How I Went Punk

JANUARY 15

For two weeks now I’ve been listening to the Clash, the English punk band from the seventies. My friend Tyler sent me a box of fifty-three cassette tapes as a New Year’s gift, and I chose the first Clash album to put on. As soon as I heard the opening of “Clash City Rockers,” I began to bob my head: “An’ I wanna move the town to the Clash City Rockers, / You need a little jump of electrical shockers.” (Actually I looked those words up on the Internet. The song sounds like: “Ana rara marba ow burbah Clash City Rockers, / Oo meena dadda gump duh secktical shockas.”)

I listen to the tape at very low volume. It’s not the anger and noise I enjoy but the newness of the music the Clash are inventing. The full force of their innovation in 1977 is hitting me just now. Their abrasive singing and revolutionary politics warm my blood. At the age of fifty-six I am going punk! (I’m not, however, cutting off my white beard or my long, thinning hair. I am punk inside.)

The Clash’s music was a reaction to classic rock in the same way Christianity was a reaction to Judaism. Jesus said: “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.” The Clash sang: “White riot, I wanna riot, / White riot, a riot of my own!”

By 1977 classic rock had become a showcase for long, egotistical guitar solos, long, egotistical drum solos, long, egotistical keyboard solos. Rock musicians had carefully tended hair and ruffled clothes. Punks were pale guys with rough-shorn hair snarling into microphones. Everyone knew they would die young.

JANUARY 16

This morning I listened to the Clash, then walked outside into the nature preserve. Is there such a thing as punk nature? Certainly. A thunderstorm, an earthquake, a puma mercilessly pouncing on an antelope. Nature has a punk side.

Today it’s raining hard, but not quite at the furious level of punk. It’s more like Elvis Costello, this rain.

JANUARY 17

I just watched the Clash on YouTube, performing at an outdoor concert for eighty thousand punks at London’s Victoria Park in 1978. The band seemed to be moving at hyperspeed, like the people in silent movies. J. Krishnamurti said that when your habitual thinking becomes as unbearable as a burning house, you will immediately escape.

The Clash moved with the intensity of men fleeing a burning house.

JANUARY 18

Researching the Clash’s lyrics online, I was startled to discover that they rhyme — though the words are impossible to understand! How touching, like putting on your best shirt to visit your blind aunt.

JANUARY 20

When punk first hit the airwaves in the seventies, it sounded to me like chaos. Listening to the Clash today, I’m struck by their discipline. The melodies are catchy, the singing warm and ironic, the drummer highly talented, the four-second guitar solos brilliant. Punk can’t have ballads, but the Clash hit on the idea of covering reggae tunes to vary their tempos. They even wrote their own reggae songs. Here’s one:

My daddy was a bank robber
But he never hurt nobody.
He just loved to live that way,
And he loved to steal your money!

Yes, their songs are minimalist, but so are the “serious” compositions of Philip Glass. Until now I never realized that punk was a form of music.

JANUARY 22

How can I be more punk in my life? I live in a Victorian house next to a small forest, and much of my day is taken up by spiritual practices and physical exercises for my aging body. For me, being punk doesn’t mean dyeing my hair purple; it means courting intensity. When I sit on my meditation cushion, I must close my eyes with flaming conviction and be ready to meditate unto death.

A nun in my meditation group told this story yesterday: Some people went to meditate on a beach in Africa. The mosquitoes were unbearable, and everyone left the beach except one monk, who was determined to continue meditating despite the aerial attack. After half an hour the monk opened his eyes. He had been bitten everywhere his skin was exposed, but after that no mosquito ever bit him for the rest of his life. He had “exhausted his karma” of mosquitoes.

That monk was punk.

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