Thinking thinking thinking. Memories and such. Like flitty little fireflies blinking on and off. Writing about my past music moments, the stories take on a sepia tone like old photographs, or maybe more like clippings or stills from the middle of a scene, or the very beginning or end. Not a flow from the start to the finish.

In August of 1991, I walked into a hotel room with two twin beds. On one sat Kurt Cobain and on the other sat David Grohl. Outside NYC was molten with summer heat (a bit like it is currently) so that the over-AC’d room was prickly cold, which I’ve decided accounted for the goosebumps. I’d been listening to Nirvana’s Nevermind advance cassette on wash&repeat nonstop to the degree I was sure the tape would snap. Something about it. Everything about it. Moved me in a way I hadn’t been for a long long time. The thing I’d loved about music was the loss of control. Back then it felt freeing.

I walked into the room to find them there, Kurt and David, no Kris, can’t remember why not him. I was going to turn on the tape recorder and ask them questions. Be a journalist for SPIN, which was my job. Weirdly, the question and answer requirement was my least favorite part of the job. What could I ask them that hadn’t already been asked? Even with a band who were just stepping into a larger spotlight. Or maybe the actual question was What could I ask that would make me seem cool and hip and completely wink-wink in on the fact that interviews were necessary evils and really I’d rather you just pretend like I’m your friend and act normal. In retrospect, it does amaze me how often I flat-out tried to ignore the fact that my job was to do just that: ask questions uncomfortable, inconvenient, informative, fun.

In this case, I started softball. I had a few having to do with the issue of selling out and how much money they got for an advance—probing stuff—I didn’t really want to even know those answers to be honest. I mostly just wanted to hang out in this air-conditioned room with members of a band whose music I was transported by. After a couple of questions (how’s New York treating you? What are you doing while you’re here? blah, blah, blah.), Kurt announced that in X-amount of minutes he was going to be sick. As I remember it, I nodded as if he’d just told me his favorite ice cream flavor was Rocky Road. Then, true to his word, he got up, went into the bathroom and did what he said he was going to do (I’m guessing. I couldn’t actually hear anything). David explained they’d been to a party the night before…something he ate…hungover…etc. I didn’t know anything personal about Kurt Cobain at the time. I just loved the music. The out-of-body performances even when he was sitting in a swiveling office chair. Eventually, he came back and we carried on. Maybe he was a little less present after his return. Again, I don’t remember being overly curious or suspect about it.

It wasn’t until two decades later when I knew more about his struggles with substances that I wondered about the connection between that and him leaving the room during our interview. Funny thing about writing fiction, which I do now, is that you get to use situations and recast them. Maybe it’s to play with seeing how other outcomes might look or what the thing would feel like if the stakes were way higher…or lower. In any case, I used the situation even though the character in my book does not have a name beginning with K and in no way resembles that guy from Nirvana. But the situation was the soil I planted the seed of the scene in.

It feels like a gift, these memories, although I also recognize how my relationship with control has morphed over time. While I can’t altogether put guardrails around where those various situations took me back then, looking back I can slow walk them in and out of my mind at will. And the thread that runs through it is the sound and fury of the music. The loss of control I loved back then has in the intervening years become complicated and difficult. Like deep-diving into a cave where it may be dark but it’ll also be exciting. I can swim out at any time. Now that I’m a diver, I know the requirement of having a dive buddy. That’s an incredibly important thing. And although I had good friends back then, I didn’t have a dedicated buddy who knew the way back into the wide open bay and to solid ground. We were all just flailing around, in and out of caves and the like.

Swimming this analogy one pond further, I’m remembering my first dive after getting certified. We were in Zihuatanejo, Mexico, and our guide had taken us to some unspeakably beautiful coral reefs. She actually had a hold of me because my buoyancy capabilities were pretty crap-ass. I was agog at the beauty of it all. Then she let go and I floated to the top while she swam on. She was keeping an eye on me though, making sure I was all right. I looked down at everyone drifting below me and had a brief thought that this must be what it’s like to be dead—sounds morbid, yes, but it wasn’t actually, then a school of fish swam by with big blinking eyes and stared at me, which felt surreal and happy-making, then on the boat going back to shore I got nauseous and puked over the side, but felt so much better afterward and finally ended up on a lounge chair grinning stupidly, staring at the blue-green clear-water bay, eating saltines and sipping soda water. It was a good day. If I keep a-hold of that entire analogy and transfer it to experiencing music, I can see that all kinds of emotions can coexist: the good, the bad, the ugly, the transportive. And how I translate them will shift and shake like an archaeology dig. What stays in the trap I can look at, then pen down in stories real and sometimes with the flourish of fiction.