Personal Narrative: "Memoria"

“Memoria” I think it was the absurdity of it that first caught my attention: an infant greedily reaching toward a dollar bill on a fishhook. But after stopping to give it a second look the layers of meaning began to unfold for me. The child's vacant stare told the tale of someone misplaced, lost, expected to chase the unattainable and be grateful for the opportunity. Tales I knew. Tales I had been living ever since my parents split up. So much came from that diminutive piece of cover art, which was made more extraordinary considering its location amongst the sea of bright colors and images that constituted the CD isle at Super Target. I was there to spend my own money on music for the first time, and there seemed no better purchase than this one, with the naked baby and wavy black letters spelling "Nevermind" in the left corner. I insisted on listening to my new CD on the car ride back home, but to my disappointment the first two tracks didn't immediately jump out to me. I skipped past to track three, which the liner notes told me was called "Come As You Are." I recognized the washy intro guitar lick and quickly realized that I had heard this song before; it was one of the songs my sister Emily would play in her room. She always played her music loud, but she made sure that this one in particular shook the entire second floor every time it came on. We were very close as kids, but she'd been having a really hard time since my parents got divorced earlier that year, and she didn't try to hide how she felt. I remember going to the hospital with my dad to pick her up one day and being so confused by why someone would want to shave their wrists, and more so, how they could cut themselves so badly in the process. She was very obviously upset, and that confused me because I still didn't know what to do with my own feelings. I was only eight, and my sadness had manifested itself in anxiety and depression that would continue well into my adolescent years. Having never felt this way before, though, I kept my feelings bottled up, hidden from everyone, the exact opposite of the approach my sister had taken. Naturally I was worried about her, and when I heard this song that she loved so much, I felt a new appreciation for what she was going through. It was my only link to her in a time when she alienated herself from everyone in my family. Even the repeated chorus lyric "Memoria" sounded like "Emily" to my young ears, and it being followed by "And I swear that I don't have a gun" made the song all the more poignant. This initial emotional connection set the tone for the entire album as I began to dig through it, confident that I had just discovered something important. After a day or so of only listening to "Come As You Are" I decided to go back and give track one a try. I was originally put off by the loud intro section and didn't give the song a chance past the fifteen-second mark, but once I listened further, I was entranced. The quiet part that followed the intro really excited me, even though the lyrics didn't make a damn bit of sense. Kurt Cobain's disaffected yowl was unlike anything I'd ever heard; his dynamic range, going from quite mumbles to blood curdling, passionate screaming, was awe inspiring for an eight year old kid who grew up on the Spice Girls. This was a harder edged sound than I was used to, but it had enough pop charm to still get stuck in my head. The song was called "Smells Like Teen Spirit," and for the first time in my life just hearing the song didn't feel like enough. I wanted to play the song. My mom had found a guitar at work, and after a week of futzing around trying to tune the thing, I finally managed to wrap my little hands around the chords for the intro. I was so excited and proud, emotions I hadn't felt in months. I practiced that intro part for a long time trying to get it right, and then worked on the simple, two note verse section. It seemed easy enough that I could go a little further and even try to sing while I played. This proved much more difficult than I thought, but it got me started playing guitar and singing, and today playing music and writing songs is the most important aspect of my life and my greatest passion. Nearly everything I do involves music in some way, and I don't know if that'd be the case if I hadn't discovered Nevermind. Every single song on this record affected me in different, highly significant ways, but the album closer "Something In The Way" was by far the most relevant and moving during this period of my life. The depression that had started after my parents split up was very inwardly focused; I blamed myself for a lot of what happened and I had really low self-esteem because of it. I developed pretty serious abandonment issues, making it hard to "share" friends with other people and causing a lot of personal turmoil and anxiety. "Something In The Way" is Kurt Cobain's semi-autobiographical account of someone living under a bridge, surviving off of what he can catch and the "drippings from (his) ceiling." While I was obviously not living under a bridge or catching my own food, I had become despondent and felt completely alone. I used escapism through video games to avoid dealing with my emotions and let them fester for years. They didn't go away as I had hoped they would which caused my adolescent years to be a bit hellish, but even worse, it stunted my emotional development in a way that made it difficult to ever let people know how I really felt. All along though, I listened to this song and felt a kindred spirit in the subject; I've always been able to perfectly picture myself underneath that bridge with him, holding on to what little pleasure that I have while trying to confront the daunting troubles before me. This all sounds a little melodramatic, but never in my life has an album affected me as much as Nevermind. It helped me through one of the hardest times of my life and introduced me to music as a serious art form. Never before had I appreciated songs like I did after hearing that record for the first time, and from there I developed a lifelong love and passion for everything musical. Through finding Nirvana I discovered countless other bands and artist who have shaped me as a person and made me who I am today. I will never forget the lasting effect Nevermind has had on me, and I know that it has affected many others in their own unique ways. Such is the power of music!