When Pull&Bear’s favorite rock band, Nirvana, published “Nevermind” in 1991 a curious characteristic of the album sleeve was the lack of lyrics for most of the songs. The booklet that came with the CD contained only a few extracts from some songs of the album, making it hard for the fans to analyze what they were truly about.
One of the songs that was particularly affected by this was “Smells Like Teen Spirit”. Cobain’s voice is so guttural during this song that it can be quite hard for fans to grasp what he’s saying: I, for one, wasn’t able to make sense of the lyrics for a good while after discovering it.
And, when I looked them up, I was still unable to understand them. I was 13, was just starting to learn English by myself and did not really have a clue on what did he mean by the word “libido”. Times have changed and I might have learned the literal definitions of the words employed, but I think I still don’t get how “Teen Spirit” does smell like.
Apart from the deodorant brand, of course.
It is well known that the inspiration behind the song’s name came from a joke written on Cobain’s wall by fellow musician Kathleen Hanna, who said that “Kurt smells like Teen Spirit” in reference to the deodorant used by his then-girlfriend. However, the joke turned into a song because it was understood as a revolutionary message rather than as a joke.
Yes, a whole anthem of teenage freedom and revolutionary sense came from a misunderstood joke. Probably because still no one knows how does Teen Spirit smell like.
On November 23rd, 2023, at 8:48 a.m. (GMT -4:00 time), I turned eighteen years old. While it might have been just another day of living for me, it was definitely an important date for the legal implications of my existence as a human being. From that moment on, the Convention on the Rights of the Child no longer shields me, I can go to adults’ jail and I have to legally pay taxes.
And, according to some sources, I ceased being a teenager. While there is much that can be argued about teenage years ending at 18, it certainly means the end of a whole era and the slow drift into adulthood.
Will I smell differently? I don’t know. Will the esoteric Teen Spirit magically exit my body like in this video? I haven’t seen any magical golden staircase over me yet. Will I slowly start drifting into adulthood? Certainly.
2024 will mark the year where I officially start being an adult, legally and physically. And it is not an easy year to do so: in almost every possible sense, our world is at stake during this year. It is not only the world’s biggest election year, but it will also be the year where humanity goes back to Moon’s orbit and when Mickey Mouse goes into public domain.
Increase of global GDP is set to slow down and interest rates from student loan lenders are expected to increase. The few travel restrictions remaining from COVID-19 will probably be lifted and people who were finishing high school when the pandemic started are going to graduate from college. Everything is going to be changing a lot.
And, in the midst of that chaos, many others and I will be figuring out how to become adults. Some of us are going to experience life-changing events while others will keep going on with their daily lives. Some of us are going to really experience the change, while others will just see every day pass by and adulthood still being little more than a simple word.
I am sure about all of that. What I cannot answer, though, is whether I am going to figure out what Teen Spirit is all about.
One of the most interesting quotes about adulthood I have ever read comes from a text about children books written by one of the most talented authors to ever set foot on Earth, C.S. Lewis.
In the essay “On Three Ways of Writing for Children”, he wrote that “When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”. What he identified as the beginning true adulthood came only from an embracing of childishness, not from an attempt to escape it.
There is a certain logical implication of it that scratches my head, though. If adulthood is about not escaping childishness, then childishness is about escaping it: in this dichotomical approach to such transition, where can we fit teenagers?
And I think that the only answer to this lies in the true essence of teenage years lying in not escaping or embracing childishness, just trying to understand it. When Kurt Cobain wrote a full song after a joke written in his wall, he was not trying to escape or embrace it: he was figuring it out in his own, special way.
The true Teen Spirit is, for me, exactly that: figuring things out. Most things that happen during this hazily defined period can be explained in that way, from the TikToker era most of us go through to the strange stylistic choices that have lead in different eras to the surge of emos, punks and hipsters. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
I think that being a teenager is a truly beautiful experience. It is the only moment in your life where you are tall enough to drive but not old enough to actually do so, as well as the only period where you have a certain degree of both freedom and lack of responsibilities.
It has many ups and downs. There are days where hormones, biological masters of your body, make you take strange pathways and might make you end up smelling like Teen Spirit as in the deodorant brand. There are moments when you really don’t know if you’re going the right way. There are many days when you wish you could just jump from childhood to adulthood, as Lewis might have proposed.
Yet, it is not possible. And I am very glad it’s not.
And, as I leave this beautiful period in 2024, I still don’t know how Teen Spirit smells like. I will probably have to figure it out at some point.
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