Nirvana / "In Bloom"
The first time I heard those crunching, distorted guitars, it was a revelation. Then the vocals began: melodic but ominous, they soothed me into the first thirty seconds of the song. Finally, that immortal Cobain scream let loose and the guitars followed suit with Dave Grohl’s punishing drums speeding them along. This was my introduction to Nirvana’s “In Bloom,” and it was the first song that ever changed my life.
Nirvana and Kurt Cobain would go on to dominate my teenage bedroom walls (and ceiling), but perhaps most importantly, they became a common bond for my best friend Devon and me. Neither of us had grown up with siblings but our mothers had known each other forever, and we had grown up like brothers from two different families. Nirvana was the first band that we both obsessed over, and I can still remember his mother driving us to the mall to go to the music store where we used our respective allowances to buy our first Nirvana tapes (yes…tapes). Even at that age we approached our work with efficiency--“Ok, if you buy ‘Bleach,’ I’ll buy ‘Nevermind’—then we can just trade!” These are the names of the first two Nirvana albums we ever bought, and as we soon discovered, playing them on the car ride home when at least one mom is present is the quickest way to put your new musical tastes in jeopardy. I could write the entire history of my adolescent years as told through Nirvana lyrics (I won’t, but I could). Nirvana did more to influence my musical tastes than any band since, and informed a lot of my other interests and friendships. I was hooked by the quiet/loud dynamic of their music: melody and introspection in some songs, hair-scorching aggression and guitar-driven rage in other parts. The sensitivity and poetry of some of Kurt’s lyrics contrasted with the ambiguity and ugliness of his other songs, and his words probably served as the first moment in my life where I really wanted to dive into an author's writing and figure out what it all meant. Really, Nirvana for me was a series of firsts. The first song I learned to play on guitar was a Nirvana song (I can’t name it here, but fans will know that it begins with “Territorial…”) and I learned it with another friend of mine. The first new friendship I ever made in middle school began with a loaned Nirvana tape. And most indelibly, the drug problem and tortured artist stereotype come true that ended with Cobain’s terrible suicide was the first time I, at 10 years old, ever really had to grapple with the permanence of death. All of these are the reasons why, no matter how many times I hear the opening E A G C of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" come from a classic rock station, I can still feel the bite of the guitar strings on my fingers. Nirvana will be forever interwoven with some of the earliest memories of my childhood, some of my earliest challenges, and some of my closest friends. (517 words) |
He's the one |
Maurice Sendak / Where the Wild Things Are
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"And he sailed off through night and day. And in and out of weeks. And almost over a year to where the wild things are.” |
Ralph Waldo Emerson / "Self-Reliance"
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There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion . . . The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.” |