I profoundly dislike the term conspiracy theory, it evokes a crazy middle-age guy/gal in front of a computer with a lot of time on his/her hands, a tinfoil hat on the head and a basement filled with food items to survive for a year. You have to be careful on what you call conspiracy theories because if I consider many theories floating around the internet as pure craziness but other stories simply can’t be put in the same package. I am a very rational person, and I don’t believe, period. I just base my opinion on evidence and always question what we are fed with, because the truth is out there,… just kidding! Seriously there are sometimes good reasons to question the news, even when they come from high authorities.
University of Kent psychologists Michael J. Wood, Karen M. Douglas and Robbie M. Sutton have come up with a definition of a conspiracy theory, and described it as ‘a proposed plot by powerful people or organizations working together in secret to accomplish some (usually sinister) goal’, in a paper entitled ‘Dead and Alive: Beliefs in Contradictory Conspiracy Theories’, published in the journal ‘Social Psychological and Personality Science’. Right! I have never believed into these giant plots and hidden secret forces working together, and that’s why certain stories can’t be labeled as conspiracy theories, there could just be the result of sloppy work and for example the police’s refusal to revisit certain cases because they don’t want to admit they have butchered an investigation? These are not conspiracy theories, we aren’t talking about Alex Jones’ business here, just plain rational observations that people hastily put under the label ‘conspiracy theory’ because they don’t like to think, they don’t like to derange their way of seeing things in their well-ordered world.
Since the moment I have been writing about Elliott Smith’s death, I have been treated as a conspiracy theorist by some, although I have never suggested there was a plot of powerful people behind all this, as suggests the above definition. For the vast majority of people, it’s simply too deranging to think otherwise and they call anything they don’t like a conspiracy. And I have been preached many times that people who question Elliott Smith’s death generally also question Kurt Cobain’s death, meaning I see conspiracy theories everywhere, behind every death of every famous people. No, sorry to contradict these people, but when things don’t add, they just don’t and this has nothing to do with a new world order or some other nonsense. So I have questioned the circumstances around Elliott Smith’s death, and I will continue till I get some answers, if I ever get some. Generally, after reading an article or some comments that talk about his ‘suicide’, I answer something like this: ‘You have no idea what you are talking about. First, he was clean (and had been clean for a year) when he died, second, he probably didn’t kill himself. But it’s an endless task to repeat the facts (that most people choose to ignore) every time I read something about his ‘suicide’. And no. I am not some crazy conspiracy theorist.’ The fact that I have to defend myself of being one (conspiracy theorist) tells a lot, I have heard the term way too many times.
Since the anniversary of Kurt Cobain’s death is there, there is a renewed curiosity about the case and we hear a lot about it. I have been reading quite a bit from Tom Grant’s website about the Cobain Case, it’s quite dense and overwhelming and if you haven’t visited it yet, you should before yelling at me one more time the term ‘conspiracy theory’. These are facts collected by Grant, the P.I. who was hired by Courtney Love herself when her husband vanished in April 1994.
One recent thing brought my attention these past days. As everyone knows, new pictures of the death scene were released by the Seattle Police Department, as well as never-seen-before pictures of a Los Angeles apartment which was occupied by Cobain and Love just two years before his death. If you haven’t seen them, just take a look! They had totally trashed the place, leaving filth and debris of everything, pill bottles, drug paraphernalia, unopened mail, opened tubes, crumbled cigarette packets, opened candies, business cards, it was all mixed up as if someone had just dumped the content of a garbage bag, and there was even graffiti on the walls! A ridiculous mess if I ever seen one. On the other hand, have you looked at the new death scene pictures? The one that shows his drug paraphernalia, tidy put in a cigar box, gathered around his hat, his lighter at the top of his hat, his pack of cigarette and wallet, even the sunglasses are folded and put aside, and there’s even a roll of dollar bills… doesn’t it look neat? May be too neat compared to the previous trashy scene? It just hit me today that this picture of the death scene looked almost staged and well too organized for a guy who used to live among such mayhem. Why would he had even bothered to put his syringes back in the box and close it? I don’t know, this is what fuels conspiracy theories you are gonna say. No, it is just rational observations made about old photos and you are free to do whatever you want about it.
