I WAS BORN TO ROCK

I guess I can pretty much pin point the moment that I decided to dedicate my life to music. It was probably about fifteen or sixteen years ago. My brother Nick and I would often play with the two brothers down the street. I think that their names were Dennis and Clayton, but at this point who can really be sure. This was a time so much different than now. This was right before I really allowed my imagination to take over. Sure I had imaginary friends at the time, but who didn't? There really weren't that many kids in my neighborhood, sometimes I just needed variety. It wasn't that I was schizophrenic or anything, but maybe I was, who knows.

I guess I did see a lot more of what was really going on back then. I have an idea of something that I call the threshold of human vision. I guess the best way to explain it is to compare it to the threshold of human hearing. I believe that most people can hear from 20 Hz to 24000 Hz. Of course there are sounds above and below the threshold but we don't consciously hear them. Unconsciously we can experience these things though. I have read that during all of his speeches Hitler had a 15 Hz tone playing behind him. Now if you think about your brain waves, alpha is right around 15 cycles per second. When the brain is experiencing alpha waves it is most susceptible to picking up information. There is no conscious block of information. I have also read that if you play a 9 Hz tone and a 6 Hz tone at the same time (this of course makes an audible difference tone of 56 Hz) that you will lose control of your inhibitions and begin to have very animalistic sexual tendencies. Now you don't here these sounds, but you are definitely affected by them.

Now back to the threshold of human vision, perhaps there is more there in the world than our eyes will allow us to see. Perhaps we used to see these things when we were young until we were taught how to see or perhaps there is just an incredible world happening that our eyes have never seen. Of course there are atoms and microbacteria and such, but what else is there that we cannot see? I would imagine spirits, elves, imaginary friends, and such, but I can't remember. Sometimes when I sit still long enough in nature, I get a glimpse of these things again. I have an idea that the illuminati is systematically trying to destroy our attention spans. Without attention spans we will never see what is really there and we will spend all of our time concerned with the ideas and things that the illuminati want us to waste our times with rather than seeing the bigger picture. Damn those bastards.

Anyway back to my friends. We used to have a lot of fun. We played sports and war games and pretty much anything else a normal group of kids would do. I remember Michael Jackson's Thriller was really big at the time. I might still have a copy of it on vinyl somewhere. We would come up with all sorts of great ideas together. I can't remember what these ideas were, but we were always up to something. We were prone to aimlessly tearing things apart to see what made them work and then never putting them back together (the mystery was gone, what was the point). Our parents used to have to hide the appliances from us. We were the last family on the block to get a microwave. I think that this is why.

So we played and we had fun and sometimes we would try to stay up late and watch the late night sex movies. We were curious of everything that was taboo. None of us could figure out why there were certain things that we just weren't allowed to experience. One day Clayton realized that there was a place where there were naked women all of the time. I can't remember what he called it, maybe it was Avanude Road. I can't remember but it was brilliant at the time. To get to Avanude Road we would simply have to dig a hole in the ground. Now Clayton wasn't sure how deep this hole had to be, but we all imagined it would have to be pretty deep. Every day after school we would go out to this hole that we had started digging in the woods and make it a little deeper.

During this time Nick and I had to stay with our grandmother and her kids (my aunts and uncles). My uncles were metal heads, and I looked up to them because they were cool and because they had long hair. That week or so really changed me because I heard something that I had never heard before.... HEAVY METAL (Kiss, Black Sabbath, Motley Crue, Metallica). It was the coolest thing that I could ever imagine. It was heavy and free, and I am sure that it was something that was considered taboo. I loved it. All day and night I would listen to these records. I was a changed man (or boy depending upon your cultural preferences). I went back to the hole a few days later, and I just didn't have the same urge to find this place where all of the naked women were. Sure I still helped, what else was I supposed to do, but I just wasn't into it. I tried to teach everyone the words to "Paranoid," but my brother was the only one that would sing along.

A few months went by, I was pretty much an all out metal head by this point, and we still hadn't found Avanude Road. We did however have a huge hole in the woods. This was a crater actually. We had developed a pulley system to get the dirt out of the hole and we had built rope ladders so the we could get into it. I remember we were standing outside of the gate between reality and Avanude Road, and I was saying how I wanted to be Vince Neil when I grew up when all of a sudden I felt something smack me in the back of the head. I remember the sound. It was a sound that I had never heard before--my first drone I guess--a high pitched sound that enveloped my body. Then there was black.

I woke up in the hole covered in blood with Dennis yelling from above me to quit talking about about guys with long hair and that I was wrong. The sound was still there, I don't know that it ever went away, and I was to dizzy to get up so I just passed out again listening to the sound. I dreamt that I went to Avanude Road and that I had naked women rubbing their hands all over me and then Motley Crue showed up and Vince Neil told me that I could never be him and that I had to be me. The rest of the group started playing "Shout At The Devil" and Vince told me that there would be a point in the future where I wouldn't even like Heavy Metal music anymore. I told my hero that I will always love Heavy Metal and that it will never die. He laughed at me and told me that Dr. Feelgood has already killed them all and that RATT really has no talent. I didn't understand what he meant. He told me just to stay away from needles and supermodels and to follow my dreams.

I was awoken by my brother. He helped me to get up the ladder and we went home. I was extremely puzzled by the behavior of Dennis. Didn't he know what a great man Vince Neil was? If everyone wanted to be Vince Neil, we probably wouldn't have all of the problems in the world that we have. We were never really friends again after that. I could never find it in me to trust him again. I had to take time off from school for a little while. During that time I listened to the records that my uncle let me borrow. I spent countless hours staring at myself in the mirror, doing the rock and roll face, memorizing the lyrics to everything I owned. I was able to air guitar "Stairway To Heaven" better than anyone I knew.

At this point I remember my imaginary friends completely changed. Gone were the days where I ran around town with the allegiance of elves and fairies. These things just weren't sexy anymore. I was now a member of the KISS Army and that was definitely sexy. I returned to school when I healed and I only wore black for the about the next four years of my life. Everything about me was heavy metal. Every thought that I had was heavy metal. My parents were so concerned about my new love of what they called "men in tights" that they decided to put me in a special group for children with low self esteem. This really didn't help me any because everyone of the kids in the group were into Heavy Metal. By this time I was listening to bands like Death, Sepultura, Venom, and Slayer. All of my book covers were covered with the logos of my favorite groups and in art class I drew a portrait of myself wearing an Anthrax shirt. My parents began to hate me, and I would have to turn my stereo up really loud just so I could hear the music above my mothers constant fits of crying. I couldn't understand why no one could accept my love. I didn't think that there was really anything wrong with me. The only thing that understood me was my precious metal. I liked it loud, hard and intense and it never did me wrong. I stayed up late every night dreaming of being the lead singer of the greatest metal band. I filled up so many notebooks of the best lyrics that heavy metal would have every heard but then, just as prophesised in my dream, the unthinkable happened... I discovered punk rock.

Vince Neil was right, my love for metal disappeared. I never heard another guitar solo again. My love for metal is now only a footnote in my life, a small fraction of the vastness of the universe of my mind, but for just one moment, for one brief instance that lasted my entire elementary school career, metal was God, and I was its humble servant.