So my copy of #80 just came shrink-wrapped in the mail. I don't think I'm gonna open it. I don't want to. I can't figure it actually...the impulse NOT to open it. It's not wanting to say goodbye, sure, but there's something else. Anyway, for now, I'm leaving it wrapped.
I have a shelf of Punk Planets in my office. The collection only goes back to my first collaboration with the magazine, a cover story about Iraq in 1999.
I just put the wrapped #80 in its rightful place: squeezed in right next to #79. It's all working out fine. There's no room for a #81.
It's fine and it isn't. I'm going to miss this magazine. Not because the world will be empty without it. The world will not be empty without it. If you disagree (Dan and Anne, you are exempted here), you are foolish. Whatever you got from Punk Planet - and there was so much to be gotten - go and find it somewhere else. Whoever is offering it can surely use your support.
Maybe thats too easy. I got a lot from Punk Planet that I may not have found anywhere else.
There is a tiny, fairly insignificant factoid Dan and I laugh about from time to time, but rarely share with anybody else: He wrote my first Punk Planet article.
Sort of. I wrote a draft, sent it in (late, of course), and got a phone call: "Hey man, so I got your piece and I want to ask you a few questions."
What followed was an interview with Dan. What followed that, a day later, was a new piece with a new lead paragraph, a dozen or so new or altered sentences, and a new conclusion. Some of my stuff was still there (I particularly remember the faux-noir line: "The ghost of what Baghdad once was followed me everywhere") but mostly it was Dan's piece.
That never happened again. I got better (I'd like to think). Dan still had a keen eye for what should stay and what should go. I keep a copy of a piece I wrote after a life-altering experience in the West Bank. The copy was Dan's and has all of his red pen edits. He didn't rewrite a thing, but his unflagging editorial instinct and nudging caused me to rewrite plenty. Again, but with less direct intervention, Dan extracted more from my story - from my experiences - than I thought was there.
In the days since the announcement of Punk Planet's demise, much has been written about all that Dan and the magazine have done in service to the underground. I want to thank Dan for what he has done for me - and what Dan did for me is exactly what his magazine did for the underground: he gave me confidence, he taught me to tell my stories better, and he assured me that those stories always had a home at Punk Planet.
Thank you Dan. Carry on.
