Pantera's fate needle (syringe of Damocles).

'Pantera's fate needle' or 'Sword of Damocles'.
For a while now i have been interested in the idea of fate, explored by chaos theory.The band Pantera who had a series of linked events that can be used to look at the nature of fate.This is an idea i have been working on for a while but is still in the design stage.

Pantera were a death metal band, their lead singer developed a drug problem , this led to album delays.Finally he was kicked out, the album was dropped and the remaining members decided on a radical approach to kickstart their delayed creativity. Change the band name and play to smaller venues, let word filter out and try to win over fans who had drifted away due to the album delay.While at one of these small bars gigging, mentally ill man who had fixated on the band snuck in and shot the lead singer and several others.



I liked the idea of tracing back that violent attack to its genesis using chaos theory, the idea that one small event can have prolonged effect. The lead singer initially hurt his back due to jumping around on stage, leading to the beginnings of his drug problems which delayed the album.That injury could have been as a result of the wet stages the band performed on, those atmospheric changes could be traced back to local factories, government regulations. Or more abstract, the needle factory that produced the needles for Anselmo's addiciton, the plastics being created for the needle, the design of the needle itself, the engineer who created a faster better means of production. The chemist who created heroin,the farmer who grew it. One can go on and one becoming more abstract, fractal patterns of meaning, spreading out, all linked to three murders and several injuries on a small stage in a small rock bar in Ohio.