On Megadeth Retiring

Dave Mustaine is calling it a career. I never thought I’d read that in the news. Then again, I never thought I’d hear that Ozzie died. That news walloped me. The Megadeth news just made me determined to catch them on their final tour. It’ll be more than a celebration of music. It’ll be a reflection of where I was in my own life when each of their albums over the last few decades dropped.

I always admired how fiery Mustaine remained throughout the years. Most artists have a relatively short shelf life. It' isn’t easy to maintain the passion required to drive you into the limelight. We’ve been experiencing painfully diluted versions of Metallica, Nine Inch Nails, and Foo Fighters for years, if not decades. Megadeth, surprisingly, has kept their releases steady and consistent. It’s been headbanger after headbanger, right to the end.

The final album drops early next year. What pressure for the new Megadeth guitarist: it’ll be his first and last Megadeth album. At the same time, what an amazing position to be in.

Square One

Sometimes the best path forward is backward, one of those paradoxes you’d think only exist in a Lewis Carroll story. I’m not just taking a step backward these days. I’m sprinting towards what once was, but hasn’t been, but potentially could be again, if one resists the natural ebb and flow of things and swims toward the maelstrom.

I think of time and how deceiving and malicious it can be if one isn’t careful. Age 10 was both yesterday and three decades ago. A 10-year-old’s idea of sprinting down a sandy hill for the sake of feeling a cool breeze on the cheeks and the adrenaline rush of raw speed was enough to try something that an adult would consider dumb (because it’s unsafe, of course). A tumble and scraped knees were worth it. I think of trying to skateboard and drink coffee at the same time, and failing spectacularly at both.

Contrast that to adulthood, when movement is mostly calculated. We are tethered to a beaten path, a watch, a pace, and a “goal.” Even the trails are a set number of miles, a metric. The daily walk stays on a flat sidewalk, perfectly smooth, manufactured for the sake of comfort, a number of steps that a doctor says must be “hit.” Walking for the sake of “exercise.” Movement is a chore; you’re either sitting robotically or walking robotically. What adult yearns to hang upside down and study the clouds?

I try to find the spontaneous boy who thrived in random chaos. That person, I think, was waiting patiently, not dead but just in hibernation.

I go out on a brisk fall morning and run barefoot in the park. A few random sprints with no set interval or time, just the rush and fast twitch muscles activating. I wander through neighborhoods I hadn’t seen before and study the halloween decor in the lawns.

I drive to work listening to what I used to consider 90’s trash, Limp Bizkit, and think a metal show sounds like a great idea, just losing oneself in music, aggressive and fast music, cathartic music, anti-establishment stuff with machine-gun guitar riffs and banshee vocals.

It seems preferable to another day with a prescribed routine: a day that slashes routine to pieces.

We have a pumpkin painting activity at work, for team building, so I paint Art the Clown, the evil killer clown from the Terrifer films. Everyone else paints happy faces or just writes inside work jokes. Nothing left for wonder or awe.

I doubt I won the contest, but I know I created a nightmare or two.