A Long Ramble about the Food Chain, while thinking of Nirvana

This morning an article on the 20th anniversary of Nirvana's album "Nevermind" caught my eye and I read it with great interest, since that pivotal album came out exactly at a time that was, in some way, pivotal in my own life. I can clearly recall minutia from episodes in 1991 when I hear that album...the music conjures up the clearest images for me.

And the lyrics have moments of poetic poignancy, too...words that stick with me over the years.

It was a fine Saturday for a walk, so I took one. While standing on the bridge at the end of the lower lake in the Shaker Lakes park, I stopped, leaning over the railing, to watch the school of giant carp moving through the water. The school of giant carp stopped, brought their whiskered faces to the surface, and watched me hovering above them.

They were looking for food. And I thought, that if I were a hungry fisherman who liked carp, they would look like a pretty good smorgasbord to me.

With that in mind, as well as the Nirvana article fresh in my memory, I thought of the lyrics to the song "Something in the Way" in which singer Kurt Cobain lazily croons the secret mantra of guilt-ridden semi-vegetarians everywhere, "it's okay to eat fish 'cause they don't have any feelings."

As they inquisitively looked up at me above them on that bridge, I thought that these fish probably did have feelings: hunger, curiosity, territoriality, maybe even boredom.

I won't start a philosophical blow-out on the morality of being an omnivore. And I'm pretty certain that Cobain's lyric was loaded with his trademark sardonic wit.

I liked those fish, in an I-appreciate-the-animal-world-and-the-cycle-of-life kind of way. And I liked the Double Crested Cormorant who was probably eating those fishes' cousins 20 feet away. And I've liked a fish dinner here and there in my time. Yes, I like it all, but I don't like that I can't make peace with the cruelty of the food chain, but I'm somehow no longer a vegetarian.

I don't remember if the members of Nirvana actually ate fish or if they were vegetarians. But I'm sure they were not vegans...I remember butter was part of their food vernacular. I was hired as local day-labor in 1993 to assist the band's traveling caterer when they passed through NE Ohio and one of my duties was to bake the boys an apple pie. I distinctly remember cutting butter into the dough for the crust. Of course a butter crust usually makes a darn good (albeit non-vegan) pie.

And it was a darn good pie. The manager came up to the room we were using as a makeshift kitchen because Cobain wanted the kitchen labor to know how much he had enjoyed the apple pie. I still get a nice feeling from that compliment.

Cobain may or may not have believed that fish have feelings, but he knew that flunkies did, no matter where we were on the food chain of the entertainment business.