Auf der Maur rose to the challenge, drawing inspiration from her lifelong practice of keeping a diary and taking photographs as a documentarian. “Those practices protected me and preserved my memory. It was how I could feel I had agency over my life,” she says. “To be quite honest, my life was out of control. I wasn’t the band leader. I wasn’t the big machine pushing the bands on stage. I was just a young girl attached to the ride, trying not to drown. I took agency in my life, and I documented, photographed, and reflected. I would turn the camera on me and send messages to myself in the future like ‘I have no, no fucking idea what’s happening, but you’re going to understand it later.’”
In the wake of Kurt Cobain’s death earlier that April and the media frenzy surrounding Courtney Love, Auf der Maur recognised history unfolding around her. “I always knew what I was photographing was for the future,” she says. “I knew the world we lived in was changing. Corporate forces had co-oped youth culture and sold our magic as consumer products. Of course, the world is always changing but for that brief moment, all of our rage, fears, and passion ran through that roaring rock music. We were like canaries in the coal mine.”
As the mother of a teen girl, Auf der Maur holds faith in a better future guided by connections that transcend generations embedded in community and collectivism – and the fires that once lit the world aflame still roars. “We can all agree that the way we live is warped and merged with tech monoliths and war mongers, and all we have is us,” she says. “I am writing this for all the freaks, others, artists, and sensitive poets so that we can find each other.”
