Punk Saves Lives!

Well here we are beloveds, we made it! Today is the final radiation and chemo treatments. It was a challenge but getting here is so worth celebrating. Hopefully my body can start to bounce back fairly quickly. I know I have about two weeks of the leftover side effects to deal with, but I will do that. I just know this journey has been hard and I’m proud of myself for working through it.

Tammy and I did celebrate the last day of treatments by going to a Flogging Molly last night. It made me feel so alive. Punk shows always have a way of bringing myself back to myself, this was no exception. Flogging Molly was the perfect band for the celebration, because not only do I get the punk but also the sacred Celtic instruments speak to my soul being added to that sound.

As I’ve written these blogs, I’ve been talking a lot about identity and I haven’t spent much time on one of the most important and enduring which is my punk identity. I can confidently say that my punk identity has saved my life multiple times in my 41 years on this planet.

I know well there are those of you who will read this and will not understand this love letter to being a punk and that’s OK, you don’t have to. And I also know there are those of you who will read it and say “that, exactly that!“ As I try to authentically talk about this part of myself, I want to let you know that if you are sensitive to profanity, you will encounter some as I talk about it. Punk brings out a passionate me that can only be expressed authentically with profanity sometimes.

To understand my punk identity one must go back to visit a scared, very closeted kid in Laramie, Wy, my safety shattered by the murder of Matthew Shepherd in my hometown. I grew up on 60’s music. The idea of counter culture always stuck with me, but I had different concerns and struggles. Imagine them as a teen hearing punk for the first time; dirty, authentic, inviting the lost and broken. Donnie Colby-Hoffman, I know you won’t remember this, but one day in middle school or early high school I asked you to suggest some bands for me. You don’t know, but I never turned back from that moment. The rest of high school I listened to punk, I wasn’t allowed to dress the punk way I wanted, yet the punk community never kept me out, if anything they were always there when other supposed friends fell away as I discovered who I was.

This is a shout out with all the love if you ever attended shows at the Mini, the Maxi, Eightball Alley, the skate park, or if you ended a show scattering after the cops were called for noise ordinance violations once again. We had a vibrant little scene. I often wonder how many of my beloved queer survivors of Laramie are here today in large part due to that scene. If this is you, congrats, we didn’t let those who didn’t like us crush us, we stuck up our middle fingers and lived.

In college, I really lived into my punk self, sometimes for better, sometimes worse. I was super lucky to meet my college roommate and lifelong friend, Seth Irwin Pederson . Seth and I have been to so many shows in church basements, bars, and hotel conference rooms. Once daring 20+ tornadoes to drive and see Alkaline Trio play. We found such freedom of the music, the late night walks, and learning to live into who we were authentically, the way punk asked for. Seth introduced me to Alkaline Trio, which is my favorite band of all time, as well as way more bands than I can remember. Seth, we need to go to a show sometime in the next not too distant future. It has been far too long.

For the rest of my adult life punk will be the part of me that fills me. I write the story of my life in the tattoos on my body. Tammy and my song is even a punk song. A couple of years ago we saw the guy who wrote it play it not 10 feet from us. Speaking of Tammy, when I met her if she was a conservative cowgirl, now I know a few people with more punk cred and ethos. She doesn’t dress it, but she lives what it means to be punk.

What I’ve come to see over the last few years is I’ve made the worst mistakes in my life and suffered the worst heartbreaks when I have become focused on doing things the “right way” or being “proper“, instead of doing those things my soul and being see as needing to happen out of authenticity. That’s what punk teaches; authentic life, messy, sometimes ugly but real and to be celebrated. Punk invites me to live. When I say that I mean live wildly, fully, sometimes recklessly, but always authentically. As a spiritual person that sounds like a spirit lead life to me.

Fuck properness, I want to live with those who have taken their lumps. Us who have been lost, abandoned, abused, been left out, called losers only to continue to be us despite it. I want to live a life that not only confuses but infuriates transphobes, homophobes, bigots, and the narrow minded, because I am being the most me I can possibly be in the most real authentic ways.

We live in a world that can be crushing right now. For me punk is the perfect soundtrack because it has the vibes needed whether you are in the mood that you want to save this world or burn it down. It encompasses both the hope and the fury that living right now causes.

Last night I heard of songs of hope, despair, love, and rage. I watched people 20+ years my younger dance and sing to music that first filled me 20+ years ago. Music of freedom, of a hoped for brighter, realer future for all of us not just some.

So yes, I am a punk, and forever will be one. I take my identity as a Crone punk seriously. You don’t have to give in or give up. We win by living and living happy full lives. Nothing pisses the haters off, then living authentically and openly in ways which they don’t understand.

So listen loudly to your music. Proudly flaunt your tattoos, scars, and piercings. Live in ways that make you happy that the world may never understand. Live real lives with all the dirtiness, and messiness that requires. Be real, be the most you that there is, the world needs more of that. And if others don’t get it, fuck ‘em they don’t have to.