It all started (over) with a twisted ankle

I guess it's time to start it all over. It's been a long long while, but this is a blog about journeys, right? Since I've been standing still for that much time, I finally found myself a goal and here I dive into my next personal journey.

It all started with a twisted ankle. Yep. Four freaking days with a plaster cast, unable even to move around the house, which caused me to remain lying on the couch for these four-freaking-days, watching TV. That was the reason I saw ALL 2011's Rock in Rio concerts last October. Many good gigs, many many others that still terrorize my sleep at night, and one in particular that was none of the above.

I have been haunted by a specific little-bit-nasal, deep, unique voice for ten years, but never really stopped to actually pay attention to what it was trying to tell. It was 2001 when I first heard it, probably an afternoon on MTV's "Disk" - the daily top 10 show. Then last October, at the last night of Rock in Rio, a recently-reunited Los Angeles band started to play. By the time the last chords of "Prison Song" were given to the public, I was furious with myself: why the fuck did I miss ten years of my life NOT listening to them?

The voice was Serj Tankian's. The band was System of a Down.

From fury came an eager wish to regain time (I felt like a teenager again): look for material, try to get familiar again with that voice and those tunes from 2001 top 10 hits "Chop suey!", "Toxicity", "Aerials" - oh, gosh! "Aerials"! I remember that simple, haunting melody with GREAT guitars! How could I neglect it for so many years? And all Music from before and after that time. It wasn't until I finally got (all) the albums that I heard the song's "hidden track" "Arto", and then I freaked out. What was that sound about?

So I passed to the live concerts and interviews. I ATE them. Nothing gives me more pleasure than studying Music, and that's what this routine is for me: listening to people talk about their sound, trying to understand how their Music get the way it does live and on recording, and of course their background. And then I found out about the band guys' Armenian descendance and what they have already said related to their heritage. Okay, it was a little too exotic for me to believe a North-American (kind of) mainstream rock band - if one takes in account that they sold A LOT... because their Music is not what we think about when we hear the word "mainstream" - could be so particularly different. I want to know more about this background! What is this country, where is it on my tiny, too-damn-western map?

I was taken aback by the first picture I Googled, and the second, and the 100th. I fell in love with the folk Music, and the colours, and the churches. I fell in love with Armenia. And I'm going there in 2013.

This year is my preparation. And this journey is all about Love.

To hear what I was talking about

(Since I decided to kind of document all of this journey and make it public, I'll be posting in English. Sorry for any mistakes, that's not my mother language)