A Treatise on the Mosh Pit

I. Definition/Form

The mosh pit is a form of dance/accompaniment attached to a variety of musical genres, including various incarnations of punk and metal music. It is also a ritual, which can be compared to certain religious experiences, due to its spontaneity and formal procedure, which come together to create something similar to speaking in tongues. The act of moshing involves a group of people gathered in a tight crowd bumping and ramming into each other; the tightness is an important element, as this will somewhat force the individuals into the act, as they navigate through the flesh. Moshing can also incorporate other acts based in these subgenres, including stage diving, pogo and hardcore dancing, but these are occasionally restricted based on elements like the venue or the performer. The mosh pit, beyond being a cultural aspect of these genres, also serves as a form of mini-society within the vaster society of these mentioned countercultures. It works as a society, which in turn creates roles for its individuals, as well as working as a spiritual experience. Before going further, it is important to mention that my experience with mosh pits comes exclusively from punk shows. These experiences may differ within a metal environment, but this treatise is specifically aimed at the mosh pit as a part of the punk show.

II. The Pit as Society

To the outsider, the mosh pit seems like a war zone, a state of total disarray with no rules or boundaries. The truth is the opposite. These pits have their own unspoken rules which dictate how the group operates. Essentially, a mosh pit is social anarchy on a much smaller scale, wherein the participants take care of each other with no overseeing authority. Added to this is a state of controlled chaos, creating non-violent frenzy with the knowledge that the individual's life is not in danger (people have died in pits, but these are often cases where a performer or internal individual decided to take the role of overseeing authority and rile up the crowd to be unsafe or more violent). Despite the lack of order, a mosh pit is a gathering of individuals who, unusually, take the form of cogs in a machine; the individuals must be able to bounce off of each other in order for the pit to work.

The most important thing to remember about a mosh pit is that a pit is always an agreement. This is something important that some individuals seem to forget, so, to repeat for emphasis: a pit is always an agreement. A lot of shows, usually shows with a more poppy sound or indie appeal, tend to have one guy who insists on starting a pit; this person, referred to as he, because it is invariably a man (for several reasons to be discussed later), will forcibly and insistently bump into the people around him and ruin the atmosphere, because some shows were not meant to have mosh pits! This is a disagreement towards the possibility of a mosh pit. An agreement is always visible; agreement is innate; the moment that agreement is reached, movement begins and things immediately get going. How does the society of the pit handle disagreement? There is a succession of steps: after the individuals around the offender show their disdain and it becomes clear that he will not stop, members of the pit will forcibly remove him from his position, often by pushing him away from his position or even physically dragging him away; certain shows will even see the offender beaten, but that is not a frequent sight. This may seem to conform to western cultural standards, but it differs in one important way: the individual's removal is collectively agreed upon and it is not committed by an individual who has been given the job (similar to a bouncer or a police officer), but rather by the "faceless individual" closest to the offender. This self-policing also comes in other varieties, including, among others, removing the shoes of people who forcibly attempt to crowdsurf or removing those whose expressions are not appreciated by the crowd, such as removing a hardcore dancer, one who throws fists and elbows and kicks at the other moshers, in a show where such dancing is not appreciated.

Another important rule of the pit involves watching out for all individuals. A pit is ultimately an example of a mutual, benevolent violence, a social group whose purpose is to release energy, not to harm others. As such, the most important rule is that you always cease all movement when one member of this group falls and make sure that the fallen individual is standing and safe. With a good mosh pit, it is often impossible for anyone to fall anyway, due to the large number of people gathered in a small space, but, in the unlikely case, it is always important to gather and raise the fallen; again, in a good pit, this will happen almost immediately: depending on the crowd, this may run the spectrum from offering a helping hand to grabbing the person in any way possible and dragging them up (the easiest way to do this is to grab the person under the armpits and drag them up!) This rule is one that often surprises the opponents of the mosh pit, who see the activity as a form of ultraviolence; who often imagine that a fallen individual just becomes a better target; picking up a fallen member is absolutely the most important aspect of the mosh pit!

Finally, the boundaries of the pit are an important aspect to remember. The mosh pit is a small subculture of the concertgoer. As such, mosh pits have to be concentrated. The area set aside for the pit is often an area directly in front of the stage, which has come to be known as the pit area (or perhaps was called a pit, where the name mosh pit comes from; chicken or the egg, essentially). The venue, in these cases, is laid out like so: the immediate vicinity in front of the stage is the pit, in the form of a circle. In this area, anything goes! The participants can dance, bounce off each other and ask each other for assistance for whatever reason. Immediately around the pit, there is a chain of people who serve an underappreciated importance. These people do not want to partake in the moshing, but they still take on the task of making sure that the pit is contained, in order to "protect" the people outside the pit, the third and least interesting layer. This chain of people are usually "respected" by the pit, which is to say, they are usually recognized and not involved against their wills. On the other hand, the people of the chain are also given extra power, pushing the moshers away when it looks like they are about to leave the boundaries of the pit. To reiterate, the mosh pit is essentially a perfectly-governed anarchic society. Of course, there is also a personal importance attributed to one's involvement within a mosh pit.

III. The Individual in the Mosh Pit

As has been mentioned in the previous segment, all the individuals within a pit serve their own purposes, whether it is as part of the chain or as instigators or protectors. It is important to remember that a pit is, at its core, a cooperation of individuals, like atoms within a molecule. Unlike regular society, a mosh pit does not have singular roles for each individual; instead, each individual carries the possibility of all roles, whenever they may become useful (one clear differentiation, again, is a member of the chain immediately outside the pit, who, as long as they are part of the chain, only serve one specific role). The most obvious individual role is the mosher (intentionally named as blatantly as possible) which refers to the very act that makes a pit a pit: this role consists of constantly moving and attempting to make contact with those around you. Another role is, again, picking up the fallen, which falls on those nearest to the fallen individual. Yet another role is the launcher, an individual who helps those who wish to crowdsurf from within the crowd; another related role is the surfee or the water, if you will allow for the metaphor: these are the people who work to keep the surfer up; after all, a fall from that high could be dangerous. These people are tasked with two related objectives: hold the surfer up and keep them from falling down, even if it is by holding on to their foot while someone else has their arm. One final role, often one which is non-consensually trust upon the person, is the barrier: the group of people "tasked" with keeping the moshers from running into the stage, by placing themselves at the edge of the stage: these people have the best view, but are also constantly battered during the performance. These people differ from the chain outside the pit, because most of these individuals will leave their position at some point and be replaced, unlike the frequent steadiness of the chain.

One issue that comes from the individual in the pit is unfortunate sexism that tends to be prevalent in the pits. A common complaint among women who attend punk shows is that mosh pits are unwelcoming to women. As a result, the pits tend to include very few women, although the pits at concerts including more political bands, female musicians or more pop-based sounds tend to include more women. Women tend to face two issues in these pits. They are usually heavily avoided, not necessarily out of malevolence, but out of the belief that they must be protected. In the worst case, there are cases of people going out of their way to grope women who mosh or stagedive. This is ultimately the one thing that keeps mosh pits from being a perfectly egalitarian social environment. Thankfully, though, there are more and more feminist and queer-friendly scenes popping up all the time, so this issue may soon become an issue of the past.

IV. The Mosh Pit as a Spiritual Experience

Perhaps the most beneficial aspect of the mosh pit is its ability to mimic religious spectacle and result in its own form of spiritual awakening. Similar to concepts like the sweat lodge, the mosh pit accomplishes this experience by draining the individual of all hydration (it is, of course, also important for the individual to cooperate with this step), resulting in a new state of exhaustion. There are a variety of steps that need to be taken to insure a proper spiritual experience in a mosh pit. First, the pit must be inescapable. This result can be attained by placing one's self in the centre of the pit, allowing crowds to gather to the back of the immediate area, making "escape" impossible. Once the pit begins to come to life, a few physiological results occur: you begin to sweat, both from movement and proximity, and you begin to ache, both from movement and contact. This contact also fits a religious context, similar to the self-flagellation that is an important part of certain Abrahamic religions, except this "self-flagellation" comes as a part of teamwork, with each individual aiding everyone else. This contact also reaches another level of spirituality with more modern concepts of sharing energy. While this may be an unpopular opinion, a pit can be as small as two people; the point is to play off of each other, search and destroy in a way; two or three or a hundred people target each other and bounce off of each other, to exchange this energy through bodily contact, while depleting one's own energy.

Where does this all lead? The dehydration and depletion of energy will eventually lead you to a point where you feel like death is imminent and this is where the experience reaches its zenith; it is when you are near death, even as a state of mind, that everything suddenly falls into place. This is the point of the mosh pit; once you reach this point of dying, suddenly you will lose your ability to feel pain, your ability to feel fear and your needs for rehydration; suddenly, you become a part of this group who are all dying and you no longer care! That is the beauty of the mosh pit: the transcendence of death. Punk has always been a lifestyle that has been constantly "dying"; every famous punk declared its death at one point or another, with the belief being that it was at their moment that punk survived. As a result, punk is constantly in a state of dying, making it the most ephemeral form of art or expression. Similar to punk's constant teetering between life and death, this deathly experience in the pit is also an ephemeral one, lasting only as long as a show. This is another part of the appeal of the pit: unlike life, you die and then it's over; the show's end brings you back to life. There is another parallel to death that comes with crowdsurfing. Often, the surfer will find their way to the front where they will be forced to find their way back to the pit, which is to say that the surfers will essentially fly their way out of death and out of the experience, again leading to some major spiritual paradox. Once you leave the venue, you can go back to your regular life, until the next show where you can die again, if only to remind yourself that, like punk, you are in a constant struggle between life and death!