HOMESHAKE

It’s the early 2000s. A music video plays on a nearby loop on the Much Music TV channel. A man stands in a room, the background is nothing, non-existent, as if in a void. The camera rolls and does not stop. He is shirtless. Sparse guitars begin as the camera sways effortlessly through the abyss, never taking its omnipotent gaze off the man. He is shirtless, cut from stone like a statue from antiquity. Flawless in all regards, but we have not seen everything yet. The music ungulates towards an apex as the camera begins to lower its gaze. Revealed are two lines few have seen before. Angular muscles beginning at the navel and ending at the thighs. A new style of music video is formed, a unique take of R&B is created, the artistry of D’angelo is now truly whole.

Peter sits at home transfixed to the screen. He is amazed as his perception of what is possible in music has changed.  Peter is now on the precipice of a new dawn.

Morning has broken.

“Wake up, grandma why don’t you put on a little makeup.” Or so he thought the lyrics went to the new music video playing. Chop Suey by System of a Down. Peter is flabbergasted again. More new styles of music, more new guitar riffs!  He sits, mouth open, with a copy of Guitar World magazine open to the tablature of Chop Suey. Reading the fine print with a magnifying glass he is now completely stunned, knocked flat onto his back, when he learns a guitar can be tuned much lower than he had expected! Drop C in fact. A tuning he uses to this day.

“Time to go to school young man. This essay isn’t going to read itself,” he thinks to himself clutching his homework. At school a classmate of Peter reads his essay aloud for marks. They stumble through the quote “Be careful when staring into the abyss because the abyss will stare back into you.” After class, amazed at his friend’s penmanship, Peter does a secret handshake with the author to celebrate the success of the essay. A ‘home-shake.’ That was the moment he realized how to unite his new inspirations. An artist is born.

[written by an interested third party]