Kurt Cobain once said that “a friend is nothing but a known enemy,” and if you ask Dame Helen Mirren, he might as well have been talking about Google Maps. In a new interview on the Evening Standard’s Brave New World podcast, Mirren teed up a breathtaking quote about Cobain and GPS that has left me struggling for a grasp on reality.
“I always say, it’s so sad that Kurt Cobain died when he did, because he never saw GPS,” Mirren apparently told Evgeny Lebedev, a businessman who owns the Evening Standard and conducted the interview. (No context was offered re: how any of these topics came up.) “It’s the most wonderful thing, my little blue spot walking down the street. I just find it completely magical and unbelievable,” she said.
Lebedev, who has apparently known Mirren for years and describes encounters with her as “a bit like having a conversation with Cicero,” did not ask any follow-up questions, but did remind her that her GPS is “tracking you, Helen!” to which she responded, “I really don’t care.” Maybe she believes Cobain, who died by suicide in 1994 when he was 27, would have written some really good lyrics about GPS, or maybe she believes the ease and convenience of a U.S. government-operated, satellite-monitored map might have radically altered his worldview.
Without answers, we are left to wander in the wasteland of Mirren’s thoughts, alienated and filled with listlessness and rage. Let’s put on Nevermind, shall we?