The first time I heard Nirvana stopped me dead in my tracks. It was late 1991 and one of my basketball teammates had put on Nevermind as the warmup music before an early season home game. The album had just been released and somehow he’d gotten his hands on it. Smells Like Teen Spirit blasted over the loudspeakers directly into my heart. It was perfect and I loved it in an instant.
I didn’t know what this music was and yet I felt like I fully understood it. It was a song of course, there were verses and choruses and big guitar chords, but it was also an entirely new thing. It was harsh and beautiful. It was punk and out there but also deeply melodic and catchy. All these years later I can still see the gym as it was when I first heard that music, I can see the light glinting off the shiny floor, and my teammate in the distance who’d just blown my mind.
This was the start of my love for Nirvana, but In Utero took it to another level. That album came out 2 years later when I was a senior. I was waiting for it this time around and bought the album the day it came out. I’d play In Utero over and over at home, blasting it, and somehow my parents and three younger siblings rarely complained. In Utero dominated our living room sound system for months.
Why did Nirvana resonate so much with me and with all of us? That’s a huge question that’s impossible to answer fully, but a simple explanation is that Nirvana spoke a truth we were all feeling, and not just with their words, but with their sound and their vibe too. They so authentically expressed confusion and disappointment with the inauthenticity, cruelty and strangeness of our modern world. They were angry about it too, but these expressions of anger were filled with poetry. And they were beautiful, raspy and savagely beautiful.
There was a punk and grunge scene that had been around for years, but Nirvana did it different enough that they stood out. There was also magic in the air, and perfect timing. What Nirvana created was the exact music we needed to process the specific pain and complexity of growing up at that time, in that world. No one knew it until you heard it, but as soon as you did it instantly became clear. That’s how it was for me at least.
I carried a lot of deeply buried shame and anger back then and Nirvana gave this part of me release. Listening to In Utero made me feel seen as I didn’t feel so alone in feeling that pain. I had rage that I couldn’t understand and Nirvana gave that rage the opportunity to sing and to dance. Their music seemed to touch an untouchable place deep inside. When it was playing it made me feel better, plain and simple.
Kurt Cobain passed away in April of 1994. It was still my senior year, and I was on Spring Break with my family when I heard the news. I was shocked but it also didn’t feel entirely shocking. Instead I went numb. It had been such a strange and tough year already. My dear friend and classmate Eric had also passed away a few months earlier. I’d first heard Nirvana’s music just two years ago and now Kurt was gone. Eric was gone too. What could come next?
Much of what I felt back then is lost in a fog, especially in those last few months of senior year. The big themes have stayed with me, as have the monster moments that cut through it all like when I first heard Nevermind before that basketball game. But there’s one specific Nirvana memory that rises above them all. It was a miraculous moment, a perfect moment, a moment in which I reached a transcendent state that was free of any attachment to anything and everything outside of my present circumstance. And that was when I saw Nirvana live in November of 1993, exactly five months to the day before Kurt Cobain died.
At that show I was consumed by an enraptured sweaty mass of thousands all plugged in to the same energy, which was music, but it was more. I already blasted that music at home all the time. It was different here. And not just because Nirvana themselves were up on stage just yards away from us. It was also the collective response that sharpened everything, heightened it. I felt a collective rage, but the rage was for all things outside that room. In that room we felt the same rage together, we were in it together, and that was comforting and beautiful.
And how does this music flow through you? For me, it was all about the mosh pit. You need to jump it out, bang it out, pound it out. It’s a physical thing, it needs to be. It’s not to hurt anyone, there’s none of that energy for me. It’s all about letting out the rage through our bodies, and when we do that we feel bliss. The bliss of release, of getting it out of our systems at least temporarily, but also the bliss of communion, of sharing these feelings and realizing it’s all the same for us. There’s a violence to some extent too, but it’s not a violence directed at the other moshers. It’s a violence directed at the lies and inauthenticity of the world, at the false promises, at the crazy pressure, at the people in our lives who should’ve helped us understand how messy life can be instead of pointing out our imperfections.
And that was where I entered my transcendent state, bopping and pounding against sweaty bodies as the music vibrated through me, penetrating all corners of my being.
The show took place at the University at Buffalo basketball arena. The floor before the stage was huge and open, and the mosh pit took up much of it. Imagine a half circle extending from the stage with a 100 foot radius starting at Kurt Cobain’s microphone. That was the pit, and the concentric ring around it became the standing room area. The line between these two zones was loosely defined but also closely guarded by a self established group of protectors who ensured people were only hit by the pit if they consented to being in there.
I of course had consented, with excitement and so much energy I could hardly contain it.
And I moshed and moshed. And although it was rage and confusion and hormones that propelled me, that’s not what I felt. I felt joy instead, transcendent joy. It was an aggressive joy, but it was joy nonetheless. It was intense. I was banging hard against people in there, jumping, jostling. The crowd would squeeze you in and out like an accordion. You couldn’t control it but you loved it, even though it actually hurt. The pressure of the sweaty masses squeezing you from all directions was amazing. That hurt was so good if you know what I mean.
At a certain point in the show I felt I understood the movements of the pit enough to be able to move myself in the direction I wanted to go, and what I wanted was to get right up front in the center, right in front of Kurt. So I started weaving my way over there. It was a process, slow and uneven, taking two steps forward and one step back as the pit takes on a life of its own at times and sends you in whatever direction it wants.
But then it happened, finally, and I found myself dead center in front of Kurt Cobain who was just fifteen feet away. There was also a metal gate in front of me with a row of security guards between the barrier and the band.
And now the crowd was pushing me into the metal gate. I was locked in, I could no longer move. It was amazing, but my hips were also starting to hurt. I didn’t want to leave where I was though and even if I wanted to I couldn’t.
That pushing was so intense, I can still feel it, my hips being pressed hard against the metal. But I was also in a blissful state. I was feeling all the pain and the joy and the pushing and the sweat and the almighty music.
At a certain point I couldn’t transcend all the pressure on my hips and the pain anymore. It became too intense. So I asked the security guard right in front of me to push me back a little, to give my hips some relief, and he did. He was huge, offensive lineman huge, with arms like tree trunks. He grabbed me by the shoulders and pushed as hard as he could. This gave me a little space, which I was able to protect for a minute or so until I got pressed back up against the barrier again.
And then it kept going like that. Every few minutes I’d ask the security guard for a push, he’d do it, and then I’d go right back to bliss until the pressure on my hips became too much.
I stayed in that spot for the last half of the show, alternating between bliss and pain. With the bliss I felt connected to something as pure as I ever felt. I was exactly where I wanted to be, fully in the moment, inspired, in love with the music in the air. I was all in too, completely committed, totally open to the entirety of the experience.
With the pain came a reality check. I was hurting but there was also no place I’d rather be. Fully in the moment as well, tasting the hurt at the same time that I felt the beauty and perfection of the blaring music. But the pain couldn’t go unaddressed for too long or it’d be impossible for me to focus on the music anymore.
This felt like some form of nirvana as it transcended everything outside of the present moment. I’ve got huge respect for those that pursue “actual nirvana” by the way, like all of the devoted Buddhist monks out there, so I’m not going to push the comparison too far. But it was just one of those moments that sucks you in in its entirety. You become the present, that’s all there is, and that’s all there was for the rest of that beautiful show.
I remember walking out by myself, following the throng, and meeting up with my friends in the parking lot. We’d gotten separated as soon as I jumped in the pit. Someone handed me a gallon of water and I chugged more than half of it. I was totally soaked in my t-shirt on this unseasonably warm November evening, my jeans were soaked, everything about me was soaked. What a great feeling!
When I got home that night and got undressed the front of my hips were pretty raw and bloody. It was a battle scar, a beautiful battle scar.
I seek this kind of connection. Feeling lost in the moment is something that I want, that I love. But it’s rare, at least for me. These moments of totally connected bliss, even from decades ago, I can still feel and remember so clearly.
After Kurt died I never listened to Nirvana as much as I did before. I’m not sure why, but that’s how it happened. My love for them never diminished though. And now I feel truly lucky I got to see Nirvana live, to touch and taste that insane, exquisite energy. Definitely one of the best shows of my life!