I’ve mentioned that school itself was not full of pleasant memories for me. That doesnt mean my childhood was all unpleasant.  There were the weekends. 

On the way to a tutoring class, I carpool with a classmate and The Offspirng’s “Bad Habit”. Half the song was bleeped out and it set me down a path in a way a small handful of songs have in my life. I became ovsessed with music. 

I used the early days of p2p to listen to al kinds of punk, emo and ska and finally on Septermber 15 2001, I saw a band called RX Bandits. They were supposed to play in the middle of 5 bands but due to the panic around the tragedy in NYC, two bands couldnn’t make it and they became the headliner. 

It was my first show and I may have heen the most incredible. Everyone was emotional by default after being on edge the past few days. The band, as I would later find out, going to around 20 of their shows, always gave it their all but on that day they gave more than their all. They knew we needed it. 

It was the only time I saw their trombone player Richard Balling before he left the band and he rocked harder than any trombone player I’ve ever seen.  I rememebr how hard the lyrics hit that night “We can live with no regrets, this ride’s not over yet” refering not to individual experience but to the direction humanity is heading.   

I remember watching the guitarist and lead singer Matt Embree in the audience dancing to the two opening acts and being amazed that someone with hundreds of people there to see him could put himself in the middle of the crowd to enjoy the show before playing himself. 

The sense of community that formed around the music was compeltwly new to me and I am not sure I would have survived school without it. 

I took a bunch of fliers for other shows and tried to go to whichever I could. I found a small local one much closer to my house in an old abandoned church a week later and resolved to go. None of my friends were interested so I went by myself. My parents were worried because zi had never gone out by myself before and I was still just a freshman in high school. 

I knew I had to go though. 

This show was more of a ska and hardcore gig. At that time pop punk, emo, ska and hardcore would often share the stage and so I got into all of them. I moshed like crazy and crowd surfed and tired myself. Sat on the couch and ended up in a conversation with a girl who had a pink mohawk. 

“My parents wouldn’t like her…I want to know what she’s about”.  We chatted about the scene. I told her I was new and she wanted to show me the ropes. She invited me to a house party a few weeks later and we exchanged phone numbers (texting on Nokia was just starting to be a thing). 

Her boyfriend was as emo as she was punk and had green hair.  Her friends were all kinds of appearanced, some with tatoos and piercings everywhere and some who looked like jocks but they all loved this music scene. She was my first in to the scene. 

So at 16 years old I started having more friends outside my hometown than at school. 

There was one girl who was a year older than me at school who had taken me in as a kind of kid brother and she was into the same music so eventually we started to go to concerts together. 

She ended up being a groupie for many of my favorite bands and so I managed to meet a lot of them, but not always in the most flattering situations. I saw how disrespectful some of them could be and they often treated me like a nuisance since they just wanted to sleep with her. There were a few really decent people among them though, and eventually I realized that people became musicians for various reasons. The ones who loved it clearly loved it. Some likes to enjoy the perks more than others and some were only there for the perks.  I learned how to spot them out. 

I remember my third crush was a singer in a local ska band. She was the ex girlfriend of a popular emo band and it was said that some of the songs were written about her. We flirted but in the end I felt like I might have been out of my league and lost confidence 😆 

Eventually I met two punk guys from the next state and they expanded my world even further. When I started driving I’d go out of state to watch local bands from other areas. I built up quite a network of people and during my third year of high school I had a band that played with a bunch of semi-famous acts, mostly emo. 

I remember Fall Out Boy complimented us and I wasnt into their band so I tried really hard to be nice without complimenting them back. Later they became massive, if you don’t know them, they wrote the theme song for Big Hero 6, Spiderman and Ghostbusters.  I didn’t even realize Jack Antoff was one of the writers for the massive single “We are Young” by FUN. I hung out with him a few times at shows before he was famous. 

I’m not bragging here 🤣 I am just sharing this because it paints a picture of where I come from. In school I was a nobody and had no power, I didn’t even know why I was there. On the weekends I had community and rubbed against all kinda of people, some of which became very succesful, and I learned how to communicate and distinguish my tastes and values.  

On the weekends the sky was the limit as long as I could catch a ride. On the weekdays, I felt like a prisoner. The contrast made the good feel so much better and the bad feel so much worse. 

Funnily enough I noticed many classmates influenced by my tastes, even people who wouldn’t admit it. I became a kind of renegade trendsetter. A funny thing about trends is that the trendsetter is always the one who doesn’t care about trends. 



There is no specific message here. I am just trying to explore some memories in order to understand better how I got where I am. 

I always wonder why I am considered adventurous or brave by people I meet. I don’t see myself that way.  If i see a shop that looks interesting I go inside. If i hear about an art space in the mountains, I find a way to get there, even if I have to hitchhike. I go places alone.  I move to countires with no plans. 


![IMG_6189.png](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/selfhelp4trolls/AK7wwqXdV8JfqE341nvRSBZFhH2WWmNDqjxCxBaPsm6kPMr4i1NuN5cSp4iS8H4.png)

This isn’t brave to me. It’s common sense. Of course I take precautions. I guess it helps to have places I can go and people I can call if I am in trouble, but ironically I met most of these people living this way. 

I boarded a boat to leave Japan in 2011 without any plans other than to learn Mandarin. I went from tourist to employee to tourist to digital nomad before coming back to Japan 2018. 

None of this felt like a choice. I just went where I could find what I needed. I needed independence in a safe environment so I came to Japan.  I needed freedom and healing so I hopped from city to city to learn everything I neeeded to learn and practice living life of my own life from my own will rather than the path set for me by society. The. I learned to follow the path set out for me by the universe rather than the path I set out by my conscious mind. 


It’s funny, brigning up famous people or accomplishments doesn’t feel like bragging to me.  They are just road stops on rhe way to a destination. All experiences are tools to bring about more freedom and joy for myself and for others.  

It only feels good to brag about my life to the extent that I can convince others that it’s not a big deal and that they are just a few steps away from a mich more exciting existance. 

Learning to follow the voice inside that guides us is a skill we need to train but it comes more and more naturally. I’m still learning. 

But digging like this helps me understand things better so thanks for coming along for the ride 😊 

Here are some of the songs I listened to back then that are still awesome to me now:
My favorite live band as a kid
<iframe width="100%" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2CYzsoQDol0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>


another band I saw over 15 times:

https://youtu.be/CPythXYuVI8?si=FT8jfcESOCdYybJ7

Punk classic:



<iframe width="100%" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-rJ7DR0X9kw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Emo classic:

https://youtu.be/nVrVayeXzpo?si=xqo2ewQSv4xtibAr


A bigger band many people might know which I loved and saw live a few times back then 
<iframe width="100%" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Nxe56iChHuw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>


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