The melancholy city park next to Kurt Cobains house...
The melancholy city park next to Kurt Cobain's house... Seattle.Gov

Kurt Cobain's house is on the market for $7.5 million. It has four bedrooms, four bathrooms, and is 117-years-old. Because the rock star killed himself in this house in 1994, it is world-famous. Everyone knows the band Nirvana, everyone knows how Cobain's life came to an end. This house and his death cannot be separated. And this is why it seems so odd to put the house up for sale. How can one person own such an important and public part of Seattle's history? What Cobain's last house reveals is something that our society sometimes finds hard to grasp or comprehend: private ownership has its limits.

In the popular imagination, ownership is as total and as natural as the universe itself. Once you fully own, say, a piece of land, it's never going to not be yours unless you make the decision to sell or give it away. But in truth, private ownership is not natural, as the 17th-century British philosopher John Locke made the English-speak world believe with his labor theory of ownership. It is cultural, and as such, it's susceptible to cultural changes. One of those changes involves the relationship between the public and the private. It is possible for an owned thing to entirely lose its private value and become valuable only to the public? For example, could you imagine selling the actual Roman, wooden cross Jesus was nailed to? Could you imagine putting it on the market? And putting it into the home of one person? Something similar can be said of Cobain's house. It is has a value for millions upon millions of humans whose lives are attached to the music and life of Kurt Cobain.

This is why Charles R. Cross's proposal makes complete sense. He recommends that the city of Seattle buy the house, demolish it, and turn it into a park.



Charles R. Cross, the author of the defining Kurt Cobain biography, Heavier Than Heaven , posted on Facebook:
What if the city of Seattle buys this house, for say $6M, demolishes the structure (it's a beautiful home inside and out, but is there anyone, really, anyone, who wants to live here?), (or the city moves or reuses the actual building materials on another site), and redevelops this property as an actual official enlarged park, with an appropriate marker as a way to honor to a musician who forever is going to be connected to Seattle?

There is already a park next to the house, Viretta Park, that "attracts tourists," and so it makes perfect sense (in the terms of value as public) to expand it and make the whole thing official. This is will be the place the city honors one of its most remarkable citizens. This is the place you shall go and express your love for this citizen's life and contributions to our culture.

Because Cross knows very well that the suggestion to make public what is bluntly private will offend the many minds that are fixed to the idea that ownership is the end all and be all, he points out the potential economic value of such a park. We should see it as an "investment," or, put another way, as increasing the city's cultural capital. Seattle's tourism sector is already booming. This park would add more bang to that boom. But the thing about the public is it also displaces the value of money. A Cobain park may have positive or negative economic consequences—there are no promises either way, and that's not what matters. What's important is that the place is there, and anyone can go there, and feel connected not only to the rock star but all of the lives that his music and ideas moved.