Worldview: The Context Issue

Some days I wake up and I’m happy as a clam. This morning I had a really terrible dream. Chelsea Handler was in it.

I was in an antiques store and I had my American Express black card back—I don’t have a black card right now. And I was with Sean Penn and we were antiquing and money was no object. I have to focus a lot on my finances because I have so many lawyers in my life. And that doesn’t leave a lot of room for creativity, for productivity, because lawyers like to fight all day. That’s what they do. It’s a drag because you can’t just do a simple thing if there’s a lawyer involved, everything takes on extra meaning and extra finances, and just simply expunging something off my record is a cluster of eight law firms, same if Jay-Z wants to use “Teen Spirit.” My daughter’s not really happy about that, and I don’t know how happy I am about it, and at the same time we’re working out the royalties and the finances on it. I mean, I’m pretty friendly with Jay-Z, but business is business.

I’ve been trying to write my book today. I have a life map of topics to cover but there’s things I keep avoiding because I don’t really want to go there. There’s a lot of salacious things that I’m trying to avoid, because I don’t want to have a salacious book, but unfortunately, there’s a lot of salacious things in my past. I had an editor over here and I was talking about how AIDS has impacted me—there’s just so many people that I loved in my life who have died from the disease. Today was heavy. After the ‘80s and ’90, it’s a miracle that I’m healthy and alive, even to the point where I just had my liver and lung panels done, and my pulmonary test came back above average, even for an athlete. And I’m a chain smoker. Strong like bull or something.

It’s been a day of reflecting on mortality, and aging, and the aging process, and the fact that none of us are going to be here forever. We come in alone, we go out alone, and what we do in between is pretty significant, or can be, or won’t be. I’ve been exposed to my fair share of death, and it’s kind of depressing. But it’s uplifting in the sense that you only get one shot to make an impact and make it count, and to make an impact on other people, a positive impact, life-changing or cathartic. I’m pretty confident of that anyway, but today, I had to examine it. Plus going to the doctor last weekend, having a full workup and every X-ray you can imagine—I went to this longevity guy, specializing in longevity, and he was actually amazed. Maybe more from my reputation than facts, because I don't think I’ve done half as much as people think I’ve done. But you know, I have done a lot of things and I've put a lot of toxins in my body. He was just really kind of blown away.

So in the dream I was shopping for really beautiful flapper dresses, and a table that had, like, an Eastwood vibe to it. Then there was some really sturdy Irish furniture, Regency era, really good English stuff, you know? Like leather tables, masculinity, really masculine antiques—except for the flapper dresses, which were great. And then Sean Penn was shopping for Mid-Century Modern. We were in this huge emporium, and he was shopping for Eames. It was this crazy shopping trip. Then other stuff happened. It was a really intense dream about life choices, and where certain life choices have ended me up.

I don’t want to tell you about my dream, actually. It was too intense.

Written by Courtney Love Cobain