I wasn’t intentionally shaking off my parents, at least not consciously. As we stood in the audience, jammed in between strangers with exceptional taste in music, we got pushed closer and closer together as each body pressed toward the stage. Anticipation hung heavy in the air, mingling with the heat that radiated from the crowd. Sweat had not yet broken out on me, but the dancing that erupted with the opening act portended the stickiness to come. Excitement throbbed deep in my stomach. The stage glowed yellow, and the iconic backdrop displayed the ten-foot graphic of a slingshot, surrounded by the words “GYPSY PUNKS.”

I had attended concerts before. Somehow, though, the energy of this show coursed through me differently than anything I’d experienced before. It filled the air like electricity, feeling kinetic even before Gogol Bordello walked onto the stage.

With a cheer that seemed to predict the aesthetic change, the overhead lights cast the stage in a deep red. My inhibitions melted away as the band ran to their places, instruments in hand. My parents stood directly behind me, but I could only focus on the performers about eight feet in front. I screamed in exhilaration, my voice drowning pleasantly in the sea of the crowd’s cheers. My hand flew up, reaching toward the band, following the wave of arms.

There was no more waiting, no slow transition into the music. The show commenced with a bang of drums and a rip of guitar strings. The musicians – all eight of them – broke into frantic, perfect motion.

Music filled the room, striking the walls hard and loud. I sang and screamed along, knowing every beat and every word. The pit began to mosh, and I went along with the frenzy, bouncing in every violent but intimate direction, slamming into my neighbors. I lost my parents before the first song came to a close; though this hadn’t been deliberate, I felt satisfaction in being freed from their stifling supervision.

Surrounded by insane, moshing strangers, with zero personal space, my hands and arms and hips were in constant contact with another person’s limb or other indiscriminate body part. I was immediately drenched in sweat – both my own and the other moshers’. I was dizzy from simultaneously jumping and head-banging. I was in some unknown district of a city far from home, and I was essentially alone.

Only, I wasn’t. I was in a place that was probably far from safe, but I felt infinitely secure. Alone and surrounded by strangers for probably the first time in my life, I was not filled with anxiety. In fact, I felt totally comfortable functioning in the super-organism of the pit, like I was home.

I was far from alone. For a perfect moment, lead singer Eugene Hütz stood four feet away. For a
moment, we existed in complete sync; our eyes locked, and we sang the same words, a duet in which my voice went unheard but remained somehow essential.