The front of the postcard Krist Novoselic sent me.
I like meeting musicians.
I never have a problem going up to a musician and saying hello. It’s not something everyone has or every cares to have, it’s something that matters to me. I like to make a connection between myself and what I’m listening to. Doing that makes things a lot more real to me. I’ve driven around the country to stand in old recording studios. I’ve forced my wife to travel to fields in Mississippi just so I could feel closer to Charlie Patton for a few minutes.
For the living musicians, the ones that I can say hello to, I have rules.
Not all musicians are created equally for me. There’s the punk affiliated musicians that I don’t really see walls with. Those people I go up and say hello to, I shake their hands, say something nice, and then I walk away. When I met Killer Mike in a Raleigh elevator, I asked for a picture. When I saw Carrie Brownstein in that same elevator, I didn’t ask for a picture. I didn’t even say hello because I was mad at her and Corin for dumping one of my favorite drummers, Janet Weiss, but that’s beside the point. I didn’t get a picture with Mike Watt, Ian MacKaye, or Thurston Moore. I wanted to get a picture with John Cale but he got away before I could take out my phone. There’s a dividing line. Punk kids, I give nice words to but I take no pictures. Non-punk kids, picture.
Of course, there are exceptions. There’s always exceptions to ridiculous punk orthodoxy. Some punk kids are just too big. No, I’m not talking about anyone involved with chemical romances. No, there’s the big one, the real big one. Anyone involved with Nirvana, no matter where they came from or where they’re going, are on another level. No matter the connections, they’re my generations Beatles, and I’d have a tough time seeing them as just mere mortals. I shook Lori Goldson’s hand just because she played on Unplugged in New York. Consequently, I shook Dylan Carson’s hand for a much worse connection, he bought the shotgun Kurt used to kill himself. The myths are too big even if they help destroy the thing you love.
Some weeks ago, maybe months ago, I found Krist Novoselic’s address online. It was a PO Box, not his home address. A few people online mentioned how he responded through the mail. I’ve sent random postcards to all sorts of PO Boxes in the past. I’ve sent to record labels, famous addresses and business, and a lot of fan clubs. I haven’t heard much back. The only person that has responded to me with a unique piece of mail, was Ian MacKaye, but refer back to the top of my diatribe; he’s a mere mortal punk: a person. He doesn’t want to be seen as a totem. MacKaye helped shape my life in meaningful ways but was not someone I saw ten-foot-tall on MTV’s Live and Loud 1993 wearing an SSD shirt. Good luck unpacking that list. MacKaye is appropriately sized. Novoselic, no matter the indie word he came from, dosen’t feel real to me. His immensity was implanted in my memory when I was too young to be able to understand what I was seeing. I’m never going to be in a room with Novolselic but I’ve been in one with MacKaye many times. I’ve said hello.
When I got a postcard from Krist Novoselic I was shocked. I couldn’t believe that he would actually send me something back. I didn’t send him a stamp either, this was Nirvana money paying the sixty-six cents. Although he didn’t have to, he made the effort. He took the time to cut my address from the envelope and stick it to his postcard. Krist wrote on the card, “Dear Jon. Thanks for the cool art. Rock on! Krist.”
The back of the postcard.
For the rest of the day I thought about the card he sent. I thought about him holding what I had sent to him, a couple collages and random pieces of paper in his hands trying to figure out what they meant. I thought about how comically low he wore his bass. I thought about watching the constant MTV coverage of Cobain’s death in 1994.
A few days later, I sent him a thank you collage. I wrote a few lines on the card about how I was a mail-artist and that I was adding his address to my active list. “I’ll send more,” I wrote.
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