Come As You Are

Photo of Leigh Alexander at NYU Polytechnic in April 2014, via the Joan Ganz Cooney Center.

Games journalist Leigh Alexander gave the keynote speech at the Different Games conference at NYU Polytechnic in April 2014. (That’s me on the far right.) Leigh talked about how she grew up alienated from brassy, hyper-masculine hair metal that dominated the airwaves during her teen years in the ’80s and early ’90s. Nirvana and “Smells Like Teen Spirit” came, to her, as a ratty revelation.

My drawing of Leigh, from my Bleed-Throughs diary comics project.

“The music was sloppy,” Leigh said. “The rock opera fans in my high school would try to discredit the band’s sudden popularity by pointing out that ‘anyone could play’ Nirvana songs. It’s true. Anyone could. I could! I’d never played music in my life, but for my 13th or 14th birthday I got a guitar and I played Nirvana songs. I sucked. It was awesome! I shaved half my hair off because I finally felt like it was gonna be OK if I did that. Why did the fact I could play it mean it sucked?”