I discovered Nirvana on classic rock radio during my early morning drives to work after Hurricane Katrina and the flooding from the breached levees decimated New Orleans in 2005. I’d completely missed the grunge wave in the 90s. Back then, I spent long days in a medical practice working with sick patients, stubborn insurance companies, and overworked hospital clinicians. In addition, I was dealing with infertility treatments that ended in disappointment after disappointment for a lot of the decade. I put more stress on myself by sneaking outside to smoke, an old habit I picked back up thinking it would calm me. Overwhelm was a dark cloud overhead as I struggled to cope.

Popular culture, including the hottest music of the time, wasn’t on my radar. The only music I could tolerate was classical which played in a low murmur from the little radio on my desk. I didn’t know crap about classical music, having been raised on Country & Western until I rebelled into 70s Rock in my teen years. But those days of almost constant stress made my beloved Rock too loud, too overwhelming, just too much.

I’d lost a job I enjoyed because the company didn’t return to New Orleans after the hurricane and now I was stuck in a frustrating job in a ghostly mold-infested building in an atmosphere of dead. I knew I was lucky to have one of the few jobs available in early 2006 but my life had changed and I was perpetually pissed off. Rock radio was a perfect companion on the drive to my post-Katrina job, the pounding bass and screaming guitars fit my mood on the dark early-morning drives up Tchoupitoulas. My companion commuters were usually pick-up truck beds filled with brown-skinned laborers with work-worn faces and dirty, rumpled clothes all squished together holding picks and shovels swayed precariously on the crumbling streets toward long days of tearing down and hauling away. On the inclined approach to the Crescent City Connection bridge, work trucks with ladders attached often wobbled in front of me as I clutched the steering wheel hoping one wouldn’t come crashing through my windshield. Traffic was minimal because so few people had yet to return but what vehicles were on the streets felt like accidents waiting to happen.

Right away, “Come As You Are” pulled me in with its plaintive opening guitar riff and Kurt’s gravelly invitation. The drums, guitar, and vocals were hypnotic and visceral as I drove the nearly empty streets paved with dried mud and debris, lined with flooded cars, stinking garbage, destroyed houses and buildings spray painted with X’s or messages such as Looters will be shot! or Katrina you bitch! or Bush is wanted for murder! and sometimes, We will be back. Everything around me was depressing, destroyed, demoralizing. Maybe the lyrics come as you are were my unconscious prayer for everyone to come home, for all of us to claw the hell out of this limbo and back into living.

The chorus launched something primitive in me as I sang along, my body rocking to the words on repeat...no, I don’t have a gun. Something in that chorus felt like a desperate denial of the metaphorical gun I wanted to point at all the crap I saw everyday on my apocalyptic drive.

It was scary and cathartic at the same time. It was my morning ritual, my get-the-mean-out before getting to the office where everything had to be held in. Still today when I hear this song, all the tumultuous feelings are just the same as they were then. That’s the crazy, time-bending thing about music. The moments are always there, waiting.

– Charlotte Hamrick

Author’s Note: Music is an important part of my life and appears frequently in my work. In this piece, I wanted to share how the raw and honest music of Nirvana, particularly this song, helped me exorcise the complicated feelings I experienced during a difficult period of my life.