Prison Song
Upon entering my first System of a Down concert, security confiscated my hot pink drill.
I was eight years old.
I had brought it as an accessory.
My father had taught me to use it so I would never be impressed by a man who could fix things.
A few weeks earlier my mother had enrolled me in ballet.
When the music started,
I ran around the room slapping the other ballerinas.
I was, of course, kicked out.
My father was very proud.
The concert was his gift.
They played Prison Song first.
I froze and began to cry.
I had never encountered that much intensity before.
Harder.
Faster.
Louder.
More force than I knew what to do with.
Eventually I stopped crying and began jumping with the crowd.
Later my father lifted me onto his shoulders.
He and his friends were higher than the top of the Chrysler Building that night.
And then so was I.
Above the audience, I felt like the whole world belonged to me.
At the end of the show, the tears came again.
I didn’t want to go home.
So I asked my father if he would leave me with the band.
When I was four years old, he taught me how to headbang to Rage Against the Machine.
To this day, it remains the most useful thing he’s ever taught me.
System of a Down Reunion Tour
The Forum, Inglewood, California
May 24, 2011