I WANT A NEW LIFE FOR EVERYWHERE

Earlier today I was listening to an iTunes playlist named “old school punk.”

It's pretty rudimentary stuff: Ramones, Clash, Sex Pistols, Damned, Buzzcocks. I had thrown in some Wire, X, and Blondie toward the end, in the interest of heterodoxy.

I made a CD of these songs last year for Ma-chan...

When I was in Japan with the family last summer, I had the chance to spend a day with my 23-year old nephew, Ma-chan. His dad took us all to a large park, with the express purpose of playing “catch ball.” This was a reprise of what we had done when I was visiting a few years prior.

As we drove to the park, Ma-chan commandeered the radio, inching the volume up on an Asian Kung-Fu Generation CD. His father, a school Vice Principal, was remarkably tolerant, and simply raised his voice a little to converse above the noise.

The talk turned eventually to punk rock, and Ma-chan was clearly delighted to hear that I had a long acquaintance with the genre. We went back and forth on the topic in broken English/Japanese, relying occasionally on Taeko's translation.

He was not too familiar with the history of punk, so I promised that I would burn a CD for him, which I was able to do right before we left for America.

I could tell that Ma-chan was traveling on a slightly irregular path, and I wanted this mix to convey to him some of what I had always valued most about punk. I wanted it to communicate tenacity, hope, and courage. I wanted it to let him know that he would surely make it through all right...

Last night at about 1:00 am, Taeko's phone rang next to the bed. We both bolted up with a start, and I went to the bathroom. When I returned to bed, she was still on the phone, speaking in Japanese. I could register in her voice equal measures of shock and sympathy. She hung up, and I reached over to touch her on the elbow.

“Ma-chan is dead. A car accident.”

And that's what punk rock means to me...