of do away with the maudlin let's celebrate this incredible human being let's let's let's do it with 500 pages so yeah cheers to those who read it no i promise it's actually a pretty quick read because the

[00:49:46] interviews just go they're they're just fast you know i mean they're neat these people are awesome who came out to help me it was definitely a fun book to write i will say that it was depressing but it was fun and i made some awesome friends met some incredible people it's wild people telling you about oh and it was really weird and i went to mopop and i saw my guitar museum and i'm like like mind blown you know so so it's safe to say everybody that had their chapter beforehand and read it

[00:50:13] they all gave the approval and said this is this is fine yeah everybody's good they gave you their blessing everybody's good i think like two people i couldn't get in touch with but i just sent like emails like if i don't hear from everybody this you know by this date i'm assuming everything's good but yeah everybody was happy with it a lot of people didn't even like no we trust you we don't need to see it but i wanted everyone to have access to it that right there says a lot when they're just with the rapport that you built and they were able to say you know what we trust you yeah a couple people were like no you're fine we don't we know you're not going to do anything weird

[00:50:42] like go nuts to spin the narrative yeah and i would never and i'm a meticulous fact checker so even if someone didn't check their chapter you know i still went online to like make sure dates were correct that i heard them correctly and all that i just want it to be accurate like i said not having read other books on him i don't know if any of the stuff in it challenges existing literature i couldn't tell you i really didn't try to put a spin or a twist on it like i did in that it's positive

[00:51:10] but i didn't twist anybody's words so my spin is that this is a positive book this is a celebration of life but i certainly didn't twist anyone's words so you know whatever somebody said i don't know i printed it that was it this wasn't my tale to tell this was somebody else's i think when charles cross wrote heavier than heaven i think he interviewed like 400 people i think i maybe have 35

[00:51:33] you know interviews in this book so that tells you how deep these interviews are because to have a 500 page book that's mostly interviews i've literally turned the tape recorder on and was like whatever you want to say let's do it let's go this is your friend let's honor him so it's it's different in that sense you know but and i want to say i have a ton of respect for other writers you know anybody who's tackled the topic of yeah of kurt cobain and nirvana i just my book might sound different from theirs

[00:52:02] didn't read others i know there's a lot of depression and look you cannot write a book about this man and not include depressed topics and i'm sure reading his biography is probably very depressing that's why this isn't a biography this is a 100 celebration of life you know a legacy factor but that's great also that you included there was you sent me in the email a huge list of all these

[00:52:30] resources for anybody if they're dealing with depression if they may know someone who use a suicide there's so many different resources and it's i don't know how many pages worth it is on the book but i mean it was a long list that you sent me via email i want to be thorough i also have something else in the book i do have some mental health statistics from uh the world health organization and from um i think the mental health alliance and then also what i did too is if

[00:52:58] somebody's speaking i think i did this a lot with um the people in the legacy part of the book the indie artists if somebody's like you know i was bullied in school kurt's message got me through you know a hard time i pull in a lot of statistics about like bullying statistics and things like that just so people can kind of see this is what's going on this is what people are dealing with you know this is this is there's a lot of bigger issues at play i also brought in other uh authors into my book so i

[00:53:26] have a couple uh you know nirvana slash grunge authors i have jillian gar she's written some incredible books i have nick soulsby who has this unbelievable website uh you know devoted to nirvana he's so thorough and he's written some great books i have mark yarm mark yarm is awesome he wrote a grunge book um i have darren paltrowitz who didn't do a grunge book but he did do a book um called the dlr book how david lee

[00:53:54] roth changed the world and he's got a podcast and he does a lot of deep dives with musicians so i wanted you know his opinion and the reason i brought authors in is because i think authors tend to have this kind of like crystalline like ability to look at things and compartmentalize and see a person for who they are and i wanted authors to speak about sensationalism in the media that was really what i wanted like as a writer as a journalist as an author what do you think about

[00:54:21] sensationalism in the media or you know what do you feel about this or what are your thoughts on you know the unhoused crisis or what are your thoughts on nirvana's you know this rocket ship to fame you know what i mean um so it's not just gonna be people who knew kurt telling stories about him it's gonna be people analyzing him dissecting him not in a bad way but really that fame right and that

[00:54:48] legacy and why we really need to pay attention to what he stood for what am i gonna be a total jerking quote what is am i quoting v for vendetta stand for nothing all your or you'll fall for anything something like that you know but but it's true yeah you have to have something that you're standing on yeah if not you're you're liable or subject to just be a leaf in the wind you're getting blown everywhere that's why i brought a lot of people in because i was like you know what i i don't want

[00:55:12] to sound like an authority figure because i'm far from it i'm just somebody who lost a family member walter to suicide and i didn't want his name to be forgotten and i don't want kurt cobain the person not the musician i don't want kirk cobain the person to be forgotten because he was somebody's father husband brother friend he was not defined by his depression and he wasn't defined by his celebrity

[00:55:40] and i think if anybody wants to read a book that just kind of talks about a life really worth revisiting um i hope they check the book out and if nothing else you know what i mean even if you're like yeah i'm still not sure how i feel about him the book is at least supporting some really incredible charities so you know that's the big driving factor for me i just wanted this book to do some good like i'm a very private person and i was nervous my publisher was like you have to start

[00:56:06] marketing the book but then i would revisit the charity pages and where you know okay this is where i'm sending money to and i was like if these people can be warriors every single day and you know experience what they experience then i can push this book to make sure that you know we can help get them the funds that they need and the funds that they deserve like i have um i don't know if i told you i have a big book launch party i've got you know cover band coming playing a bunch of cool music

[00:56:33] okay i didn't know about that we're gonna sell tickets to it we're giving 100 percent of the profits to a children's advocacy center it's the one that's on my website jenny's house they work with abused children they're gonna be at the event so i'll do like q a if anybody has any questions but yeah no and all my book signings are gonna be food drives too so i'm trying to i just want to hit the ground

[00:56:59] running with this yeah that's a great great heart spirit and and everything behind it my goodness when is that when are you having that um that whole shindig february 20th on the man's birthday um there will be tickets for it yeah they're working on the promos for it but the book comes out officially on the 20th of february and that's when the party will be i think we can fit like 100 people they'll be selling like 100 tickets so it's you know the advocacy center will be there giving out

[00:57:27] literature and information to kind of raise awareness for child abuse so you know kurt went through a lot growing up so these are all organizations that i really support i feel strongly about that's what we can we can forget as people on the outside because of how idolized and how larger than life musicians or actors or celebrities are made out to be but deep down in the core these are human beings dealing with

[00:57:55] human nature and dealing with the emotions that we go through the letdowns the anxieties the pressures and then now when you have all of this notoriety and the these these lights on you that just amplifies those problems much more in any kind of mistake you do and i get i get down on myself when i make a mistake and i'm just here in the room alone now imagine a thousand or ten thousand or a million eyes on you and

[00:58:23] you make a mistake and they're not going to let it down because they're they're talking about it on every news feed and like you said sensationalism is what sells it's what people want to see or or what they put in front of you to where you want to pay attention to and i'm not look trust me i get it i get why they do it i just don't subscribe to it so i just wanted to there's there's nothing this book came from a good

[00:58:48] place this wasn't yeah i like that attitude because that that also reminds me of um if there's something that you don't like and you're not satisfied with then go ahead and provide and and be the change that you wish to see so this is something that you for instance you did not like seeing you didn't subscribe to that so you know what i'm going to go ahead and do it differently and i'm going to use my creative outlet to express that and show the world that and that's what you did that's commendable

[00:59:18] well thank you what do they say nothing changes if nothing changes and i just thought i was like it was the fact that i heard a young person blasting nirvana and i was like that was a spark well it was and like i said in 2006 coban was listed as the highest um highest earning uh dead celebrity uh higher than elvis and the estate at the time was valued at half a billion dollars and you think a lot of young people listen to nirvana and what kind of a message are we saying if we paint him

[00:59:46] continue to paint him like this tortured artist caricature we are not defined by our depression he was more than that the people in the book showed me he was more than that the people he affected and inspired showed me he was more than that let's stop making out him out to be this the the most depressed artist of the 20s let's stop enough we heard it we get it this man was a lot more than

[01:00:12] his depression people don't have to be defined by these things we can be more than one thing we can be a couple things yeah and this was a good human being from what i learned and i'm just really excited for people to check the book out i hope people feel as as um passionately about it as i do i hope people read this and not only think differently about kurt but about um people living with mental health

[01:00:36] people experiencing depression people it's you know battling homelessness to understand um or i'm saying be people who aren't housed i just hope that people understand um we need to stop tearing each other down i mean to stop start helping each other yeah and um hey i'm trying to get back from my corner of the world i look at it like this i can't bring back walter but maybe my book a story in it the resources

[01:01:02] can save one person's family member and if that is the case then i succeeded and i set out to do what i wanted to do with this book and that's fine i i don't care if rolling stone ever picks up and cares about my book i don't care if the new york times considers me a bestseller or has no clue who i ever am i care that one person going through it reads this book and knows that their life has value that they

[01:01:27] have people who love them and that there's always a positive way forward and that suicide is never the answer and um you know that's the hill i will die on so that's me my book i hope people check it out yeah no no i mean that from everything that you're doing and then just the the fact that all of a lot of the proceeds if not all of it in some of your projects the workshops it's going 100 to charity so this is for a cause and this is something that we're really uh you stand behind it you're not just

[01:01:56] um trying to um use this story or his his life and his legacy as a way to cash in you know a cash cow kind of thing that's far from it and the people that were close to him and they they had conversations with you and they built a rapport with you and they they seen that and they automatically were saying you know what we trust you go ahead we're uh you know looking forward to once you're you're finally done

[01:02:21] with it now you said it just within a the last two weeks came out for pre-sale it was put on reddit by a friend of mine this is something that you're working on for two years years and i had a couple people oh this is a attention this is a money grab and i i messaged people privately and i because i didn't have like the reddit karma to post at the time and i was like let me tell you yeah that's a little tricky and funny it is and i said let me tell you about walter who was my family member who died by suicide who was a veteran marian who gave his life for this country essentially i said let me

[01:02:51] tell you he's the impetus why i wrote this book let me tell you where some of the money is going you know believe me i've got receipts on my facebook page this is not a cash grab this was a very expensive book to write because you have to license everything um i don't know if i'll even see any money back i don't care because the point of this was to get a message out that i felt was important and like i said that's why i'm vowing to donate you know um 50 of my profits to charity and uh i actually

[01:03:18] had some of the people on reddit dm made it to apologize and i appreciated that because i think it takes a big person to admit you know if they've misspoken or if they're wrong but you know i'm kind of kind of tune out the the hate at this point because i know i wrote this and um i feel blessed that i was able to i kind of jokingly say like infiltrate kirk cobain's inner circle but not that just meet these incredible human beings these you were invited in i was and these people are

[01:03:46] incredible and um i have nothing but the utmost respect for the people in this book they're lovely human beings and i hope they know that you know they have a sincere debt of gratitude you know from from me for helping me put this story out there helping me make anybody who reads the book aware of who walter was and showcase a different side of kirk this is it's always fascinating to me when i when i hear and know of people that write books there's been a lot of people actually

[01:04:16] that i've that i've uh spoken with in conversations that i've had and and i've i've uh shared with the listeners the different different guests and a lot of people it seems almost a majority so far that i've had on a lot of them have found their their healing source in a place of comfort and help helping them cope with the trauma or the abuse or whatever it was they were going through in their life it was through writing

[01:04:43] yes it helps writing has been a big ingredient for a lot of the people that i spoke with gets it out there this to me was it definitely helped and um you know there were times when i thought should i just kind of shelve the book and let it just be for me and i was like no curtis for everyone the story is for everyone um okay so you went through that i didn't know how people would feel about a book like this i didn't know people would be angry that i didn't know him and i kind of approached his life from a

[01:05:12] different angle but i thought yeah then be angry and don't read my book i'm allowed to say what i yeah i went on record and i said i think this is a life worth celebrating i went on record saying that this man wasn't defined by his depression and i stand by these words so i encourage people who want something positive to consider googling positive kirk cobain stories or kirk cobain's more altruistic

[01:05:36] side i invite people to do some research into the benefit shows that he played um you know i invite people to try to learn more about him on a human level because i did and i was wildly impressed and i with what i learned about this young man who just died way too way too soon who didn't see the value in his life that was there um and he if he had just held on a bit longer i think he truly would have overcome

[01:06:03] you know these obstacles these hurdles because there were people in his life obviously that loved him and cared about him as you know evidenced in the people who spoke to me you know so i that's the best i can say don't don't believe everything you read in the media do your own research be your own mental health advocate if something seems sensationalized maybe it is and that's what i did i you know people also there's was cobain talented wasn't he talented and i was like well who can i ask to

[01:06:29] dissect nirvana's music that's also incredibly talented oh i'm gonna reach out to jeff dana who did the um he's a really really really super talented composer he did the music for um the brett morgan film uh kurt cobain montage of heck on hbo in the movie kurt uh you know it's all nirvana's music and um it's basically been reimagined by jeff he redid this music so i said to him let's sit down let's

[01:06:56] have an interview and he's in my book and he has a whole chapter and he talks about why kurt cobain was a wildly talented musician and to me it's just another way of celebrating him yeah here's this renowned composer saying yeah this guy was talented and here's why so i i wanted to do different things to to celebrate kurt not even just how he helped people but why he was talented what was the genius

[01:07:21] behind the music so i kind of tried to go places that i thought were a little like offbeat and talk to people that might not have dawned on other people to speak to to paint this complete picture um and i did it on the other side of the world from seattle not knowing anybody out there and uh completely unarmed because i'd never read any books about him and everything i learned about him was through interviews

[01:07:49] or a little bit of research you know uh here and there along the way i mostly watched the shows and mostly read interviews with kurt and i felt those were really great ways of getting to kind of understand this human being and i'm just um i'm anxious for people to read it because not because i need that pat in the back because i'm assuming some of the people reading it might need the reassurance that they're okay and that there are people out there that that care about you and love you and that things will be

[01:08:18] okay and i'm hoping the book can be that reminder that as my grandpa used to say this too shall pass yeah it really does fall in line with um something that i that i stress time and time again is the fact that um with these stories all of these stories from people that have overcome their own adversities and their own struggles that were celebrating the fact that they did go through that but like you said with cobain also he wasn't defined by this or he wasn't defined by that you can still create a new chapter in

[01:08:48] your life you can create a new story you have the authorship to do what it is you want to do but you have to see that value you have to see that in yourself and so hope hopefully with people hearing these stories and being exposed to people from different walks of life different backgrounds and they've they've been through their own fire in their own way that yes okay they did it i'm no different you know what my

[01:09:12] life does have value i do have some meaning and yeah let me embrace that yep 100 and even i think it's i think it'll be on the back of the book like you know there's always like a tagline on the back of the book and my publisher put um i'm trying to think of what it is verbatim but he put um curt as he was not as not as some need him to be and i thought that was a really good way of summing it up because it's like well we need him to be sensationalized we need him to have been depressed

[01:09:39] we need him to do this because that's what gets people interested in reading and i'm like that's not what i'm writing i'm more interested in you know a book that shows the side of him that's lesser explored you know we spend so much time you know building up this myth that we forget that there was a human you know and isn't that sad you know more what did my friend say i think he says more built up than explored you know what i mean it's like it's human let's start focusing on the

[01:10:08] human because you know i think we tend to forget um hi he had a family wife child and imagine you know being his daughter growing up and this is the narrative you hear on repeat and it's like come on exactly we need to stop exploiting this family's pain we need to stop exploiting his you know cobain's pain we need to start you know celebrating people we need to start saying it didn't have to end that way he didn't have to be a member of the 27 club absolutely not i don't care

[01:10:34] if i didn't know him i'm going on record saying that absolutely not didn't have to be part of that any more than walter had to you know die at 33 at 100 there's a way forward and we just need to to do better and have open and honest conversations about mental health awareness and we need to remove the stigma surrounding suicide and we need to be able to comfortably say i'm not okay and that's okay

[01:11:00] and know that there's help and you know you will get through it and that's my whole big takeaway and you know i'm listening to myself i'm like because i am really long-winded yeah not hard to believe that i put 500 pages no this is it you you really uh you put a lot of time you put a lot of effort a lot of energy and this is personal to you but uh from from walter and then the fact that you got in with people that were close to cobain and of course you start developing relationships yeah

[01:11:28] this becomes real genuine i've been come very close with and i um they mean a lot to me uh not just because you know of my new relationship and i've made new friends but because they cared enough about walter to do this and to help me um they're just good people people in the book are just good people i can say that with confidence they're just good human beings and i feel blessed that i was able to

[01:11:53] do this and i want my kid growing up in a world where they know it's okay to be who you are and to go for your dreams and you know this with some positivity you know i mean you have to be you know the change you want to see and that's what i'm trying to do again i'm one person i didn't know kirk coban i don't know if this book is gonna change a narrative if nothing else i hope it makes people think the goal

[01:12:18] was always to help at least one person with it because it's got that list of mental health resources in it because the money's going you know half the profits are going to the right place if i can do that i've succeeded i don't care lamb asked me read it for what i've said like if you don't like the book oh the world doesn't need one more kirk coban book yes it does get out of here so don't read it don't read it you don't want to read it nobody's forcing you to this book was meant to do the right thing um you know we've already gotten a lot of money to camp victory uh in coban's hometown we're

[01:12:48] hoping to hit the ground running at the benefit concert on the 20th to get the money to jenny's house this book is doing the right thing getting the money to the right places then yeah we did need another book you know we absolutely did there can never be enough volunteer work and that's what this is this is my way of volunteering so because this was a lot of hours oh my god this was a lot of hours i mean to do a book like this in two years i was doing 40 hour weeks just on the book plus

[01:13:13] i'm a you know i'm a parent plus i i work as a you know i'm a career writer so this was uh yeah this was gnarly to write totally worth it wild experience you were grinding it out talk about somebody who's committed to their craft and to the cause someone who just is gonna lay lay it all on the line to accomplish and do something that they have set in their heart that's right there inspiring

[01:13:41] to just go after whatever is in your crosshairs it doesn't matter what the naysayers are saying because sometimes the naysayers that like you said you start having your own inner critiques inside of you and now there's a battle should i should i not but it's like you stuck stuck to your guns and and you pushed full force you bit down on your mouthpiece and that's what i did my god one person was like oh good luck getting anybody from seattle grunge community to to talk to you and i was like

[01:14:10] okay have a nice day like it's just yeah the peanut basically i had to bite my tongue so many times and i was like you know what as i make the donation you write a donation check to one of these incredible phenomenal charities that the book is supporting i'll remember your it was a roller coaster huh but i'm i could imagine once that last dot was set how did you feel afterwards once you finally this is done

[01:14:36] we finished it i'll let you know in one week because they're sending it back for one more round of edits okay we're almost there where i'm saying we're like i'm i took a part in this now i'm trying i'm trying to ride your coattail it's totally done it is it's just like a couple of like um you missed a space here you missed a period there no it's done it was wild it was really weird sending it off to my publisher to be like here's my heart and soul uh hope you like it this is my baby

[01:15:03] it was crazy but it felt good because i'm ready to just hang out with my family and let the book do what it was designed a lot of sacrifice huh it was well you know what i i refused to ever let the book come in between the time i would send with my family so i would usually work on the book from like 11 p.m like 6 a.m so i became like a vampire with very limited sleep like i did a lot of my interviews at

[01:15:30] like midnight and stuff like that because i worked with people in different time zones so i promised that this would never come between any family time so i would do like i'm i'm a very very part-time writer like for the places that i write for so i only do that part-time so i was able to do that like very early in the morning before like my family was up and then all day long it's like okay mom duties because i homeschool my kid too so it's mom duties momming all this and then it was like okay

[01:15:55] everybody go to bed let's get this book done so you know there's a couple pockets of doing it like here or there you know maybe if like my husband was off work and we could kind of trade roles but it was i was determined never to let it cut in it was just a lot it was a lot it was intense my family's been my biggest supporters from day one it was definitely intense though but again if it can save one person's family member friend whomever it was worth it i don't regret it i dealt with my fear of

[01:16:23] you know people giving me flack i dealt with my fair share of like adversary uh you can't do this who are you uh you didn't know him the hell out of here i was like that's cool i'm doing it anyway i believe in it the people in the book believe in me so you know i have to ask you because this is your bread and butter you do you're a writer by trade this is something that you do i'm just curious do you see it in your own line of work or the people your peers that are also involved in writing and they're in that

[01:16:52] they're in that world do you see with the not only the development but a lot of the push towards everything being ai and so now you have it you have a demand on turnaround and time rate that can or the integrity of the work because they oh you it's gonna take you two days or three days to do it i can get it done in a day it's a running joke it's literally all we do is talk about um because i am an seo

[01:17:17] content writer for a lot of websites and ai has put a lot of people out of work i'm very lucky that the places i write for have a ton of integrity and they make you sign contracts that you will not use ai oh that's great to hear oh yeah yeah they you will be fired no no questions asked it's not like something where they reprimand you like if you are but how can they is it still easy to find out they've ai checkers i don't know how they work but i know they they can scan the content

[01:17:45] oh so on the back end or oh they scan it and they can content for ai oh yeah you'll be fired on the spot it's not even like we'll put you on a professional like improvement plan like bye which is cool because i can't i can't stand ai that's just me it's putting good writers out of work i've seen people write books with ai and i'm like you're just killing the creativity behind it i think ai has its purpose like don't get me wrong like i i just don't like seeing it for the arts

[01:18:11] that kind of bugs me um especially writing because the big problem i've seen with ai is i've done some editing for ai before and i can't think of what the article was about it was just going back a couple years and it was like some musician but the ai pulled the information for the wrong musician and it was like had this guy born like 50 years earlier and it there's there's like that article that was on the internet where people were getting sick and going to the hospital because they read an

[01:18:39] ai generated article about foraging from mushrooms and they were eating crap that was toxic and it's just like i understand like there are instances where you can use it like maybe to draft an outline for something but it's it's stripped the creativity i think and it's put a lot of writers out of work like i said i'm very lucky the places i work for have a very strict no ai you're signing a contract policy um well i didn't even know they actually had that that's really hardcore with that they don't

[01:19:08] want it and i have a lot of respect for them they they want they're they're keeping writers in in business they're keeping writers and there's a craft to writing the humanity aspect behind yes and not for nothing too but these are people that like pay their bills based on this and to go and exactly you're cutting a lot of people like i'm fortunate that i only do this very very part-time but i've got friends that do this full-time and ai has completely screwed up their entire you know everything with

[01:19:38] their bills and again i see the value in it don't get me wrong i understand there's a use for it i don't see the use for it in creative writing that's the thing about creative writing like is my writing style going to be for everyone now but it's my it's my art it's my creativity you know there's only so so much creativity you can put into a book that's mostly interviews so my creativity is the words

[01:20:05] that i use the language that i use and i would never in a million years have run that through ai and have it you know be chopped up to to something else you know and you really especially with fact checking you know you just can't with ai because it's not always right i've seen that like it's just not always right and you got people that are reading this stuff like relying on it so the places that i do write for are high quality and they do require the human touch and um that's why this

[01:20:32] one place i've been with them for five years because they're you're phenomenal i wouldn't even think of jumping ship with them they they hire you know we're all ghost writers so we all write behind the scenes for a variety of websites and um just awesome they're keeping writers employed you know i'm also an editor and i've seen like i know when ai comes through it's it reads differently um you like know it immediately and you can kind of trip people up to be like i love your i love your use of sat words can

[01:20:58] you tell me what that means and it's like what gotcha oh can i ask bt what it means you know you can just tell ai uh we check grade levels on a lot of stuff too and ai usually comes in at like a really high grade level so it just says stuff and then like every so often there's like a random word like peanut butter and you're like nope ai so you figure it out you see this crap coming from a mile

[01:21:21] away but um but no but i like i said my books no ai it's just 500 of that's all you my art and soul in collaboration with a lot of people that that knew kurt that worked with him that were friends with them appreciate everybody in the book everybody in the book if they don't know you know i thank them i'll thank them again thank you thank everybody in the book thank my family for for supporting me

[01:21:47] um my publisher for because i had a few publishers who were interested and uh i went the indie route and um they were incredible yeah they didn't make me change my words they didn't want something sensationalized like some other places were interested in uh interested in they just wanted something honest so i really really respected that and appreciated that so you had a lot more freedom to um to go about it the way you wanted to but not too much outside pushing you in this direction

[01:22:15] or okay go ahead and we need to glamorize this a bit more you need to tone this down no not at all other places wanted that rationalism in the media that i i didn't want to cater to um and i was actually told by you know some lit agents like oh i can only sell this book if and you need to bring these stories in and um i remember saying to this one agent who i knew sold books to like the big you know the big

[01:22:41] vibe and i was like oh you want something sensationalized and you want something that's a bit of an exploitation and i said no i said i don't care if you can sell it i said i'm not doing that that's not what this book is and at the end of the day my integrity i was just going to self-publish it i was like i absolutely yeah you didn't compromise your integrity i had some people because i'm in some writing groups like what are you nuts like oh my god the chance to be seen by a big five blah blah and i said yeah but i'm not trying to be like a big five author i'm not trying

[01:23:11] to be a new york times bestseller i'm trying to write an honest book and if that means i put it out on kindle direct publishing yeah and but then i decided to go i um i stopped working with my agent around that time too because i was getting kind of discouraged with the industry and with the narrative i could kind of tell they were looking for and i was like screw it i'm doing what i want i'm self-publishing and then i was like i had talked to another music author and they were with um a pretty big press and then they left and they went to genius which is my indie press

[01:23:41] they're medium-sized are phenomenal and he was like if you can get in with genius you take that contract you don't look back you sign it he's like i promise you they won't do you wrong and um i did and i sent them my manuscript i sent a couple places and a couple were interested but i went with genius and i loved when they brought me in for you know our meeting and they were like we support you we support mental health awareness we support your vision we are not changing your

[01:24:10] words let's do this and that was it and they're like family to us now we well i love them i adore them um they they're just i feel like you don't get to say that much about the publishing industry i'm blessed to be with them if i ever wrote another book i would put it out with them i don't know if i'll write another book this was a lot i didn't set out to be an author i i set out to tell a story

[01:24:35] and i've told it and i'm good with that you know my goodness that was that was definitely an experience in itself and i'm sure that you learned a lot about not just cobain but even about yourself with this whole process and i didn't think i'd have the stomach for something like this you do have to you are it is suicide culture for two years it is grueling at no point did suicide

[01:25:01] not come full circle in a conversation how can you not he died by suicide you are listening to people tell you about their friend kurt that died by suicide it's awful i would get off the phone i would cry i mean it's just um it's it's that brings up a good point how were you able to just because you also have to feel yourself back up you have to replenish you have to balance everything out

[01:25:28] because that could really just bring you down and just suck the life out of you and like you had you hear about sometimes you hear actors and they take on these roles and they completely lose themselves in the role and they could never come out of it they're just there's yeah no method actors there you go it's very hard i would have to get out of those conversations and you have to compartmentalize and i would go look at my kid or look at my husband and i'd be like that's it well i love legos like i love building like those crazy like you know lego sets and i was like that's it everybody i was like

[01:25:57] like we're doing it we're putting legos together you have to be very careful like i like to watch tv you know i write for collider so i i obviously watch tv movies and i write about it and um you have to kind of oh i'm not watching that i know there's suicide in that movie i'm not watching that uh you have to i'm just gonna watch seinfeld tonight like you have to take breaks um like i have a book coach that i worked with uh lizard works publishing phenomenal and there was one night we were supposed to

[01:26:27] work on something because he it's uh so he's a friend of mine and he did help me with some outlining because you do kind of need like what is my direction with this how the hell am i getting pen on paper and one night we were set to talk and i was like i can't i can't do this tonight and instead of talking about the book it was like let's just talk for two hours about what is bothering me about the book and i was like you know i've been there i remember the phone call from my husband

[01:26:54] that walter had died i know where i was i know what time of day it was i remember his funeral it's like i don't but you have to revisit these things because you're trusting people to tell you about their their profound loss losing kurt so it's like it's like sharing hour and then i'm telling them my story and it did at a certain point it almost kind of like you become desensitized to it when things were going really fast when i signed the contract with my publisher and i'm doing all these interviews

[01:27:22] and i'm in the transcription process and i'm lining all this stuff up it's like you don't have time to think when you stop that's when it's kind of like drop hits you yeah it's hard what's hard for me is when i talk to um veterans or i talk to other marines because walter was a marine and that i think to me is the hardest because you know you hear their stories overseas and you know what they went through

[01:27:46] and these people have given their lives and you know so many of them didn't come back you know and i look and i think walter did but he brought so much home with him and he was so funny and he was the life of the party and he again didn't see how much he had to offer and yeah it's it's it's really terrible and that's why like you know they have these conspiracy theories about coban and i don't

[01:28:14] subscribed to any of that and um especially after writing this book i definitely don't subscribe to any of that and you know these people but but how could kurt have done that how could he have done that he you know i mean he he was he was so happy right and he was in these interviews so happy so was walter walter is the last person i would have ever thought would have done that you know even people who uh you know were in his platoon and stationed with him overseas you know reached out to the family

[01:28:41] after he passed and were like i never would have expected him he was the one that helped us so i'm not surprised that you know somebody like kurt coban who was battling depression very publicly um no i'm not surprised but i'm not not saying there wasn't another way i'm just saying yeah i mean that that is what happened he did he did die by you know his own hand and it's sad and it's tragic i i want to

[01:29:07] say this on the record too i do not know kurt's family so these people um oh these you know the family put them up to nah i i wrote this book on my own i wanted to be you know let the family know i did it so i made sure to reach out to this state and say hey this is what i'm doing i want to be respectful i am respectful in the book but no i wrote this on my own these are my thoughts everything in the book you know the exception of the interviews but my words are only my words i'm not speaking on

[01:29:35] behalf of anybody else unless it is an interview and i just think sometimes people surprise you with depression and that's why if we can remove the stigma surrounding suicide if we can speak openly and honestly about mental health i think it does it's almost like it says to somebody you're okay you're in you're in good company it's safe you can talk you can tell us how you feel we understand and

[01:30:00] if we don't understand or we can't understand firsthand we're still here for you and we will find help that does understand yeah sometimes people just want to they they want to an ear you know they they want to be heard they want to feel as if there is somebody that cares and you never know what this person is going through inside like you said from the outside it looks rosy everything is peachy but inside people are struggling and they're dealing with their own demons and sometimes it just take

[01:30:28] the the attitude that they have from the outside can be too much and it really takes them over the edge but if now you turn around and bring some kindness to them some empathy your understanding and you're you're open and just receptive and that could be enough to just help them get through that day and from that day it builds a little bit of momentum to where they're able to pull themselves back out of that but even look at bullying and people don't i mean i i i was a teacher i saw children

[01:30:53] get bullied terribly disgusting and this is why so many young people you know feel that they have to to to to take their own lives when they don't they don't have to how terrible is bullying and again you know i think a lot of people uh kirk oban was this big famous person all this money and it's like like they're invincible yes i'm like this is if you want to use the word bullied the media outlets bullied this man you know what i mean in a lot of ways taking pot shots at somebody assuming to know

[01:31:20] what's in their head exploiting their pain exploiting their suffering essentially exploiting their family them oh you're famous you don't get a right to a private life excuse me like it's like he lost his right to be a human how terrible and my point with writing about kirk oban and kind of using him as a vehicle to tackle i think a lot of larger systemic issues is that if you had this man who at the time was

[01:31:45] you know arguably one of if not the most famous musician in the world this man was able to go through these things while being you know so his whole life was on on public display just imagine what people who aren't famous are going through this happens people are going through it and it's like just stop just think before you say things don't be a bully like i hate to say it like this just just

[01:32:09] don't be a dick be nice be the person you want to have in the world yeah and maybe some people do lack empathy but i like to think people are are good overall you know you don't have to do much to be kind to somebody but you don't know what somebody's going through you know like sometimes you're at the store and you got the the cashier who's you know in a bad mood and i think to myself some people might be rude right back i'm like oh i like your earrings you know what i mean because you just don't know

[01:32:38] what somebody's got going on at home you don't have to fight fire with fire you don't have to be a jerk cobain certainly wasn't walter certainly wasn't i'm not raising my kid to be anything but kind you know and it's like like i said before and this isn't my quote but nothing changes if nothing changes and i'm my change is starting with a positive book about somebody who we remember for a lot of depressed reasons now celebrating life you get the cobain fans and they might not agree no he we

[01:33:05] knew he played cow pals we knew they raised 50 000 for bosnian rape victims we knew that he did the you know this concert that concert but go up to the lay person on the street go up to somebody who isn't a diehard nirvana fan just go up to somebody and say have you ever heard of kirkoban well yeah what do you know about him well he's a drug addict who committed suicide you'll hear that i got that and i'm like what if i told you he was more than that and it kind of starts to flip the switch in people i'm like oh

[01:33:30] he was something else did you not think he was capable of you know what i mean like do not think that people can be two things at the same time like you can be depressed and you can you know take drugs and also be a wonderful human being like you can be multiple things it doesn't have to be an either or um and i just hope that people think differently about him but more importantly mental health and suicide after they read this and people just feel hope that's what i'm that's what i want to

[01:33:59] get from them yeah well you covered a wide range of it and it's pretty much like with this whole story kurt cobain walter and the the over the overarching thing of just mental health mental wellness and and bringing bringing awareness to these type of things whether it be depression or the the trauma that somebody's dealing with or the way that people feel as if they have no reason no value no love this

[01:34:24] really just sheds light on the entirety of what it is to be human the and the overall play that we're all involved with you have the tragedy you have the conflict but you also have the love you have the hope you have the promise and this seems to be touching every aspect and and shade of it and i'm sure that people like you said this isn't just for cobain fans because a lot of the stuff that you mentioned i had no idea he was involved with and i was i fell under that category of people that just

[01:34:54] knew him as another thing that would say this is where the whole emo scene came from it's just the emotional and he was depressed and it was just real down and but there is a whole other side to him that um i had no idea about until you started to uh unravel all of it right now but that's just a bit of it you say there's so many interviews and there's just hours of hours worth of information

[01:35:18] and material crazy it's good it's neat it's some of the stories and look a lot are sad but a lot are also kind of funny and like you know people like oh remember the last time i saw him and you know what i mean like kind of like little funny anecdotes about you know what i mean like it's um it it's got moments of you know levity to it to kind of break up the otherwise i mean it's a it's it's a maudlin kind of you know topic it's there's no two ways around it but there's a lot of um just

[01:35:45] positivity in it which i think kind of balances that otherwise like oh this is a book we know how it ends um you know what i mean there's those hopes and pot and i think with the pockets of hope i hope people can read it and be like there is a way forward you know there's a way forward people who are you know living with depression um there's a way forward for people who are you know experiencing these issues um i think this is a good way for people to see okay maybe kurt didn't realize how

[01:36:12] loved he was but here are people coming on the record to say how loved he was and this is why we have to carry on no matter how things how hard things are suicide is never the answer there are people who love you and even a reminder for people reading it to make it a point like my my mom would say she's like don't wait till i'm gone to give me my flowers you can go ahead and give them to me now while i'm alive and i'm able to appreciate it so then that's almost a that that's a that can be a

[01:36:42] reminder in a call for everybody to just remember that you do have people in your life and to appreciate them while they still are around and if we all do that and and that's like that that old you know there's a lot of different commandments and you have different religions and philosophies that talk about you need to do this do that but the the golden rule is just treat others the way you want to be treated and so you give that respect you give that love you give that kindness you give

[01:37:11] that understanding and that patience and everything that comes with it i think overall that would be just a good chain of events to happen across to across the globe but it's easier said than done but um i think reading that that is that can be a reminder for just people like wow you know i need to uh be mindful and respectful and appreciative and and show gratitude to the people that are in my life directly right now just yeah be kind to people i gotta tell you something i had some unkind people

[01:37:39] that i encountered who knew him who are obviously aren't in the book not not many maybe like one people who they were not his friends they were not in his circle it might be somebody from you know a label or something that i'm not even a label but just like you know one of the many gazillions people he met along the way who kind of like you can't win them all you can't and i remember thinking like i'm a complete stranger and you're going to be this way to me and he you think he probably did have a

[01:38:07] lot of as for as many wonderful people as were around him i'm sure he was surrounded with a lot of negativity too and i'm sure he was treated like a meal ticket by a lot of people who were dependent on him for things and you know there's always the question of why didn't he just walk away and it's like because one you know as any artist or anybody contracted will tell you it's not that easy you can't just never mind i'm just forget my contract well that that's not the way that works

[01:38:33] um two he wasn't the only person in the band three nirvana employed a lot of people it wasn't just you know the guys in the band there's there's there's you know you got a crew you got roadies you got you know sound text guitar and a lot of people who aren't famous there's a lot on your shoulders a lot of responsibility he loved what he did he was a musician he was a he was an artist he was a a creative type why should he have had to quit because people couldn't stop you know prying why

[01:39:03] why he can't do what he loves because people couldn't stop prying i think it was just a lot all at once and maybe he needed more of a break you know what i mean he a bigger break who knows maybe i i don't know i i wasn't around i can't assume to play therapist into you know i know he was in the exodus recovery center and he left and there's the week where he was missing and nobody knew where he was and that was when he died i i can't again is not a i'm not a mental health you know specialist

[01:39:32] so i can't say what could have been done differently i think we have better resources and tools now where we don't we don't have to keep having you know suicide doesn't have to be you know epidemic like we can do things to get the people to support you know that they need i think we have more tools now again not having been around then i i couldn't tell you what could have been done differently for him i can just say that maybe if he had picked up a phone and reached out he would have seen that

[01:40:00] there were all these people that loved him you know there's always a different way forward and you don't have to suicide is never the answer not it's just not you know like i said that's the hill i'll die on um i'm a big advocate for suicide awareness and prevention for mental health you know awareness open honest uh you know conversations i've had friends that have messaged me in the middle of the night i'm going through it i'm feeling away i'm like let's talk let's do it you know my husband's dealt with

[01:40:29] the same thing with his friends you know we're 24 7 open door policy if you need to talk we value you know human life up in this house you know we're free zone here we're judging the zone we are like that's it we after what we after what happened with walter we're we're uh we do the check-in with like our people like all the time like you good you good you good i'm good are you good are we all good everybody

[01:40:52] just bump like you got it you know you have to yeah no no that's right we take it for granted that everybody's doing well but lo and behold there's some of us like me i'm one of those people that and i'm just now learning how to do it to speak more about something when i'm going through it but my wife would tell you what is it like a turtle going into a shell and she's like i just would pull i would just turn inward i would just isolate myself i'd keep quiet something's bothering me and

[01:41:21] there's some people like that and so it just takes a little bit of poking a little bit of like my wife was very patient and she'll let me know like hey i'm still here and there you can talk and so slowly but surely it's like you know what it is okay to i don't have to hold this stuff in if whatever it is small or tall but when you have somebody that is showing that care or or you you hear that and you feel it and you know that it's sincere and it's coming from a genuine place that really does mean

[01:41:50] something it's it's the truth it's the truth and i think if people can just feel secure and know that they've got one person who will listen and that's why we have these these crisis hotlines devoted to you know all different kinds of um i think you know we have some crisis hotlines that are just for the lgbtq you know plus community we have crisis hotlines for veterans we have crisis hotlines for just anybody 24 7 you can you know whatsapp you can chat you can text whatever you need

[01:42:19] we live in you know this is the technology age it's there for you there there are people there for you just stop stuff you've got these thoughts in your head you know that your life matters pick up a phone there is somebody always to talk to you know what i mean there's there's somebody always to talk to you and um you know i think we can just do better yeah we could do better in society like i said i i

[01:42:46] knew that my book might have some people kind of um this isn't the kirk cobain that i grew up with i'm like okay because maybe you only got one side of the story what do they say there's two sides of every story the truth lies somewhere in the middle yeah i i didn't know him so this isn't like my experience with him this is i sat with these people they told me their experience i asked the questions

[01:43:11] i put it on paper i texturized a little bit with some like statistics i threw my two cents out there about what i think and i hope that my message is received and that people see the value in their life even on their you know crummiest days because there's always you know brighter times ahead even when things feel bleak there's there's there's always a way through you know what did i say i i said you

[01:43:36] know sometimes the only way out is through and that was how we felt when we when we found out about walter you just have to keep pushing and you have to find the good and i i like to think and joke about you know funny things now i remember when he when he found out i had never seen star wars at at the ripe old age of 35 and he looked at me and he was like i'm sorry you've never seen star wars i said never seen star wars and he said to me he goes you must have worked really hard to have never seen that

[01:44:06] and it's one of these funny things but it's just like this memory that stands out he was so impressed by the fact that i'd never seen star wars and he was like did you like leave the room when it was on did you stand outside for like the last five years how did you avoid star wars do you just is there no electricity in your house like and it's funny because i'm sitting in front of two star wars posters because my husband's a huge huge fan and i've and i'm looking at a darth vader poster across

[01:44:35] from me but um okay so you did just step out of the room every time it was played or how did that work out basically someone put on star wars and i was like i'm going to walmart but but they have stories here i'm standing in a field let me know when it's over but but i just remember he thought that it was so funny that i had never seen it and those are the memories i tried i choose to focus on instead of the call that he was gone that's how i remember walter and um when i think of kurt cobain i'm not

[01:45:02] going to remember i remember where i was when i found out he died and i'm not i'm not focusing on that i'm focusing on a story one of his friends told me about i remember kurt and i were both driving down the same dirt road and kurt's following me and i can see him in my rearview mirror and he's laughing and he's tapping the back of my car with his bumper and he's just laughing he's tapping the back of my car with his bumper and he's laughing and that's the last time i saw kurt cobain and it's

[01:45:27] it's sad but it's funny because it's like that's your last memory him you know purposely like tap in the back of your car with the front of his like that's a way to be like hey i i acknowledge and i accept that my friend died but i have some really funny and beautiful memories of him and let's keep that dialogue going and i'm hoping it maybe inspires more people to want to rate celebratory things

[01:45:50] about people you know celebrating life and even in the name itself the forever in bloom like even sometimes when you you can go outside and you can just just uh take for instance uh nature for an example and it it can be a sunny day outside and then the clouds just pass and then they block that sunlight and then now all of a sudden there's darkness there's no there's no sunlight and in the same way sometimes when we're in a dark spot in a bad situation like you were saying earlier or you

[01:46:20] said your grandfather said or that too will pass and just like that cloud it eventually just crawls right out of the way and then that sunlight is hitting your face again you're enjoying the warmth of it on your skin and this is the the way that life is like we a we give that it's time it's moment but it too shall pass and there will be a day where we can pick up we can put the pieces together again and we can just start rebuilding that was my husband i always like to give him credit he i said

[01:46:48] what do i call this book and i would waffle with so many he goes forever and below i was like i knew i'd marriage you for a reason i knew one day that's so spot on no and i gotta tell you i do want to give a shout out to the photographers because uh there's two different versions of the book there's a paperback and that's the one that be like on amazon and stuff then there's the special edition hardcover which is just on my publisher's website and that one's not 500 pages i think that one's like

[01:47:14] three and change because it's a bigger like physically bigger book it's more like a coffee book okay the black cover is actually a brand new photo of kurt that was uh given to me from henry diltz who was at nirvana's last la show at the forum on december 30th 1993 and i i want to say he took 37 pictures that night and only one is in circulation at the morrison hotel gallery so henry was kind enough let us look at the rest of the role from that night talk about something wild somebody showing you like

[01:47:42] you know 35 or 36 like never before seen photos from that car and he let us choose one that was the one we chose and then the other cover the paperback was uh given to me from gilbert blacken when he photographed nirvana uh in berlin and um i hope i didn't screw that up and uh he's just awesome gilbert and he you know told me his his time meeting kurt and how kurt was very patient with him because gilbert was saying that he's got um he said i have asperger syndrome he said and and kurt was very

[01:48:11] patient with me and gracious and you know having uh i was a special ed teacher so when i hear stuff like that that kurt had patience for him behind and um that gets me because when i did work with handicapped uh kids i did witness a lot of cruelty so to know that this this young man you know kurt cobain who was just on this meteoric rise to you know fame understood that you know he was being interviewed

[01:48:40] by gilbert blacken and was so gracious you know what i mean just i love these stories this this to me is like oh that's a good dude right there like that you know what i mean like i don't know i think one of the one of the worst things that somebody said to me when i was writing this was oh kurt would have really liked you and that made me feel bad because i i'll never get the chance to meet him and he really seemed like an incredible person and i just hope people are able to

[01:49:05] see beyond you know the soundbite see beyond the clickbait and recognize and respect that and like literally start respecting that maybe be more respectful in you know what we write about this man and what comes out in the news about him and try to remember that there is still a child that has to read about her father in the media and that you know this isn't just these aren't just media stories for for this this young woman this is this is her father really there needs to be

[01:49:35] respect for the family that's it you know people have their opinions and um okay but we do need to understand that there's a family out there that did lose a family member so this might be one person's entertainment this is another person's tragedy and there does need to be that line drawn in the sand and that was why i was very careful with what i chose to publish because if anybody said something that not that anything came from a bad place but people you know you're you're bsing with people for

[01:50:02] hours stuff comes out and i was like oh i'll cut that for you like they didn't even tell me i was like no no i got you don't worry i'll cut that um because you do kind of feel a little protective of i feel a protective of kurt's you know memory now i feel like i've you did his story justice it sounds like hope i feel like i got tasked yes i gave myself the task but i got to do something really cool and i know now that like the people in the book people are counting on me to make sure i do the right thing and to uphold you know his memory and um you know come hell or high water i'm doing

[01:50:30] that i'm actually uh so he's got the memorial park that was started for him in aberdeen tory kovac and denny jackson two lovely uh older men um denny sadly passed away but they did start this memorial park for him and it's right next to the young street bridge uh which you know they call kurt's bridge and there's been a lot of you know what's going on with that bridge um you know if the township i don't follow it too closely anymore but i know they were talking about tearing it down or possibly just

[01:50:57] making it into a footpath and putting another bridge up next to it because it's a safety thing so that park is really important to people they come from all over the world to to kind of just be there be present in the moment uh with kurt and the grays harbor conservation district they're wonderful they preserve and maintain kurt's park it's all their volunteers come out and they they clean it up so i said that i'm going to give them you know some of my money from the book to continue to keep doing the

[01:51:26] good work they do with keeping that place what denny and tory made it to be what kurt deserves it to be and what those that want to remember him you know really need it to be so i just want everything to be full circle in the book so yeah i picked like parties matter to me but also places that are going to keep doing good work to keep you know kurt's honor alive and uh kurt's memory alive in aberdeen

[01:51:49] all across the board i mean you covered all bases you did this with a genuine heart this was your your baby right here and um everything from being a mother a wife the workshops that you offer you said you've only done one or or this that's a fairly new thing but you're giving 100 profits to charity you're involved with eight different charities you have a a lot going on and you're doing your part

[01:52:16] to spread the message of celebrating life and that's really what it's about we can and we can all take from this right now is just to take some time out of the day to appreciate the people that you have around you the people that you come across on a day-to-day basis those you don't know those you do know strangers all walks of life that um you were dealing with a human being who has emotions

[01:52:44] who has feelings and so this is something that this is a beautiful message all across the board in the name of the title the uh forever in bloom i mean your husband you said came up with it and that's that that that's a great concept and it really does paint the the right picture of what you were portraying and and i'm expressing thank you i i hope it's received well i hope people um appreciate it and if nothing

[01:53:06] else else i hope it inspires people to um go do something good just because you know we're all on this uh on this floating rock together let's um let's make the most of it yeah kelly thank you so much if if there's anything i'm going to leave the links so people can when they hear this and they're interested in it you had the link tree so i'll put all the information whatever needs to be included so

[01:53:32] people can uh find ways to get in touch with you with what you're doing the charities you're involved with your website and even the book when it's finally finally available but um if there's anything else you'd like to say before we wrap this up you did a real good job of just explaining yourself and taking us on a ride of what this was and what it means to you and the inspiration behind it no i just want to thank you because um you know you're putting this positive message out there you're you know you're

[01:54:00] helping me with getting my message out there so i um i just want to say thank you you know you're taking an interest in something that means so much to me and you're helping me you know share it with with with more people uh you're sharing it you know helping me share it with the world so i i sincerely appreciate that you know i know you've taken a couple hours out of your day to help me you know get my message out so um i'm grateful and blessed for this opportunity and very appreciative

[01:54:26] and i want to say thank you oh thank you it's been a pleasure absolutely all the best to you and yours thank you so much you too hope you enjoyed the conversation kirk cobain forever in bloom a celebratory portrait of a man musician father and a friend that goes beyond the cliches of being

[01:54:49] only a tortured soul his music and his artistry his heart and compassion for humanity had and has a long and wide reach to this day impacting inspiring and connecting with millions of people across the globe and kelly losing a family member to suicide chose to honor the memories she shared with her loved one

[01:55:14] remembering the good times and writing an extensively thorough book that not only sheds light on a man whose music many know but who was often misunderstood or misrepresented those pages they also include important issues like bullying child abuse laws in the unhoused crisis with the portion of the royalties going to charitable organizations and that's something that i have a great deal of respect for

[01:55:40] for the fact that kelly has that passion and conviction to be the change that she wishes to see her dedication to a cause she deems worthy of attention and the fact that she's actually putting her money where her heart is all the best to you and your endeavors appreciate your time your attitude and positive spirit kelly you are a giant amongst us anybody interested in connecting with kelly the links to her website

[01:56:09] with information on how to purchase her new book kirk cobain forever in bloom and um also information on her workshops and all of the names of the organizations she's involved with and a big shout out to everybody listening thank you for tuning in you know where to reach us you know how to find us on youtube on spotify

[01:56:32] deezer reddit and um like i said last episode we finally finally are available on apple so pretty much wherever you can listen to a podcast we're there and of course if you want to add to the conversation if you want to reach out to us let us know where you're listening from how you're listening to the show share some thoughts say hello to connect with us in any which way check out the show notes find us on

[01:56:59] one of those links and we look forward to hearing back from you all i hope you guys have a great rest of the week we're gonna catch up and do this again real soon but before i wrap it up if you would like to be a part of the show and share your story or even a story of someone in your life that has impacted you in a

[01:57:21] positive way you could always reach out to us via email i'd be happy to connect until next time and very soon peace looking for a sign to know i'm on the right road

[01:57:52] ain't seen no signs