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I have a new friend. His name is Yudhi, which is pronounced “You-Day.” He’s Indonesian,
originally from Java. I got to know him because he rented my house to me; he’s working for
the Englishwoman who owns the place, looking after her property while she’s away in London
for the summer. Yudhi is twenty-seven years old and stocky in build and talks kind of like a
southern California surfer. He calls me “man” and “dude” all the time. He’s got a smile that
could stop crime, and he’s got a long, complicated life story for somebody so young.
He was born in Jakarta; his mother was a housewife, his father an Indonesian fan of Elvis
who owned a small air-conditioning and refrigeration business. The family was Christian—an
oddity in this part of the world, and Yudhi tells entertaining stories about being mocked by the
neighborhood Muslim kids for such shortcomings as “You eat pork!” and “You love Jesus!”
Yudhi wasn’t bothered by the teasing; Yudhi, by nature, isn’t bothered by much. His mom,
however, didn’t like him hanging around with the Muslim kids, mostly on account of the fact
that they were always barefoot, which Yudhi also liked to be, but she thought it was unhygien-
ic, so she gave her son a choice—he could either wear shoes and play outside, or he could
stay barefoot and remain indoors. Yudhi doesn’t like wearing shoes, so he spent a big chunk
of his childhood and adolescence life in his bedroom, and that’s where he learned how to play
the guitar. Barefoot.
The guy has a musical ear like maybe nobody I’ve ever met. He’s beautiful with the guitar,
never had lessons but understands melody and harmony like they were the kid sisters he
grew up with. He makes these East-West blends of music that combine classical Indonesian
lullabies with reggae groove and early-days Stevie Wonder funk—it’s hard to explain, but he
should be famous. I never knew anybody who heard Yudhi’s music who didn’t think he should
be famous.
Here’s what he always wanted to do most of all—live in America and work in show busi-
ness. The world’s shared dream. So when Yudhi was still a Javanese teenager, he somehow
talked himself into a job (speaking hardly any English yet) on a Carnival Cruise Lines ship,
thereby casting himself out of his narrow Jakarta environs and into the big, blue world. The
job Yudhi got on the cruise ship was one of those insane jobs for industrious immig-