Nirvana: ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit,’ Twenty Five Years Later

I was 18-years-old when I knew that I wasn’t what I had I invested in. The end and the beginning converged to leave me confused and lyrically emancipated from all I had depended on with levels of confusion.

I was in a club that let me in based on an ID that I garnered from free spirits who assured me that I was entering a domain that required my presence.

They were right.

The thumping of Heavy D and the rest of the posse that fit perfectly in the genre of adulation kept me wide awake and prepped for the renderings of what I had never heard before.

It was loud and commanding.

The force of the beats against the screaming and pleading for attention didn’t scare me. It was the words. The drums beating with force that can’t be denied.

He sounded new and old. He was determined to rile up the indigene in me. He wanted blood for the dare to relinquish everything I believed in on the bet that I could be something else. On a whim.

I took the bet.

Twenty-five years later — I still listen in awe and picture the blood splattering on the walls — and the gaping hole ordering witnesses to question the audacity of life in the orchestral beauty of refinement.

We love and we lose — and then we gain the knowledge of prophetical bullshit that leads to the cross — but who bears it?

I am old enough to astutely answer that question and yet I am rendered inadequate because of so much hidden and renewed.

I danced to this beat and hated the vision staring back at me in the mirror at a club — infected with the evidence of struggle.

When you remain silent — you live but then that familiar rhythm hits your fray and you smell it.

Damn it! It stinks of teen spirit.

Okay. It’s time. To fight like hell!