Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

thoughts

Emotional Spring Cleaning

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I should be subjected to some sort of electric shock of increasing frequency and severity whenever I let posting lapse for more than seven days. I wonder if there is a WordPress plugin for that.

Failing that, I at least have a persistent nagging in the depths of my soul. PETER, growls my inner OCD Godzilla (a voracious blog reader), YOUR BLOG IS STALE. A week and a half, maybe he can bear. Two weeks and he starts exhaling tiny wafts of smoke from his nose, and I’m like, Godzilla doesn’t breathe fire, right?

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I read a lot of blogs about betterment, simplification, and frugality. They all dole out advice about organizing and eliminating – make a clear surface or a paid off credit card, and then it’s easier to avoid the things you would clutter it with.

I’ll never quite attain that clear-surface perfection in my physical existence, but this past year I’ve been struggling to get there in my intellectual life.

A little over a year ago I had a lot of stuff on every surface of my mind. Event-planning. Marriage. Marketing. Songwriting. Blogging. Some piles were deeper. Identity management. Seemingly unfixable relationships.

For the past year every time I read one of those decluttering blog posts, instead of decluttering my desk or my bureau I decluttered some recess of my psyche.

It was scary for a while. I jettisoned some stuff I thought was pretty central to my existence. But you know what? None of it was. I am a husband, a songwriter, a blogger, a music-lover, a communicator, and an occasional activist.

All of the other stuff is just ornamentation, and there’s a thin line between emotional tchotchkes and emotional clutter.

And, anyway, OCD Godzilla needs a lot of space to roam. He is a free-range imaginary beast of the psyche.

Writer’s Envy

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(I forgot to post this yesterday because I am A PRO.)

WTF, am I doing a meme? Yes, because one of my favorite bloggers and virtual pals Kari from Inflammatory Writ addressed this very interesting set of questions to the internet at large, and I found them compelling.

I guess that’s how memes start. It’s like mono getting passed around in your Junior year of high school – everybody thought it was a good idea to kiss that one boy, and things just spiraled out of control from there.

Anyhow, here we go.
[Read more…] about Writer’s Envy

Rats retire from a sinking ship

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I have been enjoying a budget blog called Early Retirement Extreme, written by Jacob – a man who semi-retired into financial independence at age 30.

How? Here’s a glimpse:

I don’t have a driver’s license, I don’t have any debt, I don’t live in a house, I cook everything from scratch, I cut my own hair, I practically never buy new or anything at all for that matter, I am not on any prescription medicines, and I am in great physical shape.

Essentially, he has eliminated the American addiction for conspicuous consumption from his financial diet, and it hasn’t left much else to spend on. I can definitely appreciate his no-frills approach to spending – even within my yuppy, metro life I’ve managed to live marginally.

For a more detailed analysis of how Jacob works his magic, see his recent post Your budget is like a sinking ship. He literally compares the average American budget to a ship, showing how you can plug the leaks. He also aggregates the spend on some common items – like clothing and furniture – across a lifetime, like so:

$2688 a year or a lifetime cost of more than $200,000 simply to have other people prepare your food. If the average income is, let’s say 40000 after tax, would you really want to work 5 years of your life just so you can eat a meal you didn’t make yourself a couple of times a week for the rest of your life?

While his simplistic living might seem beyond your ability to withstand, his bottom line can make sense for anyone – identify the quality of life that you want, and then plug the leaks.

Bandcamp mixes modern distribution and musical artifacts

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In world of digital downloads, what’s happening to the album – not only as a cohesive work, but as a physical product? Is it still relevant? Who wants to buy it?

Of all the people to contemplate that question, you wouldn’t expect one to be the founder of Bandcamp, the kick-ass digital music publishing platform that allows any band to adopt the recent Radiohead model of “pay what you will” and “choose your own file format.”

Yet, last month Bandcamp released their first ever physical record as an unlabel, an album by ukulele-ist Sophie Madeleine. It’s literally a record – a beautiful piece of red vinyl with screen-printed artwork, along with a digital download of the album. The release is limited to a mere 500 copies.

Not only is their unlabel model intriguing, and not only does founder Ethan Diamond have great taste in collateral (including Edward Tufte’s beautiful Visual Explanations), but the Bandcamp folks have a mind towards music as anthropology and not just noise:

[The album] must somehow be made into an object that every one of your fans has to own, has to hold while they listen to your music, and has to show to all of their friends. It must be transformed from a disposable good into something your fans will fetishize.

Ethan raises a point that will dominate this decade of music sales. People don’t cultivate large physical collections of music the way they used to. My friends are typically shocked when they witness the number of shelved CDs in my living room.

To get someone to buy an album instead of downloading its contents – legally or illegally – the media has to be more than a vehicle for the music. Record companies have it only half right when they stuff on video clips and re-purposed press kits. They tend to be of a “use once a destroy” value.

The whole point is to create something no one would destroy – something they want to keep, touch, share, and revisit.

Clearly, Bandcamp isn’t just about digital music distribution – it’s about musical modernism. Providing pain-free downloads and designing killer album packages both serve the same purpose: promoting music.

Disclosure: My new LP is available for download exclusively via Bandcamp, as is E’s band Filmstar’s first demo.

February Funk

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I have a well-documented history of spending February indoors avoiding people and neglecting my creativity. I watch movies, play video games and berate myself for watching movies and playing video games rather than writing magnum opus blogs and an album.

That the month is bisected by my dating anniversary with E – now eight years – doesn’t help matters. In fact, sometimes the intersection of anniversary with my shut-in status just re-emphasizes my desire to live the rest of my life as a hermit.

If January is for resolutions, February is for malaise and self-hatred. I’m not sure if it’s a Virgo thing, but it’s as reliable as the sunrise.

It helps my hermit case that I’ve just now shaken the remainder of a nasty bought of possible laryngitis. Also, our block remains under sixish inches of ice, and getting anywhere in the city has required about a mile walk to a reliably non-detoured form of public transit.

Happily, this year I pulled myself away from Netflixing through Lost and playing Creeper World long enough for a Valentine’s brunch with E at one of my favorite upscale pubs, Nodding Head, where we were serenading by the jazz stylings of one of my favorite musicians, Alexandra Day.

So, there’s my one social engagement for the month. There are ten days left, and I am already chalking them off as lost. Maybe if I can embrace the vast nothingness of this awful month then I can find some small delight in any minor progress I make as a person from within its icy grasp.