Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

self-aware

by

Three related paragraphs that have absolutely no bearing on anything.

I am so chirpy on the phone. “Thanks so much for your help!,” i expel with force. “You have a great holiday!” i command with enthusiasm. I suspect the clerks in guidance offices across Montgomery County hardly know what to say to me, which is apt, because i hardly know what i am saying. I imagine fielding a phone call from me is like trying to catch water from a great stone fountain in a meager paper cup … the stream steady with random variation, the force and volume too great for the vessel.

Last night i was walking down Walnut street, thinking about how everyone wants to be famous. Everybody does. Not all face-famous, of course, not all actors or politicians, but famous for something; inventing, writing, singing, designing, growing record-sized pumpkins, etc. I always thought i’d be a good famous person, because i think i understand what a public expects from someone in possession of fame. But, to be famous you must become famous, and to become famous you or your product must be recognized, and i and the three or four products that i consider to be eligible are currently incognito, embedded in our stealthy and unnoticed positions until further notice.

Sometimes i think that i will take on a character, change my carriage and manner of speaking, to see if i am somehow different than before. When i arrive in the office to find it full with dozens of perspective students, or when i step into a store i’ve never been near before. What great acting it would be, what a superb lie, to alter myself not according to a script but in every facet of my ongoing self.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/11/106986643165083879/

by

I am not a terrific actor. I have zeal, and am unafraid, but i always balk at surrendering myself entirely to a persona that is not wholly my own. Acting, for me, is a series of motions, and when i am acting i string them together as fluidly as possible. Sometimes, though, i know the movements and the words so cold that i stop speaking and let the character speak through me. Those are the moments when i am truely an actor.

Despite not thoroughly mastering the art of acting, i am slowly becoming more aware of the acting of others. I can see, now, the vast difference between motions being gone through and characters. This sight has turned live theatre into something much nearer to a sporting event for me, but what it has truly revolutionized is the screen. No longer can i appreciate overwrought dramas or lightweight sitcoms, where the actors are just punching the lines in all the right places; acting is not pummeling. No longer can i endure even the most viscerally executed CG action sequences; not if i have to suspend my disbelief in the characters doing the fighting.

It might sound like a revolution of criticism, but that’s only because the standards for what we call “actors” have sunk so low. Suddenly i get the point of the Academy Awards — they are not to award the most favorite actors for the most fun roles. No. They are for the actors who chose not to appear in their movies, instead letting their characters speak for themselves.

I wish i could do it, but for the time being i am content to appreciate it. I am more than content to drink up masters like Ian McKellen, who skips from playing fairytale heros and villians to portraying the imperfections of real life without skipping a beat. I love ensembles, like the one on West Wing, who are so in on the show that i have trouble watching them on talk shows and award ceremonies when they are just being themselves.

I like that I can see this all now, a layer beyond the story and the movement and the words. Yay for college education.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/11/106870870418760368/

by

I just got back a midterm marked: No complaints – a solid effort. The comment is nice enough, but it doesn’t seem to match up with a 48/50 grade. Maybe if he had used an exclamation point…

As i walked from class, preoccupied with mentally arguing over the .4 i had lost on an earlier question on Security Dilemma, i stopped for a moment to consider who i would say that to. Certainly not someone who did a nearly perfect job, that’s for sure. It’s the sort of thing i would say to an anonymous member of upper management who managed to make conversation about Drexel or the Eagles or my guitar or some other nonsense with me for an entire elevator ride up to my department on 35 … “No complaints, sir, that was a solid effort.” It’s the kind of thing i say about decent lasagna made by non-Italians, or about opening acts who i have no intention of hearing again. It usually does not accompany a 96% approval rating — more like a 88%, or maybe even a 79%. I would have been perfectly happy with “solid effort” and an 88%, or with my 96% and “Outstanding job – you should expand upon this topic in your paper.” But what i’ve got leaves me feeling … eh.

What the hell am i going to be a stark raving perfectionism about after i’m done with this nonsense in (checks watch) seven and a half months?

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/10/106736429862474693/

by

I’ve been holding on to this awful fear in the pit of my stomach for over a year now — that anytime the phone rings it’s going to be bad news about my grandmother. Maybe it’s why i hate the phone so much, how i always avoiding answering its ring and why i made sure to leave my cell phone safely ensconced within my old office building for the last two weeks … why i wasn’t surprised to finally pick it up only to hear a sequence a messages from my mother, each serving as a cold comfort as none quite claimed the worst.

I was caught, though, last night, live and on the line to my mother as she once again laid on this guilt, as if i know how to set aside my entire life and somehow make this all easier for her, or how to make my grandmom happier and not in so much pain, or how to do anything. The truth is that i don’t know, i can’t do anything, and every time my mother reminds me of how truly bad things are i see my grandmother and i convince myself that everything is okay.

I have finally been convinced now, though, that it is not okay. Sitting in the middle of the floor idly strumming my guitar and it all at once hit me that even though i made Elise promise to drive me over there tomorrow when her class is over that i missed out. I missed out on bringing Elise to meet her like i said i would, and on having her come to my college graduation, or even have her see me become successful or hold my children in some distant future. I realized all of that, and that maybe i have resisted dealing with it emotionally for all this time because i was hoping that somehow if i pushed it to the back of my mind and just kept working i would somehow make everything that she’s always dreamed for me come true.

What followed was a mess of tears and words and suddenly, two hours later, i’ve lost a box of tissues but gained a song so stupidly simple that i can’t help but keep crying as i have it on repeat because it encapsulates so very perfectly just how crushed this is leaving my life, and how much i just want to be able to have my college diploma and my successful life ready to bring with me tomorrow when i sit next to her bed, because i can’t think of anything else to give her (because she doesn’t really like songs all that much).

But, on the bright side, i’m a third of the way done my next Trio.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/10/106550775490805569/

by

I spent all day worried about the notes that i fucked up on Mother Mother. Peter, i kept thinking, how could you post a Trio with notes that fucked up?. Well, i knew how; “Mother Mother” had been holding me up for over a week, and finally this morning i just woke up, tuned my guitar, screamed intermittently for about three minutes, and then wiped my hands of the Trio just in time for my directing class.

I walked to said class while listening to, for the first time in many many years, Paula Abdul’s Forever Your Girl. This was an album that, in my pre-adolescent life, was probably second only to the LPs in my Madonna collection when it came to getting the most spins, though i would be hard pressed to explain that phenomenon to you after a day of suffering through the ten-track atrocity that Paula passed off as a debut album.

I refer to it as such not because it failed to be a coldly calculated synth-fueled pop smash (it was), but because even with the best computers the late eighties had to offer and a multi-cultural multi-gender team of anonymous back of singers, Paula can still barely hit a solid note. It’s actually quite pathetic. Verses that i remembered being supple and sweet were instead slurred and sloppy, and vocal crescendos on choruses were actually a tiny, squeaky Paula being carried by a crashing layered tide of herself and said crack team of backup singers.

I can appreciate that some people aren’t the most phenomenal singers, but all through my walk to and from class i found myself wondering couldn’t they have gotten a better performance out of her? Obviously the album was destined for success whether it featured assured singing or not, but why settle for not? Why not train more, or record more takes, or pick a pop-model who can actually sing to sell your songs rather than a former cheerleader destined to be remembered more for her scripted anti-Simon quips than her amazing vocal abilities?

I don’t know that i’ve figured out the answers, but tonight i found myself absent-mindedly listening to my first Trio ever, and i realized that i really didn’t hit very many of the notes. I was singing, and supporting a little, and i had pitch, but i was not singing with the tuneful confidence that invites harmony, a band, or a record deal. If had i turned in a similar performance earlier today it would have been promptly thrown into the recycle bin. And, yet, three years later i find myself kvetching about a “so” on “Not So Bad” whose O wasn’t round enough, how Paula Abdul’s singing is nothing but unimpressive and contrived without the wonderful world of Pro Tools to augment it’s many Britney quality failures, and how the vowel i sing in the word “mother” makes me sound like i’m trying to remember how to vomit.

In a moment of absolutely clarity, i realized that the only thing i know how to settle for is progress. None of these three complaints would have even occurred to me three years ago, two years ago i wouldn’t have known what to do about them, and a year ago i would have settled for a few mistakes and called it a day. Each step represented a previously unimaginable improvement from the last, but at each junction i was just as imperfect as Paula.


So, essentially, i cannot wait until season five starts. And that’s a long way from now…

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/10/106549333960331142/