“Somewhere I have heard this before, in a dream my memory has stored “*

Just a short one, that came to my head yesterday. I was a huge Nirvana fan back in the days and of course I had the “Live! Tonight! Sold Out!” video. To get to the point, there was this one sentence Kurt Cobain said in an interview, that really burned into my mind. He rather uses curious and odd lyrics that don't have a straight forward meaning/statement but instead “paint a nice picture”. Something that always made music great for me: strange lyrics. And the ambivalence of melody/singing and brute/screaming. It is the same for visual arts, like illustrations, animations, collages and so on. They don't have to make sense on the first look, but should leave enough space and freedom to see things in it. Without giving you the feeling of pressure in terms of that there must be a specific meaning to it. There might be and of course will be one, but the piece works, because everyone can see something in it. Which might even lead to speculations of the meaning. Resulting in discussions/communication between the listeners/audience. And again, this is where I even see parallels between this comment of Kurt Cobain and E.T.A. Hoffmann. As “to understand artworks, means to take active part in continuation and completion of it.” (1)

Damn, this again was fairly much. I guess it will never be less. Anyway, here is a link to an youtube video with an excerpt of the interview. Jump to about 2 minutes in time and enjoy (which is a bit strange for me after all the years).

1 – Schmidt, Olaf (2003):”Callots fantastisch karikierte Blätter” Intermediale Inszenierungen und romantische Kunsttheorie im Werk E.T.A. Hoffmanns. S.114, Berlin, Erich Schmidt Verlag

p.s. I know referencing a guy who took heroine and blew his head off, is not the typical source to cite in a diploma thesis. But, well, I think, I explained why it is of importance for me.

* “On a plain” by Nirvana