A Nirvana-influenced perspective of The Best Teen Writing of 2009

Leaving the beautiful weekend in the Hamptons was painful, but I had Nirvana and the Scholastic Awards to thank for making the ride home a little better.
With “Come as You Are” pounding through my earbuds, I read through the book I received at the Scholastic Awards- the book containing what is perceived as the best teen writing of 2009. I was expecting something a little lesser of what the writing quality actually turned out to be, but I was not to surprised. I know some pretty talented people my age, and it’s amazing what some of my peers can do with a pencil- or pen, for that matter- and something to write on.

One of the reasons I prefer “older” music to pretty much a lot of albums publicized in the last decade- there’s more to interpret. So as I dug through the best teen writing of 2009, I also dug through one of my favorite songs. “Come as You Are” happens to be an example of one I’ve been thinking through for a long time, and every time the ideas come out differently.

That’s what’s hard about music- the meaning could be laying on the surface, easily spotted; there could be multiple meanings, swimming much deeper than the average human brain can find; or there could simply be no meaning at all. In an altered version of Nirvana’s words, the song could be “coming as it is.”

So I had this to ponder as well as the works of teen writers from all over.

So you could say I listened to Nirvana with the ears of a reader.

And I ended up learning a lot about myself as a reader. At first I was drawn to the short stories, but after forcing myself to randomly open to a page and read whatever that gave me, I found a new love and appreciation for creative journalism, memoirs, and other non-narrative writing.

And thanks to Nirvana, I was able to push myself to think on an undiscovered level of complexity that my brain has now been exposed to.

I think I’ll try this again next time I leave the Hamptons…