...i stared at the atari in the ads in the back of the x-men comic, next to the ad on muscle in 7 days, with a cartoon of a bicep that was larger than life like the comic book heroes i aspired to be...
...my older brother paced... ferocious... perhaps channeling the energy fo the bengal tiger from our bengal that we'd been transposed from for a better education better opportunities and things i can never fully grasp...
...what does it mean to voluntarily leave ancestry to come to a culture and custom hostile to you for the sake of your children?... i've only know self-centered decision making... but this is not what i thought of as my brother paced...
...i got into the mercyful fate song and album and other heavy metal albums made by american boys in their parents garage to release rage against a machine that had grown overbearing to them...
...somehow this translated to us... immigrant kids... kids of immigrants... us whose home life and outside life were night and day... who spoke differently, ate differently, dressed differently, prayed differently then everything in the outside world... for us... heavy metal... the rage of the guitars and drums and yell of the vocalist was our pent up alienation being released... having a channel... a cry against what we didn't understand and yet... an opportunity to fit in... to assimilate...
...the music of megadeth and judas priest and metallica somehow spoke to us and the american kids born and raised and generationally marginalized in america's cities and suburbs...
...yet the coalescing of our shared medium... our spiritual channel... cultivated a creole of art and destructiveness...
...since the creolizing required our acceptance of our patron metal-head saints as our saviors... our aesthetic in accessory, clothing, and hairstyle had to match theirs... our head movements and dance had to match theirs... our taste in woman and womanizing had to match theirs... our relations to instrumentation had to match theirs...
...in time this meant becoming a frankenstein to our ancient immigrant family of ancient earth traditional values... the spiral away from soul led into what then became necessary...
... drugs, alcohol, sex, pizza, donuts... addiction... you win... we made it in america...
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