Radiant Nirvana

Author: Hao Fang
Publisher:
Publish Date: July 1, 2006
Features:
A must-read for 1970s people. – City Weekend (Guangzhou)
A biography of non-mainstream figures, representing non-mainstream culture. – Shopping Guide (Beijing)
It showed Chinese youth another path. – Details (New York)
Hao Fang’s most famous work, praising the "cultural heroes of the post-20th century." – South China Morning Post (Hong Kong)
Fierce passion, complete combativeness, and abundant linguistic talent. – Music Life (Beijing)
A masterpiece that influenced a generation. – China Business Times (Beijing)
It influenced many Chinese rock youth. – Shanghai News
Brilliant Nirvana – The Life of Kurt Cobain may be related to personal emotions, but China’s mediocre rock scene needs to learn from this extreme approach to understand what makes rock glorious and what makes it tragic. – Economic Observer (Beijing)
A "required textbook" for rock youth. – Beijing Youth Weekly (Beijing)
In Hao Fang’s silent words, I heard the roaring music, and I felt so close to those bands. – China Reading News (Beijing)
Kurt Cobain, a messy king from a poor alley, had always been looked down upon since childhood; a spiritual punk kid who only drank the milk of rebellion. He lived by Camus’s belief: one of the fundamental faces of humanity is resistance. Kurt Cobain never claimed to be a hero. He was always depressed between inner helplessness and moral vanity. He didn’t resent the pain he had endured since childhood alone; he feared the meaninglessness and lack of escape in that pain, until he found the guitar, music, and rock. From then on, he found himself caught between fate and evil, illness and fame, searching for what could be found, saving what could be saved, and hoping for what could be hoped.
Kurt Cobain is an alternative hero. In the face of arrogant and triumphant materialism and consumer culture, he raised the arm of punk rock. He was a leaky boat against the current, a rebellious son with injuries. He pretended not to know that this was a world where everything was measured in cash, and people were accustomed to, and could no longer imagine, the existence of another way of life and thinking. At least, our faces have all appeared with the smiling mask of survival, even once rebellious artists no longer dare to throw down the glove of challenge in the face of the stern reality of livelihood.
Amidst the universal submission, there finally arose a lonely voice of non-mainstream and anti-mainstream resistance like Kurt Cobain’s, reflecting the image of a painful person. He also carried the burden of guilt, but he did bring back the disruptive smile and redemptive light from modernism to punk rock. At the twilight of the music of the century’s end, he still stood alone in solitude, his head bowed low among his messy golden hair. He rejected the pity of a serious fate, and rejected the favor of punk rock, which was his last lover. He gazed ahead, still with the sunset glow of the bay; he looked down, and suddenly felt a dreamlike, magical joy rising. He gripped the gun tightly, like holding a warm and beautiful lover, determined to complete his journey against the current.
The gun was raised, the trigger slid in silence. From the loud roar, a bullet flew out; only it knew how tragic it was, because it destroyed a hero’s dream of the post-20th century.