System of a Down

Everyday I get into my car and plug my iPhone into its swanky console iPod connector. When I do this automatic and mindless task, akin to clicking the coffee pot on as I head out to walk the dog every morning, it is without thought or measure.  When I combine my phone and my car together the same thing happens every time, and has for close to three years.  The hard driven beats of System of a Down (SOAD) start to blare. Loudly. 

I’ve become so familiar with my music beginning automatically that I have a pavlovian response of clicking the satellite radio button and finding something good to entertain me on Sirius radio.  This action happens every time use my car, for three non-stop years. Until, strangely yesterday morning when I clicked my iPhone into its tiny holster, and when the driving guitars and hypnotic vocals of Serj Tankian, the lead singer of this alternative heavy metal band started, my automatic response failed. I sat there listening to this bands proprietary song, as it moved forward I was moved backward.

I received Toxicity, System of a Down’s first major release as a present from my Ex Dalton, right after September 11, 2001.  We took the CD on our first road trip. A black Dodge Ram driving across west Texas in the middle of the night.  Two men hand in hand.  September 11 fresh on our minds. We listened to the album over and over as night covered the Texas landscape. The heat of night trying to force itself into the cab of the truck. We didn’t know our future. We barely knew each other.

We spent a week in Santa Fe. Getting to know each other.

There is no other reason why this album starts when I connect my iPhone other than the first song starting with an “A”