Where Did You Sleep Last Night

by Lynn Crosbie

  Beauty, love.

  I hope to find you answered this letter.

  There you are, holding a sheet of paper with a star over a drawing of a patch of huge celestial daisies, above the words WE ARE HERE.

  XO

  AFTERWORD

  Where Did You Sleep Last Night began three years ago, as a young adult novel. Within a few pages it became clear that only a lunatic would publish it as such. Still, the seeds of this genre are here and there, primarily, in the heroine’s deep, traumatic sense of loss, pain, and loneliness.

  While writing this book — between obsessive bouts with Nirvana’s Unplugged — I would play Hole’s “Malibu” a lot, and I came to isolate the phrase “Oh, come on be alive again.”

  The song was released after Cobain’s suicide and this line says everything, so quickly, through elegy, that there is to say about grief. These words are folded into the protagonist’s anguished love for Cobain; into the novel’s premise and purpose.

  “Don’t lay down and die,” is the next line in the Hole song.

  He does not.

  What follows is a love story, flowering from this plea; that is, an articulation of what suicide does. It leaves so many people bereft and wanting; it leads to the kind of magical thinking that I deploy here, in what I call a true story.

  I mean no disrespect to Cobain’s wife and true love, or to his daughter, who appears here only in the faintest of visions.

  A magical thinker himself, Cobain predicted in one of his songs that the tragic actress Frances Farmer would “come back as fire,” and take her revenge one day.

  This book is for all the girls and women who have written stories like mine, all very different, and all the same in that they never ask why he’s alive again, or how.

  He just is, I’m sure they say, flipping their hair, and sighing about the colour of his eyes, and the saw in his throat that made such matchless music.

  — Lynn Crosbie

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I wish to thank David McGimpsey, an early reader, for his good advice.

  My friends Michael Ventola (dead ringer,) Chaase Dylan (doll-maker,) Damian Rogers (heaven-sent,) Margaux Williamson (sweet inspiration,) William New (the only man I’ve ever loved,) Nick Mount and Robert Lecker (hell-benders).

  Lesley and Jessica Mae, Sam, Eddie, Kate, Lucy, Liz, and Janet.

  Leanne Delap, who always says, “Keep going,” and “Go further.”

  My family; my mother and father especially, for always loving me, and wishing good things.

  At Anansi: Janice Zawerbny, a killer editor; Sarah MacLachlan, a killer; John, Linda, Matt, Laura, Carolyn, Amelia, and Neil.

  Carolyn Forde, my friend and advocate.

  Also, thanks to Lola Landevic for her wonderful illustration; to Casey Joseph McGlynn for his brilliant painting of KC, and to Eric Kostiuk Williams for an early, excellent illustration.

  I received TWO grants from the Ontario Arts Council (Writers’ Reserve and Works in Progress) for this book, and I am exceedingly grateful to the jury, and to this great institution.

  I am grateful too, to the Toronto Arts Council, for their assistance in my endeavours.

  Finally, the two creatures who are always with me: Frank and Blaze: thanks for waiting on me.

  And of course and always, the sublime Kurt Cobain: RIP.

  PERMISSIONS

  Every reasonable effort has been made to trace ownership of copyright materials. The publisher will gladly rectify any inadvertent errors or omissions in credits in future.

  What follows is a list of the various movies, books, songs/titles, and anecdotes that are glanced at in the book, in chronological order.

  The epigraph and heart of the book: Where Did You Sleep Last Night (In the Pines). New words and new music adaptation by Huddie Ledbetter. TRO – © Copyright 1963 (Renewed) 1995 Folkways Music Publishers, Inc., New York, NY. Used by Permission.

  “Valium Funk” (Independent release) and “Tom” (from Tom: A Rock Opera). Words and music by William New and Groovy Religion. TRO – © Copyright 1995, William New. Used by permission.

  “Atmosphere” and “Isolation,” from Closer. Words and music by Joy Division. TRO – © Copyright 1980, Peter Hook. Used by permission.

  AND, gratefully, The Pixies, “Here Comes Your Man”; Saul Bellow, More Die of Heartbreak; Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman, Kurt Cobain, Suicide note; Natural Born Killers (“One of these nights soon, I’ll be coming for you.”); La tristesse durera toujours, Vincent Van Gogh, his last words to his brother Theo; Guided By Voices, “Glad Girls”; Jim Carroll, “a threshold back to beauty’s arms,” (poem for Kurt Cobain); “excellent, tender lover,” cited in Pamela Des Barres’ anthology, Let’s Spend the Night Together; Jim Carroll, anecdote (“You could do better”); P.J. Harvey, “Is my voodoo working”; Robert Lowell, “Skunk Hour”; Robert Service, “The Joy of Little Things”; Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire; Chet Baker, anecdote (“It’s just my life, man”); Michael Ventola, Dream, April, 2014; Chaase Dylan, “Boss Twerp”; Damien Hirst, via Robert Oppenheimer, via the Bhagavad Gita, “I Am Become Death, Shatterer of Worlds”; Jacqueline Susann’s Neely O’Hara, Valley of the Dolls; Tiny Tempah, “The Children of the Sun”; Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast, for the idea of being young and poor and happy; Liberace, “Too much of anything is wonderful”; Anonymous Yelp! review; “Room was not cleaned well . . .”; Lytton Strachey, “Landmarks in French Literature,”; The Kids in the Hall, “Jerry Sizzler”; Michael Turner, letter, 1993, “It’s when energy flows . . .”; Groovy Religion/William New, “Valium Funk”; James Joyce, Flower-letter to Nora Barnacle; Nirvana, “You Know You’re Right”; Man on Melbourne Street, Parkdale, spring, 2014, “Oh, the stars, how they do sing”; Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (afterword); Henry Miller, the idea of wanting to sleep with someone’s hair in one’s mouth, extracted from a personal, plagiarized, love letter; Johnny Mathis, “Misty”; Joe Strummer and Ian Curtis, inspirations for carrying one’s archives in plastic shopping bags; Paul Simon, “Graceland”; Leonard Cohen, “So Long, Marianne”; Jack White, “Love Interruption”; Joy Division, “Isolation,”; The Pretenders, “Back on the Chain Gang”; The Crips, “Let it rain, let it drip”; Joan Crawford, My Way of Life; Scott Walker, “Duchess,”; Groovy Religion/William New, “Tom”; Jim Carroll, the idea of wanting to be “pure”; Amy Winehouse, “Rehab”; Boyz II Men, “I’ll Make Love to You”; Joy Division, “Atmosphere”; Haroun (ENG354 student/poet,); Saul Bellow’s fictionalized Delmore Schwartz, Humboldt’s Gift (“supernatural beings”); James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; The Wild Nothing, Paradise; Lana Del Ray, “Young and Beautiful,”; James Kirkwood, P.S. Your Cat Is Dead (the small yellow towel appears here); David Bowie, “Wild Is the Wind”; Georges Bizet, Carmen; Kings of Leon, “Wait for Me”; Veal, “Judy Garland”; Nirvana, “I Hate Myself and I Want to Die”; Motörhead, “The Ace of Spades”; Giacomo Puccini, Manon Lescaut; Sylvia Plath, “Edge”; Celine Dion, “It’s All Coming Back to Me”; Lou Reed, “The Glory of Love,” and “Sweet Jane/Heavenly Wine and Roses”; The Violent Femmes, “Never Tell”; Neil Diamond/Barbra Streisand/“You Don’t Bring Me Flowers”; LMFAO, “Sexy and I Know It”; Michael Jackson, “Give in to Me”; Panic! At the Disco, “Miss Jackson”; Peter Lieberson, “Amor, amor mio”; Scarface, “The World Is Yours”; Psychic TV, “But Only Love”; Elio Ianacci (kick through the night); Khia, “My Neck, My Back”; Daniel Johnston,” “Going Down”; NIN/Johnny Cash, “Hurt”; Martha Beck/murderer, (“tortured by love”); Kanye West, “Monster”; Actual craigslist/Seattle post (the Mercedes); Flaubert, Madame Bovary; Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights; T.S. Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent”; Hank Williams, “Lovesick Blues”; Rosemary’s Baby, “This is really happening!”; Actual Expos fan, Olympic Stadium, circa 1981; Lou Reed, “Perfect Day”; Daniel Johnston, “Hi, How Are You?” (tee-shirt, photo
graphed on Kurt Cobain); William Shakespeare, Cleopatra; Donna Summer, “Love to Love You Baby”; Billy Ocean, “Suddenly”; Nirvana, “In Bloom.”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Author photograph: © Lynn Crosbie

  LYNN CROSBIE was born in Montreal and is a cultural critic, author, and poet. A Ph.D. in English literature with a background in visual studies, she teaches at the University of Toronto and the Art Gallery of Ontario. Her books (of poetry and prose) include Pearl, Queen Rat, and Dorothy L’Amour. She is also the author of the controversial book, Paul’s Case and most recently, Life Is About Losing Everything. She is a contributing editor at Fashion, and a National Magazine Award winner who has written about sports, style, art, and music.

  ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

  House of Anansi Press was founded in 1967 with a mandate to publish Canadian-authored books, a mandate that continues to this day even as the list has branched out to include internationally acclaimed thinkers and writers. The press immediately gained attention for significant titles by notable writers such as Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, George Grant, and Northrop Frye. Since then, Anansi’s commitment to finding, publishing and promoting challenging, excellent writing has won it tremendous acclaim and solid staying power. Today Anansi is Canada’s pre-eminent independent press, and home to nationally and internationally bestselling and acclaimed authors such as Gil Adamson, Margaret Atwood, Ken Babstock, Peter Behrens, Rawi Hage, Misha Glenny, Jim Harrison, A. L. Kennedy, Pasha Malla, Lisa Moore, A. F. Moritz, Eric Siblin, Karen Solie, and Ronald Wright. Anansi is also proud to publish the award-winning nonfiction series The CBC Massey Lectures. In 2007, 2009, 2010, and 2011 Anansi was honoured by the Canadian Booksellers Association as “Publisher of the Year.”