I got to "honk" the guys nose in the hi-rise drum set! LOL! He poured coca cola on Robyn's, Tina's, my and Stephen's heads.
Also got to pinch this one's bicep :)
Robyn and I got #4's pick :) How cool is that?
Anyone who knows me knows I love heavy metal. All those times you had to be nice for political reasons, all those traffic jams that we get used to as part of modern life, getting there a day late and a dollar short- something what an evening of scream therapy can do. So much of modern life shoves our regular animal instincts and drives into a box of rules and regulations and protocol. The necessity to defend ourselves and fight or flight, regular social instincts and energy. We just can't do whats natural anymore~ But, there is a place for it, the mighty metal concert where ancient instinct meets present technology.
I think its par for course for an adrenaline junkie~ the bass hits you in your chest, moves your clothes even if you're standing still. Then the excitement of the beat and being in unison with thousands of others where you can lose your identity, self consciousness and gain sensation of the moment all at the same time. Runners high happens after you've been pumping fists into the air for an hour or so :) Lights blaring and changing puts you into a world where day and night mix freely.
Not to mention the competitive sport of it! Being snug against the rail is the goal~ something akin to defending a goal or blocking the opposing team. Make no mistakes, as much as I love *love* I will elbow an intruder if necessary 0:) Its a metal concert, its expected. They know it, I know it, we signed up for it... but all in the same breath, we make new friends and find humor and concensus, too. Only rarely do the elbows have to come out. You get intimate with the folks to your left and right enough to realize what kind of antiperspirant they wore- or didn't (eeeewww- in which case, defending the rail isn't such a priority).
Tina and Robyn, her little sister, got to go with Stephen and I. We're veterans, but this was their first metal concert: SLIPKNOT!!!! And we were in the PIT! Whoo hoo!
First, let me tell you a 9 member band is both loud and entertaining. Someone is always making noise and someone can take a break. But what Slipknot has learned from the footsteps of others is to look and behave larger than life by use of physical differences~ instead of the makeup like Kiss, they use masks. The masks serve a few purposes, its a transformation of self into an alter ego to express what the original ego can't. Its permission you can put on your head. Second, its an experiment in mirroring- people react to you differently with a mask on than they would with your bare face: the bare face is human and relatable, the mask is something different and something you can project more onto, much like a doll. The mirroring the crowd offers will be different- I bet a slipknot concert is a bit more aggressive than any other- except Gwar, maybe (lol).
OK, so while the music is going, we see #3 walk right next to us! We're right to the left of the stage, so he's been near us the whole concert long, but he's walking out and about... he disappeared for a while and we went back to screaming, singing and fist waving.
Then the security guard in front of us brushes us to our right. I look over and there he is again! But right next to us! I reached out and grabbed his bicep and gave it a couple of squeezes ;) Stephen told me to grab his nose when he went by, LOL!!! Part of me wanted to, but part of me didn't out of respect. It was a funny thought, tho.
So, we go back to enjoying the concert and then a weird guy in a clown mask looks at us, me, Robyn and Tina in particular and hollered at us... after I saw the video camera, it dawned on me it was CLOWN! #6, Shawn Crahan! While he reached out to grab Robyn's coke, I reached in and grabbed his nose and tweaked it twice, LOL!! I got to grab #6's nose! What a rush, ha ha...
So, he grabbed Robyn's coke and squeezed it, then poured it onto Robyn's head! Ha ha ha! I grabbed her and shoved her at him, ha ha ha, yelling Get her, its her first metal concert, get her! What an initiation. He shook the rest of the drink on me and Tina and Stephen, all of this is getting recorded, btw... hopefully it will go into some recording we can buy. I love it because Tina's x boyfriend was supposed to go with us, but he's too busy being a cheat and a liar.
Look what you missed! nanny nanny boo boo
The whole concert was great~ and it kicked off questions of what brings people to adrenaline laden arenas? It was a blessing to see these folks in the flesh, the beat in your chest, the energy flowing, the electricity in the air the rush in your heart. If I hadn't been so dehydrated, I'd have cried. It felt like home. We met wonderful, giving and sweet people from Mexico City all the way to Louisiana. Ha ha!
But whats been stated before over and over, especially reiterated on Metal: A headbanger's journey , (more towards the end) metal concerts are so much about family and something even more intrinsic, a tribal mentality... a belonging with a group when everyone else, those "out there", seems to be a criticizing force.
"Criticizing force" and the need to get away from it... where does that need come from? Depends on who you talk to. Me? Many things created alienation in my earlier life and then several times later on in adulthood. In adulthood, the number one cause of alienation was ME. Seems sometimes we re-live that which we have not understood enough to change it. This is why, of course, you see children growing up to be abused in adulthood because they don't understand its been passed down to them from years of generational input. Yes, I got on the merry go round, too.
Hmmm... the criticizing force~ the part of my personality that still feels "there" comes from a time where I was a problem child and proud of it. It was said "Where Linda Roberts (my maiden name) went, trouble followed". It was true the tools other people had weren't available to me and what I could do with what I had wasn't good enough. It was really tough deal through a formative time and well, we can't choose what shapes us, right?
My hellraising was inherent, however. My paternal grandmother was a McCoy, as in the Hatfields and McCoys- something about them just made them hellraisers. They fought outside, they fought inside--- they just fought. If society wanted poodles, these people were the bulldogs of the world. There is a sociological reason for this, studies have been done on it, too. (See Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America and Historical Usage of the word Redneck) It has to do with the British invasion of the Scots-Irish and the need to hunker down and thwart off an enemy. Maybe Metal has a Celt tradition? It certainly has a few things in common... But certainly my love of heavy metal is genetic. Go ahead, laugh, I have :).
Seriously, some traits really are genetic, like the ones that bring a person to a metal concert. Like sensation seeking and boredom intolerance, see ADD and Creative Individual Trait comparison. I'd always been an adrenaline junkie- one of Mom's favorite stories is about me begging her to scare me. She'd hang out in the hall or lurk in the closets and jump out and scream. Dad wanted to tie both of us up by our tongues. Gosh, I must've been 2 or 3 at most? But when other little girls liked quiet tea parties, lace and barbie dolls and perfume, I wanted to dance on furniture, read books about Manson and paint "bad" things on the neighbors whirly gigs. Mom wanted so much for me to be into something Victorian and dainty. OK, well, I did like barbies, I guess, too, but rather posed them for portraits (yes, Lisa, I did) and taught them math. Still have the pics :) Sometimes I designed their houses, but always had them dressed to kill.
Anyway, then if you add that in with difficulty being bored (see low boredom tolerance they call it) and causing trouble just to maintain attention span in school.
Some of the practical jokes were pretty bad and they made it hard to be my friend because trouble almost always followed me. It was lonely sometimes because the "nice" kids steered clear and the ones just as wild flocked to me like seagulls after fries. I haven't grown out of it and don't believe I will~ God made me this way and made me this way for a reason. God has made other kids this way, too... but common teaching methods don't reach people like me. Lisa was this way, too, and we both took a bit more patience and understanding.
Common teaching methods have been called by some researchers a "pathology based system". What creates something "pathology based" is that it makes a person feel bad about themselves rather than good. If we mold and model children by telling them: no, don't do this, you've got to quit doing that, stop this, you're bad if you can't do that, why are you being stupid? All we are going to get are kids that feel horrible about themselves later--- but for now in the teenage years, there is all this energetic hate that builds. Gotta go somewhere.
What would help? Lordy, this is a hard one. Education is a good start. This might help.
What would have made my experience different? Now, there's this thing called "Learning Styles" . I'll post more about it later, but it was good looking it up for now.
Learning Styles and multiple intelligences
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