punk affirmations on the indignities of aging and body-having
February 6, 2023 7:41 AM   Subscribe

A friend is going through some tricky medical stuff that's occasioning a lot of changes in their body and the kind of care it will require. Trying to help them tap into a punk ethos that's helped them through past troubles, and seeking inspiration from punks aging with humor and grit.

My friend is a cheerful hedonistic troublemaker and they've been a punk musician, and I want to help them connect to that mindset in their current depression and change.

Looking for anecdotes, interviews, memoirs, songs, movies, maxims, etc. Not "getting clean" stories or tales of managing the fallout of a rock&roll lifestyle, or not just that--I want stories about regular human aging.

Can be in response to just getting old--doesn't have to be about acute medical crisis, though that's fine too. Also doesn't have to be specifically about musicians, but we do share an affection for punk music and punk as shorthand for noisy positivity. Thanks!
posted by miles per flower to Grab Bag (15 answers total) 12 users marked this as a favorite
 
I'm really loving The Undying by Anne Boyer about her experience with breast cancer. It's very critical of the whole cancer corporate machine in the same way that Barbara Ehrenreich is, and she's great on gender issues. For me, it's been a refreshing change from the supposedly inspirational stories that cancer patients are subjected to. I don't know if that would count as punk in the way that you mean though.
posted by FencingGal at 8:01 AM on February 6, 2023 [6 favorites]


Seventeeners (17th and 37th) by Lawrence Arms perhaps for a song
posted by General Malaise at 8:41 AM on February 6, 2023




Look into cpunk and the resources/media/communities around it. I have a friend with endometriosis who said finding it was life-changing.
posted by music for skeletons at 9:27 AM on February 6, 2023 [3 favorites]


This interview with Chad Clark of Beauty Pill might suit. Also this older article about the unusual process behind recording Beauty Pill Describes Things As They Are. Clark has written a bit himself about his experience and perspective on health and aging on Beauty Pill's Bandcamp community over the past couple years, too.
posted by EvaDestruction at 10:09 AM on February 6, 2023 [1 favorite]


I can't think of a good quote to express it at the moment but there is little more punk to me than surviving, particularly in the face of adversary.
posted by Candleman at 10:23 AM on February 6, 2023 [1 favorite]


Poet Jillian Weise claims the pronoun "cy" for cyborg. Cy work is cripple punk. Cy website.
posted by Jesse the K at 11:50 AM on February 6, 2023




Would Young@heart Fit or is it too on the nose?
posted by St. Peepsburg at 12:51 PM on February 6, 2023 [2 favorites]


Response by poster: Nothing's too on the nose! It's a question about punk rock and affirmations, neither known for subtlety. (Thanks for all the promising suggestions so far--looking forward to digging into them.)
posted by miles per flower at 1:06 PM on February 6, 2023 [1 favorite]


Richard Meltzer "Autumn Rhythm " is about an old hipster aging

I found Cosey Fanny Tutti's book "Art Sex Music" to be affirming. She's been through more than most.

I recommend "You Can't Win" by Jack Black (not the actor) to anyone who will listen as life changing

Voltaire's "Candide" has always been useful to me to remind me to laugh in the face of life's misfortunes

The song "50 Year Old Man" by The Fall is incredibly hilarious and irreverent and helpful sometimes as I stare my encroaching middle age in the eye
posted by SystematicAbuse at 1:30 PM on February 6, 2023 [2 favorites]


This may sound weird, but I would look at the life of Jane Fonda. She’s been a hell raiser most of her life, and is still protesting once a week, I believe (Fire Drill Fridays), and recently had to deal with fighting cancer at age 85. She had some things to say about it that I thought were pretty good.

Bernie Sanders is pretty punk, too. As is Neil Young. David Crosby had some deep thoughts about aging, too. I would google each name along with “interview”, and aging or death.
posted by MexicanYenta at 4:08 PM on February 6, 2023 [3 favorites]


the queer punk collective commando just released a single called diet soda today!

The lyrics for Diet Soda were written following conversations Juba Kalamka had with Lynnee Breedlove around issues of aging as punk and hip hop musicians in a context where dialogues on long term queer and/or POC health imperatives are often waylaid by simple day-to-day survival concerns.

Juba was diagnosed with Type II Diabetes in 2011 after exhibiting symptoms that overlapped his other chronic health conditions. As an invisibly disabled person he thought it would be cool to contextualize some of the dark humor of his elder family members around this common condition ( referred to as “The Sugar” or “The ‘Bētēs” in African American Vernacular English [AAVE]) in a cheeky ‘rage against the dying light’. The song also represents a confrontation of the very real fears of his future and seemingly inevitable consequences of the disease despite the harm reductive measures he is engaging in the present.
posted by noloveforned at 11:48 AM on February 7, 2023 [1 favorite]


Seconding looking into cripplepunk/cpunk. There is, of course, Discourse that pops up here and there, which is tedious, but if you can ignore that there's some great art and writing.
Also, Ian Dury.
posted by BlueNorther at 7:36 AM on February 8, 2023 [2 favorites]


Is your friend aware of Henry Rollins?
posted by gakiko at 3:55 AM on February 10, 2023


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