Mosh With Love

  Mosh pits are a cathartic descent into our primal nature. The best concerts are poorly lit, super crowded, painfully loud… They set off the evolutionary red flags which get us on high alert. That means a serious adrenaline rush. The nervous energy is crucial to a wicked show. Adult Contemporary sure as hell doesn’t have my heart pounding and my palms sweaty. I never attend a concert to unwind. I go to tense up. Sometimes the only way to purge yourself of anxiety is to binge on it. That is the genius of the genre. The beauty of Metal, in all its grotesqueness, is the power to turn pain into art.

In addition to the thrill aquired from merely attending such a show, it gets even better when you are caught in a mosh and live to speak of it. Biologically speaking, animals are programmed to release endorphins after eating, sleeping, or getting laid, just like we get bitchy when deprived of any of these things. Similarly, we get the same high when we encounter danger and subsequently overcome it. After all, that’s what each species evolved to do. Meanwhile, if you listen to some mellow clarinet tunes, you may feel chill (at best), but not fulfilled.

Let me draw an example from Hemmingway, specifically The Old Man and the Sea. Our daily lives are just like the profane sharks who pose a challenge, though the trial is far less dignified than that of the true catch. We hate our undignified, mundane problems. Homework, career troubles, family issues… Not the kind of thing you want engraved on your tombstone. A broken femur, on the other hand, is far more worthy of respect. As such, concerts are fleeting moments of such trials, when you can actually take yourself seriously. No one cares about your tenth facebook update expounding on the woes of teenage break-ups. But we all care about your potential hospitalization. Sometimes we care enough to tone down the violence in the pit.

In all seriousness, moshes are not mindless violence. They are a Dionysian indulgence. The action may seem random, but we are all aware of each blow we suffer and reciprocate. Every action you take has an equal and opposite reaction. You can take that as a collective, communal dishing out of Karma. Or you can say it’s a first-hand experience of the cruel laws of physics. Either way, I have a final remark of advice:   Mosh with love, and prepare yourselves for some serious whiplash.