Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Archives for November 7, 2006

Trio: Season Five, Suite #2!

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Trio: Season Five, Suite #2:
Songs on the Topic of Elise:
Little Love, Wilted, A Little Bit, (and a secret cover!)

Trio – the original singer-songwriter web session – returns for its fifth season featuring my own DIY music. This season each trio of songs will have a loose topic to connect them, which will often correspond to a recent post.

A sample of what I had to say in this Trio…

Little Love
There’s a point of some dispute because one line in the song is about somebody else, and the whole rest of the song is about Elise. … The whole conceit of it (if I can say that about one of my songs) is that it’s about the purest form of butterflies in stomach. It’s about having a crush on somebody just like third grade … more than anything you just want to be near them, and share time with them, and share your experiences with them.

Wilted
Being in a very successful relationship … you have to be careful how you pull from it because that song is going to continue to exist, and so is your relationship. And you have to be careful what you’re disclosing to the other person – and what you’re disclosing to the listener – because it might not be any of their business.

A Little Bit
Elise was having a laugh at my expense earlier, because I kept saying all of these songs were the quintessential Elise song, and I finally arrived at this one and she was surprised … What this song came out of is that I was in the last two weeks of college, I was under the gun for everything, and I was up all night … packing to move out of my college apartment and into my first apartment with Elise. I was so frazzled, and everything was difficult, and I had all this school work to do, and I just couldn’t handle it.

So – in the middle of all the craziness – I just stopped and I wrote a song, because that’s how things happen in my life. It’s fun.

You can download the entire Trio , or download the single of “A Little Bit..” Or, start from Suite #1.

She Said “If”

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Elise and I have been dating since Valentine’s Day, 2002 with no interruption. We are so evenly matched in every aspect from pastimes to taste in movies to scholastic aptitude – that it’s hard to believe that we were meant to wind up with anyone but each other.

Our relationship has been full of many stories, but today’s is actually about an earlier encounter. Our first, actually.

Half a year before we started dating, on Elise’s first or second day of college, the theatre produced two brief shows to introduce the program to incoming freshman. Elise, having performed and produced theatre in high school, attended with her roommate Kat.

I was in both shows, starring – however improbably – as the romantic lead in each. They were my last time acting onstage in college.

In one show I was moody and dark, but in the other show (a farce) my character was essentially me – effervescent, flamboyant, and terrible with women. Elise might have first seen me on stage, but the character she saw was me.

At some point in the evening – maybe during the show, or maybe after, I’ve never gotten it right when i tell this story – Elise leaned over to a friend and whispered, “If he’s not gay, I’ll marry him.”

A lot has ensued in the five years since that sentence but, so far as I know, it’s still true.

(For the record, I believe my first comment may have been, “I don’t know who’s cuter, her or her roommate,” which leads to other, even more amusing stories.)

It’s hard to believe that our relationship has now stretched to envelop the entirety of Elise’s collegiate career, and my entire professional life, and has followed us into our first (rented) house as adults, but that’s how time works.