Dirty Blonde

I have found a frightening new role model. I feel dirty and wrong even considering it but here goes: Courtney Love.

I know.

I picked up Dirty Blonde: The Diaries of Courtney Love and opened it to the middle. Honestly, I was looking for what she might have written about Kurt's suicide and any pictures that might accompany those entries. I'm morbid and like that kind of stuff. Deal. I was surprised to see only two pages, one photo of a fan vigil, a few words and not much else. Interesting. I sat down and started flipping through the entire book and walked away astonished.

One thing to be said for Courtney Love – she never censors herself. She says what she feels and without fear of reprimand. Or so she comes across, at least. And I know these are her diaries and a place where one would feel free to do so, but many people aren't even honest with themselves let alone the world. She comes across on paper the way she does in life: without apology.

I want to be as tenacious, bold, aggressive, confident, brazen, outlandish, determined, inspired as Courtney Love. She never doubted herself. She went after what she wanted and she got it all. Most of the diary is filled with song lyrics and I read them for the first time. Hole was never a band I was into. I couldn't get past the off-key screaming to listen to the lyrics. I saw the passion in her words. It's just plain honest. It's that stark vulnerability shining through. Choice words and no apologies. She never let anything stop her. Not having a child or her husband's suicide. She had a two-page list of all the things she wanted to teach her children about being good and creative people. I was astonished. I had no idea how much thought and love and desire she had put into having a family. Not something she projects in her outward celebrity life. She had lists of her goals while pursuing acting, her goals for her band, plans, ideas and strategies, photographs, fliers, drawings and letters. She bulldozed over roadblocks and took side streets, never sat on her laurels and always bounded forward to the next project or adventure.

Courtney is an intelligent woman who reads and researches. She had lists of important women throughout history and their accomplishments, spiritual ideas and books to look into and read, and her reaction to all of it. She's eloquent and well versed. She can't type for shit, that's true. And her handwriting is damn near illegible. But she's not spewing forth empty, regurgitated popisms. She's not talking about the latest TV show or inane, vapid bullshit. She wrote with depth about art, spiritualism, politics, literature and she had real heroes. She has never tried to make herself a brand to sell. She's truly an artist unlike all those little lost and empty musical outfits clogging the airways with inane claptrap.

Courtney is certainly no saint, but her diaries showed me a side of her I didn't know was possible. I had written her off as a drug addicted lunatic attention whore who fucked her way to the top. And while all of that may still be true there is that raw, honest, loving side of her, an intelligence and depth that her media focused shennanagins belie. She's a devout Buddhist. Who knew? She is honest with herself and, what's more, she's honest with the world. She's not tripped up by things that would derail so many others' plans. She's not always pretty and clean or agreeable but she is undeniable. And I admire the hell out of her.