Hi there, this Brian McKeown and this is my first blog….. ever. So this opportunity is pretty exciting and on top of that the topic is on Heavy Metal, something I hold dear to my heart. A little about myself: I am 28 years old, I am the father of twins, a boy and a girl, I am a Junior attending the University of Denver and I am majoring in Political Science and International Studies. The purpose of this blog is to discuss the topics that were covered in the previous week in my “Heavy Metal & the Re-enchantment of Modern Life” class.
This week in class we talked about the concept of dis-enchantment, more specifically the dis-enchantment of life in today’s world. It is really striking when one stops to think about it. In modern society things move so fast with the advancement of communication technologies, people hardly have time to relax or spend time with family because they are working overtime or two jobs just to get by, our choices are somewhat limited by our level of income and also by what is marketed to us by multinational corporations. More and more it seems like people are just going through the motions of life just to fulfill their role in society rather than to fulfill their responsibility to themselves, and that responsibility is happiness.
We also discussed how Heavy Metal addresses the issue of dis-enchantment mainly through the concept of power. Heavy Metal is a type of music that is hard, fast, heavy and frankly not easy to listen to. It gives you the goose bumps and it makes your heart beat a little faster. There is no room for grey area’s or “sure, I kinda like it”, you either like it or you hate it. And if you like then you are essentially powerful enough to endure it. And with this power one can face the things in life that are causing an individual misery. The music is very anti authority in nature and it is also individually self empowering. Whether, one is facing a mean teacher, a boss, a hard course or exam, business or financial problem, a tough project, a divorce or break up, drug addiction, a death in the family, the list goes on and on and people who listen to heavy metal can use it as a tool to build confidence, get themselves pumped up or find purpose or a goal. The listeners of heavy metal use it to support themselves as they go through this dis-enchanted life, they use it because the music speaks to what it is that is making the person feel overwhelmed or insignificant in life.
I will give an example from my own experiences. When I was a teenager, probably 13 or 14, I realized that my parents were extremely unhappy people. I didn’t understand it at all, they both worked, the family was lower middle class but we got by. They owned a home, they had functioning vehicles, and their health was good. It just didn’t make sense to me why they would be unhappy. As I thought about it more and more I realized that they had jobs yes, but they hated their jobs and the commute. I realized that they really didn’t like the house they were paying a mortgage on but it was in their price range, same thing with the cars too. And come to find out there was a huge mountain of debt that was crushing down on them, then and now 15 years later. Unfortunately this stress experienced by my parents was redirected onto the kids and it wasn’t a very happy childhood.
So as a child my life was dis-enchanted because I hated chores, I hated school, I hated my parents, life just felt very unfulfilling and I always thought to myself “it’s got to get better than this”. Then one day I saw my first Metallica video, Until it Sleeps, at a friend’s house. I was totally sucked into the TV, it just grabbed my attention and wouldn’t let go. Then my buddy said that he had the Master of Puppets album and that he would make a tape for me (yes, we still used tapes in the early to mid 90’s), so he made me the tape and I went home and went into my room and put it in my stereo and played it. The first song was Battery and by the time the guitar solo was ripping through the speakers I was bouncing off the wall!! At this moment my stepfather came in my room, ejected the tape, broke it in half, and threw it in the trash. My first reaction was “YES!!!” Even though my tape of Metallica had been destroyed I was so happy because I felt alive! I felt the goose bumps and the adrenaline! I all of a sudden didn’t feel as if life was mundane, it felt exciting and free! So I would say that it was in that moment when metal music began re-enchanting my dis-enchanted life and there’s no lookin back.
