The R.I.P Entry

The R.I.P Paul Gray issue of Kerrang!Magazine is out, dedicated to Paul and Slipknt, and I got it today, courtesy of my mum. So I decided I'd do an R.I.P Blog entry. It's very sad. You know what, fuck this. He shouldn't have died. What I want to know is why the fuck was he alone? Why wasn't someone with him?

Slipknot wasn't your average band that puts out one album and steadily gets shittier every album after. They were getting better and better every time.

I cannot even begin to explain how...who they were to me. People say things like you don't even know them, you're just infatuated with them, they're just rockstars yadda, yadda, yadda.
As far as the first point goes, you're wrong. I do know them. Maybe I've never met them, but through their music I have learned them. I have experienced them. I have that connection. Maybe one day I will meet them, I pray I will, sadly I'll never meet Paul.

On the second point, no. I'm not infatuated with them, I am in love with them. And I don't mean like your average shitty little teenage crush with men she can never have, that's not the love I'm talking about.
I don't love them in the sense of 'oh yeah, I'd totally fuck him'. I wouldn't do that to any of them. It's more...familial?

Like, they're my brothers or my fathers or something. They looked after me without knowing it at a time when everyone else abandoned me. I don't know whether any of you understand the love that I'm talking about.

Through their music, they took my anger and my rage and turned into an energy so...profound and free and...I would come in from a shitty day at school, ignore the incessant bitching of my house (it wasn't a home at the time), slammed up to my room and listened to Slipknot. Some times I would self harm, some times I'd just lie there and either cry or stare into thin air. Almost every time I would fall asleep in their midst. Fully clothed, shoes and all. Sometimes I'd get really sore feet because it would have been raining and I wouldn't have taken my shoes of. It's a habit that I haven't managed to break yet.

Some may find it disgusting but...it's kind of hard to explain. At first it was just that I was too upset or angry to do anything other than just lie on my bed and I'd fall asleep and wake up and go to school. After a while it was a routine. If I just went straight to sleep I didn't have to deal with any of it.

And I started getting fatter and everything and eventually it got to the point where I couldn't bear to get changed because I didn't wanna have to see my body. I wasn't very high on the hygeine either...I now have a fear of baths...I'm better than I was but it still takes me a while before I can work myself up to having one.

It's actually getting worse again because I'm so fat at the moment. You never know, maybe if I lose weight it will make it easier for me to bathe. I don't know why but I have a very strange relationship with nudity.

At most times I'm disgusted by it, I don't like seeing the crude details of the human body, and yet most of my artwork centres around the female figure - mostly the breasts. I don't know why that is because I absolutely hate mine and if I could afford surgery I'd have them removed.

I don't know. sometimes I get into these strange moods of fascination, fascination in things I wouldn't normally be fascinated by...rotting meat for instance. Nudity. Sex. Death (although death I am almost always interested in). Bones. Torture.

All things that most people hate.

I don't know, maybe my wish to be thin isn't just about weight. Like, people wanna be thin so what? They can feel beautiful, they can get some self-confidence, so that people will look at them and notice them?

Yeah I'd feel more beautiful if I were thin and weight has always been a worry for me, I've been dieting most of my life with scant success. But...there's something else to it. I do not have an eating disorder, right? I know and understand that stick thin is not healthy and all that shit. It's not the desire to be thin that makes me wanna get down to what I admit is stupidly thin.
You know, in a lot of cases of anorexia (I acknowledge, not all), the person doesn't realise that they don't need to be that thin to be accepted which is what they start out wanting, it's only when the illness has taken control that they wanna push it as far as they can go.

That's not what it is for me. My perceptions aren't skewed by an eating disorder but still I want to go down that road. It's kind of difficult to explain and I might try later but I feel I've gone off track.

I was talking about Slipknot wasn't I? Uh...oh yeah, I'd come home from school and listen to them until I fell asleep. Yeah, then I'd get up and listen to them on my CD walkman full blast on the bus, wear my slipknot hoody to school for which I got bitched at by students and staff alike.

I point blank refused to do PE because I got bullied because I couldn't do something or I was a freak or whatever they chose to bitch about me for that particular day. I had been wearing my slipknot t shirt because I didn't have a standard PE kit...

So my bitch of a PE teacher turned round when I said I wasn't going to do PE and I had a note from mother saying because I was bullied...she turned round and said you cannot skip PE just because you do not want to wear a white tshirt.

I was like You fucking What?

Now bear in mind that the last few PE lessons I had taken part in I had been slagged off for being fat, slagged off for being a 'goth', tripped up with a hockey stick which fucked my wrist up, had a cricket ball thrown at my face and told that if I kicked this girl again (which I didn't do, I apologised for it because I was tackling her for the football) she would bash my face in. Among other things.

So I had a go. Teacher turned round and said take part and if they bully you come to me and I'll sort it out. Okay I says. So I take part. A group of girls that had it in for me for something that had nothing to do with them started so I went to Teacher and said look, they've been saying such and such.

You know what she said? IGNORE IT. And walked away.

So I went back to point blank refusing to do PE. Slipknot were my only companions at the time. I had no friends. All those who had apparently been there for me had turned their backs, some viciously.

So I dropped out of school for a year and literally my only human contacts my family and Slipknot. I listened to them evey single day.

Admittedly I was a bit obsessed but those of you who know the feeling I'm about to describe will understand why Slipknot appealed to me. It was like a pressure inside that would not stop building. A kettle boiling over, one of those cartoons where they go totally red in the face with anger and steam comes out their ears. I was consantly getting headaches. It twisted my guts up like a deformed cats cradle.

And here were these nine guys half the world away who stood up and screamed this is how I feel and this is what I think and I don't give a fuck what you say.

The first time I actually really clicked to Slipknot was a school morning, me and my sister Kim were watching Kerrang while we were waiting to go outside for the bus, and Duality came on.
The first lines, 'I push my fingers into my eyes, it's the only thing that slowly stops the ach.'
It was like they reached in and pulled something out of me.

An acquaintance who turned out to be a total skank bitch leant me Subliminal Verses. I listened to it over and over and over and over again. When she first leant it to me we put it on in my room and we were sat listening to it.
Most of it I was like 'oh yeah, this is cool'. It hadn't hit me how important it all was yet. Until it got to number 11. This is my all time favourite song and if you have not heard it, youtube it because it is beautiful.

Vol.3 : Subliminal Verses - #11 - Vermilion Prt 2.

She seemed dressed in all of me
Stretched across my shame
All the torment and the pain
Leak through and cover me
I'd do anything to have her to myself
Just to have her for myself
Now I don't know what to do
I don't know what to do
When she makes me sad

She is everything to me
The unrequited dream
A song that noone sings
The unattainable
She's a myth that I have to beleive in
All I need to make it real
Is one more reason
I don't know what to do
I don't know what to do
When she makes me sad

But I won't let this build up inside of me
I won't let this build up inside of me
I won't let this build up inside of me
I won't let this build up inside of me

Catch in my throat, choke, torn into pieces
I won't, no, I don't want to be this

But I won't let this build up inside of me
I won't let this build up inside of me
I won't let this build up inside of me
I won't let this build up inside of me

She isn't real, I can't make her real
She isn't real, I can't make her real

That was off the top of my head, I don't need to look the lyrics up, as soon as I heard this song those words and the sound of his voice, the melody, the harmony, the accoustic guitar, all of it, it was all engraved into my heart.

I'm glad it was dark in my room as we were listening (the light had gone bust and we hadn't got a new one yet), because I was crying.

From then I was hooked, it was like they had opened a floodgate inside and the only thing that could control it was their music.
I searched the net every day like I was possessed, trying to find out every single thing I could about them.

Their music was so real that I didn't want to just listen to their songs, I wanted to know the men behind the masks. I think I succeeded but still I don't fully know them. I guess I never will unless somehow in a remarkable twist of fate we become proper friends. (Ha yeah right!)

The point is, is that losing Paul, who the other guys said was the essence of Slipknot, was more than just losing an idol. It was more than just oh my god that guy in that band is dead, what a shame.

Losing Paul was like losing a close friend, losing a member of a really strange family, and losing a part of something inside of me.

They were like Gods for me, I practically worshipped them and though I have grown up a lot and matured a lot since I decided that they had to be divine, and I know they are simply extraodinary men now...they will always be a huge part of me and Slipknot will forever be a part of my life and will forever be my favourite band.

I will never stop listening to their songs even if I live to be 80 or 90 or 100.

Nothing will ever make me stop because they make me feel alive, they make me feel real and at a time when I question this reality and I don't feel real, I'm sure you can appreciate how important that feeling is.

This may well mark the end of Slipknot - it hasn't been announced whether they'll ever continue. Part of me wants them to because I love Slipknot, but part of me would hate it if they did...It's not Slipknot without Paul.

Loads of fans cry how Slipknot saved their lives or stopped them from killing themselves and all that and I'm not disputing that or anything...Slipknot didn't stop me from trying to kill myself. They didn't save me.
I don't think I can be saved. I tried to kill myself even with the life line they threw to me.

But they held me up for a long time. Things don't just go away because you have an awesome band to listen to. I clung to them like a child clings to her teddy bear.
Even now, when I'm down or pissed off I listen to them and I feel like part of the darkness is being torn away.

No matter how much I listen to them the darkness will always come back but they free me. They give me an energy that is fucking...it's unexplainable.

No matter what they decide now, I will stand behind them as I have done for the last 6/7 years.

Paul was one of the founding fathers of Slipknot and he was a loving and giving guy. He would do anything for the fans and has literally given the shirt off his back.

It makes me angry how he was such a good person and yet the ones in the lime light for being good people are the ones who jump on the bandwagon for publicity. (Admittedly this is not true for all celebrities but it is for a damn good number of them).

But I guess the best people are the ones who are just good because that's who they are and who don't need a lime light to show it.

I'm sad that I'll never get to meet him.

As I've said before Paul, you will be missed but never forgotten and always...ALWAYS LOVED!