Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Creative

Bleed Like Me

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I am always more the rock star when I draw blood, and last night was excruciating. After a week of practice had thickened my skin to new levels of callousness i spent the day nervously picking at these foreign fingertips, leaving them as naked and vulnerable as a tiny baby’s for my rehearsal with Dante. Our first time through “Volcano Girls” I winced and dropped the tempo, eventually giving in and playing the chords as a sevenths to rest my battered pinky.

“Bucket Seat” solved the problem, though, so fun to play, and with drums! Real, live drums, doing what I’d imagine they’d do – propelling me into choruses and matching my crescendos. And, after, inevitably after my spirited performance, I found that I had drawn blood.

I think it was the turning point in the rehearsal, really. Everything rocked more after that. Saturday at the party I’ll have nearly half an hour of rehearsed(!) set, with drumming(!) throughout. For most of the guests it will just be background noise; for me, a little victory.

Nostalgia Attached

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Packing always makes me feel like blogging, perhaps because my first week of blogging featured ongoing packing.

Packing for me is never just about putting things into boxes. It is about reviewing, reflecting, and reconsolidating. Boxing my CD collection goes fast (four boxes, now), desk stuff slightly slower. Slower still is looking through a box of “peter papers” to see if anything can be disposed of yet. Nothing can be, of course, but i take the opportunity to reread almost everything inside.

At the bottom, wedged beneath a battered purple binder containing a hand-scrawled short story that only Gina has read, is a summary of a day of media-deprivation i did for my first class with Ron Bishop. My sentences are sprawling and glib (a clear precursor to this diarrheal exercise), and reading through their words to their naiveté is pure nostalgia.

I was tempted to throw this paper out, as it was just a glorified diary, but something i say in the conclusion stopped me. Feeling as though all intrusive messaging had been flushed from me at the end of my media deprivation day, i apparently sat down to write a song.

Attached to the back of my paper, for Ron’s perusal, is what had to have been the first ever printed copy of “Under My Skin.” He might have even been the first person to read the lyrics.

Amazing. So, yeah, i’m keeping that paper, and all of Ron’s wry comments therein.

Somehow, this move feels as if it’s already over. Maybe that’s too much faith to have when my solution to every problem so far has just to throw money at things, but the idea of moving into an entire house where Elise and I rule every room and closet is just too tingly and wonderful to be diluted with any anxiety about the move itself.

I keep saying that we’re moving to a house, and i keep wishing that we were buying it instead of renting it. All in good time, though.

More Screaming

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What a beautiful day!

Okay, enough positivity, now for more introspection. This weekend reminded me of two things that I know and say all the time, but don’t put into practice nearly enough.

First, not coincidentally, is practice makes perfect – whether it’s practicing your singing or practicing what you preach. After a lengthy runs on some of my lesser played songs this weekend, my voice is warm and limber. The only way to keep it that way is to use it every day.

Second, the only reason to be afraid of an honest critique is if you deny its veracity (on some level, at least). This was evoked by two things specifically – a rather comedic exchange between a book-reviewer and a nasty Christian-publishing-house rep, and a reviews of an Off the Beat CD.

In the case of the former, the publisher just can’t take a negative review, and rather being constructive and trying to build a relationship with the reviewer, the rep lashes out. Repeatedly. In the case of the latter, former OTB music director Ethan Fixell took the lament that Off the Beat’s 2002 CD entailed too much “screaming” as a compliment – he and the group half-jokingly titled the next disc “More Screaming.”

How much truth existed in either review? Was the book truly that terrible? Who knows. I don’t think Off The Beat does all that much screaming – they just like to produce records that sound as authentically rock as the songs they cover. To a trained a cappella reviewer, though, that might come off an awful lot like screaming. I am sure that in each critique there was some element of truth, but for the artist it was how that truth was handled that was most important.

I can’t be afraid to record songs just because my voice is imperfect. It won’t get any better unless I sing, and hear myself singing; it’s unreasonable to expect perfection. Maybe I’m going to be flat, or scoop a lot, or use too many diphthongs – but, maybe I’ll convey exactly what the song means to say. And, once I do that, I have to be willing to hear all about those flat, scooped diphthongs, and to either own up to them or proudly say, “I meant it that way.”

Then, only then, will I get better.

Thoughts Right Now

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Do you remember when i would just sit in my horrid little apartment sophomore year, just banging out as many posts as i had thoughts? Today i feel like that, only less horrid. I cleaned. I bought groceries. I took that pile of books to the used bookstore. I have every right in the world to sit and transcribe thoughts until sundown, at which point i’m going to a BYOB Mexican restaurant to drink margaritas on a work-night against my better judgment.

Anywho, allow me to digress to the though i came here to transcribe: I sometimes wonder what my co-workers do when they go home.

I mean, we see what i’m doing right now, and it’s not all that impressive, but it’s something. Some of them have children, so that pretty much explains what they’re up to. The rest? Some like sports, some go to gyms, some engage in serial home-repair. One creates terrific bead work that i’m going to make a website for sooner or later. Aside from her, though, rarely do i hear about anyone’s personal projects (aside from buying tickets, or getting in shape, or putting up gold-plated gutters).

Surely they must have projects – we are all comm people, after all – defined by our interest in devouring a enormous subset of all things, and governed by secret wishes to be star reporters or gossip rousers. Surely they must have a novel in draft form, or an article, or an experiment in social engineering. Something.

I try to ferret something out of them, but they are either entirely inscrutable or they really do just hang out and watch television every night. It’s hard for me to imagine it – being defined just by what i do during the day. It seems like a horrid fate.

We all know about my songwriting habit, and my blogging hobby, but in the last few weeks i’ve been working just as much on two others, one of which is arranging music. When you arrange a song, you have to listen to it many, many, many times. You have to listen for pitches and rhythms, tonality and feel. Sometimes you have to listen at half speed, or with a section looped indefinitely. You have to listen until your brain and fingers have absorbed the sound, and can recreate it in standard notation, however inefficient it seems at the time.

Before i ever knew about a cappella music or polyphony or even, hell, arranging, i used to arrange Tori Amos songs for guitar. I didn’t really understand what i was teaching myself at the time – i would just sit with the sheet music in my lap and slowly transcribe it into a single staff of guitar tab. Sometimes it was physically unplayable, but my software would still play it, allowing me to hear what six separate guitarists playing one string each could make of a Tori song.

At the time i barely could read music, let alone transcribe pitches and rhythms by ear. Over half a decade later I just listen to “Since U Been Gone” more than 200 times and somehow, after more than a dozen hours of magical effort, i have an arrangement.

When they return my question, volleying: well, what’s your hobby, that always sounds so insubstantial. And, right now, it is. But, by god, the TrebleMakers will perform it live at a cappella fest 2005 or lose their voices trying, and then it will be real and alive and in the air, and i’ll know just why i spent a whole week of my live living, breathing, and singing every element of that damn song.

As for my other hobby, you can have a hint: inebriated cinema. I dare not say any more, because i… erm… have to go and fix the broken thing that Gina just found.

Regrets

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Regrets [3.1MB] (Demo)

I claimed to want to record this all last month, but i just now got around to it. It’s still rough as hell, but it sounds exactly like what i’ve been hearing in my head (every fucking day) minus percussion. I personally prefer the version that clips my speakers so bad that i think they’re going to explode, but this one is more appropriate for general (non-destructive) consumption.

For those keeping score, that’s 3 of the new 18 songs recorded – except, i wrote a new one yesterday. So, 3/19.