I woke up early this morning to realize today is the first day of summer. It was an interesting moment after watching The Future is Unwritten, a documentary film on the life of Joe Strummer.

Strummer was the stage name of John Graham Mellor, and most know him as the co-founder and lead singer of the punk rock band The Clash. 

Stick with me here…..

So I’m reading about Strummer on the Internet, and one particular article ends with his quote not long before his death at age 50:  “This is my Indian summer….I learnt that fame is an illusion and everything about it is just a joke.  I’m far more dangerous now, because I don’t care at all.”

It’s too easy based on stereotypes of punk rock to read this as he no longer cared about anything.  From what I saw in the film, at the end of his life Joe Strummer cared about a great many things, but had figured out how to honor those things completely and “not care  at all” about fame.  In fact he seemed to have spent many sequential years struggling to regain himself from the soul-grinding fame machine, not surprisingly after The Clash “made it” in the United States.

Note to self: If you simply must hit the big time, try to do it in France.

I had no idea Strummer was such a comprehensive human being.  I’ll be thinking a lot today about “not caring at all” about the wrong things.