The Connection

I have received more than a few compliments on my writing over the years and it has always confused me. It has been a never-ending mystery for me because I could never stand reading. I didn’t exactly earn my writing talent either. I finished a few writing projects and people went nuts. For the longest time, I couldn’t figure it out. Was I just really good, or was I earning it without realizing it? 

Recently, someone told me that they loved how transparent my style has become. I agree, it’s the secret sauce to everything I do. But right after that it hit me: my music is really transparent. I think that’s why I write so well: it’s how I channel my inspiration from music. It’s where all that energy goes. Sure, reading other books has helped my style evolve, but inspiration flows most naturally from my music. And I know exactly when that started. 

2012 was when it all began. I was getting into rock at the time, and Papa Roach was about to release one of the best albums yet: the connection. I still say it’s the best album they have ever done–it’s so brutally raw and emotionally charged. Nothing else is quite like it. There was this one track on there called “silence is the enemy,” and it changed my life forever. 

It’s actually pretty rare that a single song changes my life. I can’t think of too many that have moved me enough to actually change how I have lived. I could probably count them all on one hand. Before the connection, I was the quiet kid. I basically just kept to myself. And I was the only one who didn’t want to do sports, which didn’t help. For one reason or another, I was always on the outs. And all that angst was stirring inside, like a soda can that was ready to blow. 

And blow it did my ninth grade year when this song came out. It was originally meant to be about pain, and how you shouldn’t keep quiet about our struggles. I took it a little more literally. It was a call to riot, to be crazy, to live life large and to never hesitate. The frontman, Jacoby Shaddix, was something of a wildman, so I took this as my call to be just like him. A whole new man was born that day, and it was all because of that song. 

I started learning how to be more expressive. I would watch interviews with Jacoby and copy his mannerisms. I would imitate the way he would talk and wave his arms around. I would copy his funny lines and pronunciations. Then I realized that I could do this for other rock stars as well. I started gobbling up interviews, live performances, and anything else I could find where people were being entertaining. It sounds a little creepy as I describe it now, but it gave me life, so it is what it is, I guess. Eventually, I started youtubing to practice my new personas. I would do comedic rants, fun insights, and reviews of the songs that meant the most to me. I was well on my way to becoming a rock star myself, and it was all because of that one song. 

Well, I wouldn’t say it was just the song. I was feeling depressed around this time too. An idea dawned on me that helped get the gears turning. I realized that I didn’t necessarily have to be feeling good first to act happy. In fact, if I acted happy first, I would start to feel better. I heard somewhere that there’s a cycle that human beings follow: how you act affects how you feel, which affects how you think, which affects how you act. The three are connected and if you can get in control of one of the three, the other two will follow. 

Up until The Connection, I didn’t know much about expressing myself. I was low on social connections because I was in Ukraine and the language didn’t come naturally to me. That, and I often found people rubbing me the wrong way. I always had more going on in my head than I knew how to put into words. Maybe that was part of it. Either way, learning how to be expressive brought a lot of joy to my life. I felt like I could rock the world everywhere I went, even without music playing. That’s the thing about creativity: it naturally breaks down structure and order. It doesn’t stay in the same place that you found it. An inspiring book might move you to go out and build a house. Life’s weird like that. 

All this newfound inspiration could be a bad thing too. Like most high school boys, I started running my mouth all the way through class. I couldn’t shut up. I’d say I feel bad for some of the people that had to put up with me, but I was still the tamest of the bunch. Yeah, the rest of the guys around me were actually ten times worse. While I would just sit there and talk, the other guys were throwing pencils and slapping each other with rulers. We were a wild bunch, I guess. 

But I definitely evolved when that song came out. I remember I would listen to it every day on the way to school, getting myself fired up to face the day. No matter what problems stood in my way, I was going to blast through them. I was going to scream my heart out because I was the chosen one. 

Man, it sounds dumb when I say it like that. 

But binding myself to this song had another weird effect: it turned a lot of people into enemies in my head. I suddenly became mad at the world. Everyone was against me and it didn’t make a ton of sense why. I could try to pin it to one thing or another, but honestly–I don’t know what my problem was. It’s not to say that there wasn’t one, it’s just that I was so wrapped up in my own little world, boiling over with so much emotion, that I couldn’t really rationalize anymore. 

At the time, I would have told you that the people around me sucked. Some of that was true, but I think the big thing was that I wasn’t very well connected. Like I said, I was the only non-athlete in a world where athletics were basically the only thing that mattered. So, by default, it was just me, my video games, and my music. It’s not to say that I was surrounded by awful people. We were all just normal, socially inept high schoolers. That was just the way life was. 

I sometimes wonder what my life would have been like if I hadn’t discovered that song, or even that album. I don’t know exactly how I would have turned out, but I’m convinced that something drastic would have happened either way. Between living in a single-parent house, the foreign country that I never truly felt was home, and the raging storms of being a teenager, something was going to give. Whenever I look back, I thank God that He kept the damage to a minimum. 

The only other song that I remember hitting hard off that album was the lead single, still swingin’. It was an anthem track that never failed to get me all riled up. The verses were rapped. Rap always has a way of feeling like fighting music. I don’t know why. But blended with the rock style that the Roach was known for, this was one heck of a track! It all blended well in a way that felt unique, like no one else had done it like this before. 

This rap transitioned into the chorus, a singing section that felt like the anthem of a generation. To this day, that song still fires me up. Not just to hit the gym or do a long drive, but to chase the dreams that I have for my life. That line of, “yeah, forever we will stay,” gets me every time. My eyes got a little moist just typing it out. 

That’s the heart of rock for me: power. Force. I feel like most people have the self-respect to chase what they want. It’s not something they question or have to figure out. It’s just a part of life. It’s like eating when you’re hungry or banging your head against the wall when you’re bored. I don’t feel like I have that. Something deep in my DNA tells me to just hack it when things don’t go right. 

Maybe that’s the real response to have when people tell me my music is angry. Maybe the right comeback is to say “yeah, but there are certain things worth getting angry about.” Come to think of it, if someone were to mess with one of my buddies, I wouldn’t be happy about it. If someone messed with my cat, I would want to mess with them. But when it comes to me, that feeling dissipates. It’s not that I lost it, it’s that I never had it to begin with. 

There was another major milestone that this album brought, though: skull shirts! My mom was adamantly against shirts with skulls on them. She said it was because she was a nurse, which I always found funny. I mean, every healthy human has a skull, so what’s up with that? But the connection was such a powerful album for me that I decided that it was time to fight back, even if it meant I would die on that hill. 

Long and hard we fought and eventually I won! We ordered a shirt with the connection’s album art on the front. This actually dawned an era of band shirt collecting (I have some funny stories about that. Stick around and I’ll tell some of them.) I still chuckle at this because it wasn’t even that scary a picture. I used the album art for the thumbnail of this post, but you can google it too. It’s not your typical scary rock n roll skull. It’s a simple thing that represents the hearts that rock music helps connect. It’s actually pretty cool when you think about it. But to my mom, it was a skull all the same, so it was obviously evil. We laugh about it now. 

If I was planted back into that moment with the knowledge I have now, I would probably do this part all over again. I had a lot of stress on my shoulders and I shiver at the thought of what might have been if I had found another outlet. Who knows who I would have become without music, and without anthems like the ones found in the connection. But those are what-if’s that, thankfully, haven’t come to pass. All I know is that becoming expressive has changed my life for the better and it’s a big part of who I am today. 

Until Next Time

May Peace be your Guide.