So many fucking self-absorbed fucks. God! I had to read through 14 pages filled with completely irrelevant banter to find out if anyone had had similar ideas to me about this song. Honestly -- this site is about Song Meanings, and it is completely off-topic to post your opinions about what Kurt Cobain thought or how Kurt Cobain died.
Whatever.
After reading through the posts (and resorting to blindly skipping the ones with the words "Kurt" or "death" or "suicide" in the first 3 lines), I've seen some insight into the song that rings more truly for me than the idea I had when I started. Still, I figured I'd share the impression I got from the song when I initially started thinking about what it might mean.
The feeling I got was that someone very close to Kurt Cobain earlier in his life had hurt him very badly, perhaps by choosing another person, and he was struggling with conflicting emotions, love, respect, hate, anger, towards this person. He wished things to be as they used to be, for the person to come back and be a friend to him. When he insists that he doesn't have a gun, he's not telling the truth; his anger is leading to murderous thoughts, and he's trying to get the person to meet with him so he can express to them how badly he was hurt.
I no longer think this is really what the song is about, but I still think of it as an interesting interpretation. It came to me because that is the situation I am in in my life. I know the pain and the anger and the sorrow every day, and the twisted turns it takes in my mind make me feel ashamed that I am not able to accept and be stronger.
In any case, many of the comments have suggested far more likely interpretations of the song, about acceptance and specifically how many groups, some of them well-known and mainstream, want very much to think that they are benevolent and all-accepting when really, sometimes even as a policy, they accept only those who conform to their narrow beliefs and views.
On the topic of mud vs. bleach -- I don't think anybody suggested the idea that a person covered in mud would look black while a person exposed to bleach would look pale and white. If the song is perhaps truly about some groups of people who claim to be accepting and kind and friendly but are actually, whether overtly or in secret, very intolerant of other, different groups, then this could be a reference to racial clashes that have caused great conflict and anguish, as much in recent years as in the past.
So many fucking self-absorbed fucks. God! I had to read through 14 pages filled with completely irrelevant banter to find out if anyone had had similar ideas to me about this song. Honestly -- this site is about Song Meanings, and it is completely off-topic to post your opinions about what Kurt Cobain thought or how Kurt Cobain died.
Whatever.
After reading through the posts (and resorting to blindly skipping the ones with the words "Kurt" or "death" or "suicide" in the first 3 lines), I've seen some insight into the song that rings more truly for me than the idea I had when I started. Still, I figured I'd share the impression I got from the song when I initially started thinking about what it might mean.
The feeling I got was that someone very close to Kurt Cobain earlier in his life had hurt him very badly, perhaps by choosing another person, and he was struggling with conflicting emotions, love, respect, hate, anger, towards this person. He wished things to be as they used to be, for the person to come back and be a friend to him. When he insists that he doesn't have a gun, he's not telling the truth; his anger is leading to murderous thoughts, and he's trying to get the person to meet with him so he can express to them how badly he was hurt.
I no longer think this is really what the song is about, but I still think of it as an interesting interpretation. It came to me because that is the situation I am in in my life. I know the pain and the anger and the sorrow every day, and the twisted turns it takes in my mind make me feel ashamed that I am not able to accept and be stronger.
In any case, many of the comments have suggested far more likely interpretations of the song, about acceptance and specifically how many groups, some of them well-known and mainstream, want very much to think that they are benevolent and all-accepting when really, sometimes even as a policy, they accept only those who conform to their narrow beliefs and views.
On the topic of mud vs. bleach -- I don't think anybody suggested the idea that a person covered in mud would look black while a person exposed to bleach would look pale and white. If the song is perhaps truly about some groups of people who claim to be accepting and kind and friendly but are actually, whether overtly or in secret, very intolerant of other, different groups, then this could be a reference to racial clashes that have caused great conflict and anguish, as much in recent years as in the past.