"Wonder had gone away, and he had forgotten that all life is only a set of pictures in the brain, among which there is no difference betwixt those born of real things and those born of inward dreamings, and no cause to value the one above the other."
--H.P. Lovecraft, The Silver Key
At the time Don DeLillo wrote White Noise (1985) computers were still a discrete object and something that you engaged with on an occasional basis. We had PCs but they were chained to desks and their applications limited. Today we’ve got a device 100x more powerful with a bottomless scroll and an insatiable appetite for our attention. ChatGPT and other AI applications spit out answers that flatter you and may or may not be correct, with the only certainty that you haven’t learned a damned thing. And here comes a new bright shiny and it's time to stare at the next thing!
We have WAY too much information at our disposal and most of it is noise, not signal.
This is the low hum of DeLillo’s novel.
You don’t need a plot summary; as with a book like Stoner the plot is entirely secondary and almost irrelevant. Remarried suburban well-to-do husband and wife raising a family are outwardly OK but inwardly unhappy, living a life of mindless consumption. The husband is a college professor who has built his entire career teaching an undergraduate seminar on Hitler. Weird, but he’s the king of his odd fiefdom of hyper-specialized knowledge.
The family is awoken from its torpor by a chemical spill which briefly threatens to tip the novel into postapocalyptic territory. It does not, but exposure to the chemical lends an apocalyptic air to the rest of the book. The husband is poisoned, likely fatally. His wife is caught taking experimental pills to remove her fear of death. This leads to some late novel drama that I won’t spoil here.
Is it worth your time?
Qualified yes. You need to read outside your genre; White Noise won a National Book Award and DeLillo is a wonderful stylist.
We are drowning in white noise more than never. Even though the technology of the book is dated the underlying message is even more relevant today than 1985.
I recognize myself in the novel’s protagonist. My head is stuffed with useless information; I have become an “expert” on things like sword-and-sorcery and heavy metal, but I could not fix a car engine or build a house. I suspect many of you will identify.
Now the qualifications.
It’s a postmodern novel and rather enervating. I’m much more aware of what I consume (even if I still eat too much junk food and drink too much beer); I know that you are impacted by that with which you choose to spend your time. And this book doesn’t have a particularly uplifting message ... though neither does A Song of Ice and Fire and people seem to like that well enough.
I would not recommend reading too many postmodern novels without a strong foundation of other works. Balance this stuff with heroics or fantasy or the spiritual because there is none of that here. It offers no answers to life, just an (admittedly beautiful) depiction of our powerlessness, and helplessness in the face of death.
It’s the usual stuff: God doesn’t exist, we’re just chemical reactions, even a gorgeous evening sunset is just natural phenomena—and quite likely the result of toxic fumes from the spill.
None of this is presented as a Good Thing by DeLillo; the protagonist goes from complacency to ennui, to unnerved, and finally disappointed by the state of the world. He refuses to engage with it, the hard cold data of it, and remains in a state of denial. And when he does attempt action the book steers into something of the pathetic and comic.
But if you want to learn how to incorporate theme into your work, or what heroic fantasy/S&S pushes back against, or how to create believable characters, I’d recommend White Noise.
Sword-and-sorcery typically works better in the short form than the novel, and I think I know why. It’s a lot harder to sustain breakneck action over 250-300 pages. I was reminded not for the first time of this maxim while reading Andrew J. Offutt’s Sword of the Gael (1975, Zebra Books), which I found to be a bit of a mixed bag.
Sword of the Gael is the first in a series of six books from Offutt (and later co-writer Keith Taylor) of Cormac Mac Art, a quasi-historical/mythic High King of Ireland out of medieval Irish legend. Robert E. Howard wrote a handful of stories about the character collected posthumously in Tigers of the Sea, two of which were completed by S&S author Richard Tierney. It is from REH’s interpretation of Mac Art that we get Offutt’s series.
Sword of the Gael opens with a couple fantastic chapters that hooked me out of the gate. A dragon-prowed ship bearing Cormac and his crew capsizes in a storm; many men drown but about a dozen or so including the mighty Dane Wulfhere the Skull-splitter cling to the wreckage and survive after they wash ashore on a rocky isle. Combing the barren spit for any signs of life or life-giving water they happen across a temple of anachronistic construction. Something not of Roman construction, nor even ancient Celtic, but of Atlantis. And it’s occupied by a hostile Viking crew.
Had Offutt ended there it would have made for an excellent short story. But after this well-done piece of Howardian world-building and weirdness we never see nor hear of Atlantis nor the temple again. A classic unused Chekov’s gun. Maybe we will in the second book, The Undying Wizard (1976) however this is not pitched as a series nor a book one. And after the great opening sequence the story begins to flag.
But hold your judgement for a moment.
Though it fails to live up to its opening promise there are many interesting elements in the reminder of the book that carried me through to the end. Offutt says in the introduction he read millions of words and took thousands of words of notes researching ancient Ireland, aka., Eirrin, and in the process fell in love with its history and legends. This is evident. The story feels historical and interesting in a way a lot of generic fantasy does not, clothing and food and Irish culture faithfully depicted. We get so little of Ireland/Eirrin as the setting of fantasy novels (Taylor’s Bard is a notable exception) that this was welcome, and moreover well-rendered. Here’s a bit of that rendering, from a monologue delivered from Cormac’s love interest, the Irish princess Samaire:
There are no former sons of Eirrin, Cormac of Connacht! It’s a spell there is on the fens and the bogs, and the cairn-topped hills of green Eirrin called Inisfail, and it envelops us all at birth like a cloak about the mind. We are forever under it—even those who so long and long ago moved across Magh Rian to Dalriada in Alba. Eirrin-born is Eirrin-bound, as if by stout cords and golden chains.”
This stirs my Irish blood. What do you expect with a last name like Murphy? More than a bit of Eirrin is in me (as well as Danish blood from my mother’s side).
Speaking of stirred/spilled blood, we also get a desperate pitched battle against Picts, and a fun battle against a pool dwelling giant squid. We get a reasonably well done and familiar story of a hero’s homecoming, back to the land that once declared him an exile. Cormac is the son of a murdered high king but cannot return to Eirrin because of a killing he committed years before at a great assembly, a sort of great fair and friendly gathering of competitive clan rivals where no quarrels are permitted (not unlike a Danish Thing). But the young and hot-headed Cormac is goaded to violence and flees his homeland for a dozen years.
Offutt isn't Howard but he’s a good storyteller in his own right. Sword of the Gael is earnest (Offutt even includes bits of his own verse); you cannot fake its enthusiasm. As a standalone novel it’s not entirely successful. But it’s an interesting failure, entertaining enough, and moreover instructive for writers working in the field. I’d give it a tentative recommendation to S&S fans.
For many reasons I have metal on my mind these days. I mean, it’s never far—I’m a confirmed metalhead, lifelong—but my enthusiasm waxes and wanes.
Right now we’re waxing full.
I can’t shake Ozzy’s death. I suspect it might be at least partly due to the algorithms that shape our online existence. It’s everywhere I go, from Youtube to Instagram to Reddit. I’ve been listening to a lot of OG Sabbath and Ozzy solo material.
More on Ozzy in just a moment.
I also have had three people close to me read my heavy metal memoir WIP and am processing their feedback. I’ve submitted proposals to a few specialty publishers and will continue to do so.
I suspect I will self-publish via KDP but who knows… I just know I have to do the thing. I believe in the story. I hit a bit of a lull and the 10th or 20th or 50th crisis of self-confidence but now am coming out on the other side.
Onwards.
***
Back to Ozzy. He’s everywhere right now.
As I write this the live stream of his public funeral in Birmingham is set to begin.
We are perceived a certain way, but that doesn’t mean we are that way.
We make mistakes, even grave ones. We do dumb shit, harmful shit. But that doesn’t define us.
We get a second chance, because we get to decide.
You can change your life (you must). You have tendencies and biases and weaknesses and strengths, but you are a (semi) rational being. You’re born with a personality archetype that leads to introversion or extroversion, anxiousness or confidence, reflective or active postures to life.
But these fall along a spectrum. None of these traits are immutable.
I reject biological determinism and materialism. I believe in free will. I believe there is an immortal soul in every human, bound to our houses of flesh but also something apart, malleable, full of potential (for good or ill). We can deduce the presence of a soul by its absence.
Life is not fixed. And that is a miracle.
Where’s my proof?
Ozzy.
How unique was this dude? There will never be another like him. No AI, no algorithm, can replicate his contradictions—his wild acts and occasional descents into darkness, juxtaposed with his jubilant, caring spirit.
We all must wear masks and adopt personas. Ozzy wore one for the stage. But you could see the real person underneath.
Go back and read Butler’s remembrance, but in particular this bit:
People always thought Ozzy was a feral wild man, but he had a heart of pure gold. Most of his infamous antics — the bat saga, biting the head off a dove, pissing on the Alamo, snorting lines of ants, and the rest — came in his solo years, away from the restraints of the Sabbath crew. But if you were a friend in need, Ozzy was always there for you. When my son was born with a heart defect, Ozzy called me every day to see how I was coping, even though we hadn’t spoken for a year.
His wife Sharon forgave his transgressions. We can forgive too.
His friends loved him because he was full of humor and hope. He came from nowhere Birmingham and changed the world.
He was the face of heavy metal, and its soul. If not its brightest talent its center, the sun around which the rest of the metal universe revolved. His charisma was off the charts. The world turned out to see him and Black Sabbath off in Birmingham, which you don’t do for assholes.
I've never known a world without Ozzy Osbourne. Four of Sabbath's legendary first six albums were out before I was born. His loss is immeasurable.
I think some of Ozzy’s solo material is overlooked. Certainly not “Crazy Train,” “Bark at the Moon,” “Mr. Crowley” or “Mama I’m Coming Home,” but how about “Fire in the Sky,” “Mr. Tinkertrain” or “The Ultimate Sin”?
As I noted in my Black Sabbath post our metal heroes are dying off, and the list is getting longer. Lemmy, Dio, EVH, Paul Di'Anno, and now Ozzy. That’s how it goes, none of us are getting out alive.
It makes me sad of course, but also reflective, and expansive. Paradoxically death opens my heart. See enough of it, and you realize life is too short for grudges and pettiness and trying to “own” each other. How about more celebration of the good, of reading and taking a few notes from the “Diary of a Madman” who wrang every fucking bead of sweat out of this life?
Maybe if we can all stop hating each other for five minutes and realize that we’re walking a finite and short path on a spinning ball of rock in the darkness of an unfathomably massive void we’d all be … a little happier? Or at least more appreciative of the miracle of our own lives. Ozzy had his dark moments and transgressions and addictions, but the outpourings of support confirm a few common traits: He laughed a lot, he cared about his friends, and he was hopeful.
My grandfather had fabulous foresight. After WW2 he and his buddy bought a piece of property in the lakes region of New Hampshire and built a pair of cabins that still stand today, with modifications. It’s an inspiring story of wartime service and family sacrifice you can find here on the blog.
We still have the cabin. It’s passed through a couple generations and today I’m a 1/5 owner. My extended family splits the cost of utilities, taxes, maintenance, etc, and we all put in for vacation weeks in the summer.
I’m currently in the midst of our week away. I didn’t realize how much I needed it until I saw the lake, and felt an unseen load lift from my shoulders. It had been too long.
My company has an unlimited PTO policy, which means you can take as much time off as you want (with approval). What this ideal scenario means in practice is often less time off. Guilt and the protestant work ethic are powerful forces. I hadn’t’ taken anything beyond a few scattered days off this year. But right now I’m enjoying a whole lot of little. Pontoon boat rides, Old Fashioneds, the mournful wails of loons.
I’ve put blogging on hold too, but this morning as I was sitting out on our deck listening to the wind sighing through the maples and ripple across the water I was inspired to write something I could reasonably shoehorn onto the blog.
Here’s a few swordly and sorcerous updates.
I enjoyed a visit from Tom Barber. Tom and I get together at least once a year but typically at his house. This year I invited him to the camp and took him out on a leisurely pontoon boat cruise. We got caught up on everything in his life, including the loss of his beloved partner Terri. Tough times for Tom but he seemed to leave in good spirits.
After a span of more than a decade I watched The Whole Wide World with my wife and daughter. I loved it; they liked it although they found themselves annoyed by Bob’s erratic behavior and creeped out with his too close relationship with Hester. This is a very well-done movie and it left me choked up, but I can see the issues it can cause for an outsider with no context for Howard’s life. For example, there is no mention of the extremely late payments from Weird Tales, which we now know greatly impacted his mental health. But you can't expect too much from a 106 minute film and there is some fabulous acting by Zellweger and D'Onofrio. I enjoyed this revisit of Cross Plains.
I’m reading Andrew J. Offutt's Sword of the Gaels and finding it fun. The first two chapters are absolutely fantastic, setting up the reader for a late Roman Empire/Viking Age historical … that suddenly takes an unexpected left turn into the weird. Cormac and his crew are shipwrecked on a seemingly deserted rocky isle and discover a fortress that seems out of another era, evoking deep ancestral memories of Atlantis and snake-men:
Unfortunately some 70 pages later I can feel a bit of sag that plagues so much long-form S&S. It seems hard to sustain swordplay and fast pacing and lack of character interiority over a few hundred pages. We’ll see what else Offutt can do with the rest of the book.
I read a draft of David C. Smith’s Cold Thrones and Arcane Arts. This is a new title in the works from Pulp Hero Press that offers analysis of what makes sword-and-sorcery fiction tick—what it is, and what it does well when it’s at its best. Interestingly Smith spends most of the page count on new S&S, authors like John Fultz and Schuyler Hernstrom and John Hocking and Howard Andrew Jones and many, many others besides. I suspect this will be well-received in the community although I did offer up a few ideas for expansion and revision. Some inspired stuff here.
Written storytelling has a unique and curious aspect. If a story has a great enough impact on you as a child or young adult, re-reading it can take you back to a distinct place and time in your life, even decades later. It’s a power that I don’t think movies quite possess, perhaps because of the images you form in your brain while reading, or the tactile book you once held in your hand.
After a span of 40-odd years I obtained and re-read Monster Tales, and once again was Werewolf Boy.
This proved to be a fun collection, obviously written for adolescents though it certainly has sharp edges. Every protagonist is a kid and few have happy endings. The 70s “hit different” man.
I enjoyed some of the stories more than others. The standouts included “Torchbearer” and “The Call of the Grave.” “Wendigo’s Child” by horror veteran Thomas Monteleone was pretty good too, if a bit telegraphed.
I also remembered “The Vrkolak” though I remembered it being better. It reads like a PG version of Friday of 13th with Jason swapped out for a giant toad, and murder replaced by scaring a nasty camp counselor half to death.
But the story that most captured my imagination was Nic Andersson’s “Werewolf Boy”, both now and then. I am plagued with a lousy memory but somehow I recalled most of the beats. I think what makes it memorable was my identification with the protagonist, Stefan, a young boy who is treated with a cruelty that stays with you.
(spoiler alert coming)
The story is set long ago in medieval Europe. Stefan is caught out in the woods coming home at night with a puppy. A sadistic local baron is out hunting with his cruel hounds Arn and Bern and tree the young boy. As he reaches for a branch Stefan drops his helpfless pup to the ground. And watches in horror as the hounds tear it to shreds.
To add injury to insult, the baron calls Stefan down, strikes him cruelly across the face with his whip, and rides off laughing.
That’s some callous shit and a shock for anyone to read, but especially when you’re eight years old or so.
But vengeance is Stefans. He encounters a hideous old witch in the woods (she’s missing her nose, which we find out is also the baron’s doing), and asks if she’ll cast a spell to grant him revenge. She does, but not without great cost. The spell turns the boy into a werewolf—and also costs him his soul.
Memory is not just a recall of facts, but also of feelings, emotions. It can be unlocked by a certain smell, a sound—or a story. It can even make you... transform.
As an adult, I found myself shape-shifting, into 10 year-old me. I remembered being shocked by the baron’s cruelty, then (and now). I remembered reveling in Stefan’s vengeance, and thinking how cool it would be if I could become a werewolf, and take care of a few childhood problems of my own.
The bits in the story of Stefan’s transformation from boy to beast and development of a shocking new power and inhuman sense of smell are well-rendered. The fights with Arn and Bern are a slightly less bloodless but no less ferocious version of something in The Call of the Wild. And so were burned into my memory, there for the retrieval--and re-living.
“Werewolf Boy” is an effective little tale and I was pleased to re-read it. And equally pleased to learn that it had the same effect on at least a couple other readers. While searching for details about the author I came across a couple threads where folks who had also read the story long ago were asking if anyone could recall it from its details.
Evidently this story holds a stranger power over more people than just myself.
Anyway, I'm glad I finally have a copy of Monster Tales, and equally pleased to become a werewolf boy once more.
This past weekend I was away celebrating the long July 4 holiday. My extended family is fortunate enough to own a seasonal camp on one of the small lakes that dot southern New Hampshire like lapis lazuli under the mountains. We watched fireworks on the beach, puttered around in the pontoon boat, drank spirits, and forgot about life for a while.
But my mind kept wandering. Far away, to Birmingham, England, where an old greying band dressed in black was taking the stage one last time. Saturday was “Back to the Beginning” and the beginning of the end for a band near-and-dear to my heart.
I’m talking about Black Sabbath, of course.
If you believe Rob Halford and Ozzy Osbourne (who wouldn’t? they are our metal gods, infallible, their word comes from on high), heavy metal’s distinctive sound and look derived at least in part from the sound of clashing steel machinery and billowing fire and smoke of the iron foundries of Birmingham. Birmingham was among the principal engines of the industrial revolution of the mid-18th/early 19th centuries. After the Luftwaffe bombed the shit out of it in WW2—which come to think of it is very fucking metal—it rebounded with a period of economic growth, before beginning a slow decline in the 70s.
Against this curtain of dirty steel and fire heavy metal was born.
Ozzy was born in Aston, a ward in the city, in 1948, growing up in a row of terraced houses. Not a lovely place to spend your childhood. “Unless your life’s ambitions was to work in a factory, killing yourself with all-night shifts on an assembly line, there wasn’t much to look forward to, growing up in Aston. The only jobs to be had were in the factories,” he says in his 2009 autobiography I Am Ozzy.
From this cauldron of crashing iron, molten steel slag and urban decay came Black Sabbath and Judas Priest, the alpha and omega of heavy metal. And others besides. Ozzy escaped the slaughterhouse in which he worked, and hitched to Tony Iommi his star quickly ascended.
Sabbath is regarded as the first metal band by almost everyone; if you think it was actually someone like Blue Cheer you are more than a little pretentious; if you think it was Led Zeppelin you’re an amateur but us metalheads can work with you, young grasshopper, and get you on the path to enlightenment. Those bands made metal sounds, sprinkled in metal chords, and sometimes wrote metal songs: “The Immigrant Song” is thoroughly metal, for example. But Zeppelin as a whole is not. They are blues-based rock. Likewise Blue Cheer may have made songs with heavy metal elements, but they did not start a movement. Black Sabbath did, by going all in with the sound and the look, consistently, album over albums. Their self-titled album debuted on Feb. 13, 1970, and with it heavy metal was born.
If a band is to be considered heavy metal it must embrace that identity all the way--thematically, visually, and most of all, unapologetically. Without irony, unless you are Steel Panther or GWAR. This describes Black Sabbath. The quartet of lead vocalist Ozzy Osbourne, founder and lead guitarist Tony Iommi, drummer Bill Ward, and bassist Geezer Butler, went all-in with crunching, guitar-forward riffs, demonic imagery and lyrics. To get a sense of his sound and how different Black Sabbath is than say, the Rolling Stones—who rock hard but are not heavy metal—you must listen. Words are inadequate. I recommend pulling up “Into the Void” on Youtube or Spotify. You might at first think you’re stoned; the drawn-out intro is downbeat, slow, murky. Coupled with a trippy album cover you might think you were listening to some obscure act who had their heyday at Woodstock and burned out on acid. But then, suddenly, at the 1:14 mark, the song takes a hard right turn into the primal. A primitive downshift to an entirely new type of thing altogether. If you have a pulse this is guaranteed to cause a few involuntary reactions. Your mouth will harden into a rigid, righteous attitude. Your lips will purse. In short order your head will begin nodding to Ward’s driving drumbeat. You may break out into air guitar, mimicking Iommi’s inimitable guitar tones, or you may air drum, swinging your arms to hit an invisible snare. No one seems to play air bass but if that’s your thing, have at it. Go do this now; I’ll wait here. If you experience no involuntary reaction to “Into the Void” or “War Pigs,” you are not metal and never will be.
Sabbath were the torchbearers for metal from 1970-1976, putting out classic after classic album including their self-titled debut, followed by Paranoid (1970), Master of Reality (1971), Vol. 4 (1972), Sabbath Bloody Sabbath (1973), and Sabotage (1975). Sabbath’s distinctive sound came from its tuned down guitars; Iommi needed to loosen his guitar strings after losing the tips of two fingers in an industrial accident (a story that is so metal it has passed into legend, or True Myth). Although they received little commercial airplay Black Sabbath built a massive following with hits like “Paranoid,” “War Pigs,” “Iron Man” and “Children of the Grave.” Their sound would influence subsequent waves of American thrash bands across the Atlantic, including the most commercially successful metal band ever, Metallica. Said Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich during Sabbath’s Rock-and-Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony,:“Bill, Geezer, Ozzy and Tony, if it weren’t for you, we wouldn’t be here. Obviously if there was no Black Sabbath, there would be no Metallica. If there was no Black Sabbath, hard rock and heavy metal as we know it today would look, sound and be shaped very, very differently. So if there was no Black Sabbath, I could possibly still be a morning newspaper delivery boy.”
Sabbath was also the first metal band to feel the unending attacks of self-righteous and pretentious critics, who were unable to appreciate this groundbreaking genre of music because they had their heads jammed firmly up the Beatles’ asses. Rolling Stone critic Lester Bangs in September 1970 panned Black Sabbath’s self-titled debut—the same album that launched thousand metal careers and today remains a stone-cold classic—with the following bucket of ice water: “Over across the tracks in the industrial side of Cream country lie unskilled laborers like Black Sabbath, which was hyped as a rockin' ritual celebration of the Satanic mass or some such claptrap, something like England's answer to Coven. Well, they're not that bad, but that's about all the credit you can give them. The whole album is a shuck.”
55 years later the laugh is on him. Apparently all 45,000 tickets for the concert sold out in 16 minutes. I was giving the streaming pay-per-view serious consideration but again, family comes first.
Sabbath’s last live performance as the original four was at Ozzfest in 2005, although a new incarnation picked up in 2006 as Heaven and Hell (I do consider H&H Sabbath in all but name—Iommi drives the boat, Chief. Not Sharon).
But no original four for a stretch of 20 years. Until Saturday, when they took their final bow. Back in Birmingham, as it should be.
Seated on his black throne Ozzy managed to summon some of his old power and haunting vocals, the unmistakable keening wail. I was pleasantly surprised by their performance, both the Sabbath final set and Ozzy’s solo material prior. Seeing him struggle through “Mama I’m Coming Home” brought a tear to my eye. I think he was struggling because of the words and what they represent, not the effort.
Some of the old guard summoned some great performances, too, pieces here and there I’ve been able to catch. Slayer was great. Steven Tyler was fantastic though he did not perform any Sabbath songs. Metallica rocked (“Johnny Blade”? Are you kidding? Awesome). Jake E. Lee, Nuno Bettencourt, and KK Downing shredded. I was also impressed by some young blood/Yungblud. Whew, that dude can sing. I’ve heard great things about Rival Sons cover of “Electric Funeral.”
I haven’t seen all the performances yet, just what I’ve been able to find on YouTube. I’m sure there will be some special DVD release and I’m looking forward to seeing it in full.
We also had some great recorded performances. Jack Black’s School of Rock version of “Mr. Crowley” made me smile, and nod… and cheer. He played it straight, rare for him. Over the top in an early 80s Ozzy tribute costume, but not straying into buffoonery or mockery, and he sounded great. I’ve already mentioned Judas Priest’s cover of “War Pigs,” which was sort of a separate thing though obviously timed for the show.
I don’t believe another metal band will ever receive this sort of all-star sendoff. Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, and Metallica are rivals in influence (though I think Sabbath still gets the nod here) and Metallica is more commercially popular, but by the time Metallica retires—they are still in their early 60s and could have another solid decade ahead of them—the old guard will have slipped away, either into musical senesce or their mortal coil. We won’t have Slayer and Steven Tyler to perform; we won’t have Judas Priest to create a video tribute.
Metal is going, boys. Its passage had already begun with the deaths of Ronnie James Dio and Lemmy, but with Sabbath’s departure from the stage we’re truly seeing the beginning of the end.
And it makes me sad.
Classic heavy metal is tied to the romance of my life. Growing up I discovered its magic. For me heavy metal was a release from conformity. When I joined the ranks of metal warriors I wasn’t scared; I was part of something powerful, unique, wild, weird. I wore the denim, and the black.
