Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

betterment

10 Commandments for 2013

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Happy New Year, et cetera, et cetera.

The last time I was at work (mmm, 4-day weekends), a few of us clustered around Ashley’s desk and tried to name all 10 Commandments. I was brought up on that stuff, a mind full to the brim of bible verses, but now it’s all been replaced with key changes and X-Men errata. I only got five commandments in before I ran out of steam.

What struck me as we tried to name the remaining commands is that once you discard the obviously godly ones, you’re simply left with sensible suggestions to live at an even keel. That’s why they got codified into religious texts. It’s not like they’re god’s most notable oration, you know? They’re about balanced living.

I don’t make resolutions. Or, more accurately, I made a perfectly sensible set of them nine years ago and see no reason to change them at this point. However, that doesn’t preclude me from having guidelines or goals.

Or commandments.

Thus, here are my 10 Commandments for 2013. I don’t think I’m going to obey each one every day. But, I do think if I keep them in mind most of the time I’m going to enjoy this year more than the last.

1. Establish a Vision. Know the shape of the future you’re living towards, even if that vision is vague and shifting. After shrugging off so many potential apocalypses in 2012, don’t live towards a vacuum.

2. Value What You Have. The next best thing might make life great, but before you go after it take a moment to consider what you did with the last best thing.

3. Create Opportunities (To Create). Find time in your routine for creativity, but also know when to break out of your routine to create a unique opportunity.

4. Deliver More.  Years and careers and lives are better measured in achievements than attempts. Find a way to mark every month or week with something completed rather than five things started.

5. Fail More. The quickest path to mediocrity is only trying things you know you can do and delivering things you know are great. Do more. Stop worrying so much about if any of it is going to be any good.

6. Engage in Social Penetration. Value the narratives of others as you would have them value your own. We’re all stuck inside our brains at the center of our own universes, and everyone loves to have a visitor in their galaxy. Try engaging in other people’s stories more often and more genuinely.

7. Consume Appropriate Portions. Whether it’s food, work, sleep, exercise, or time spent with a good book, there is always too much of a good thing. Listen to the voice inside your head that says, “you may have had enough for now.”

8. Acknowledge Your Body. The voice inside your head does not always take your body into account, but if you listen you’ll learnt that your body rarely lies. We’re physical beings. If your body says “run,” go for a run. (If you’re body says “ice cream,” try to figure out why it’s saying “ice cream.”)

9. Good Habits Don’t Have to be Obsessions. Having a good habit does not mean it has to be the focus of every single day. You can skip a day of blogging or a week at the gym without shattering your habit. The only thing that can break a habit is you.

10. Focus on the Positive. It’s so easy to be a critic – to define your life by what you dislike. Stop doing that so much. An average day should have as many positives as negatives. Try grading things up from zero instead of always docking points off of unattainable perfection.

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I don’t have a single resolution for 2013, but if you want to know how I plan to live my year I can’t say it any more plainly than that. They don’t address everything and I might not obey them every day, but I think I could do a lot worse than use that list to guide my actions.

But, enough about me – what about you? Would my commandments work in your life? What is my list missing that’s essential to yours?

The Human Calculator v. The Harmony Jukebox

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That would be a pretty dull superhero fight, huh?

Actually, the title refers to Friday’s post, which drew a quick comment from someone who built a straw-man of “The Human Spellchecker” to stand next to my snarky Human Calculator.

I’m so high-and-mighty about math, but do I use a spell-checker when I blog? Would I deny people a spellchecker too in my dedicated Ludditism?

The answers are, respectively, “occasionally” and “of course!” The existence of tools to assist us doesn’t replace the need to master skills or knowledge on our own.

Consider the source. I take for granted that I’m comfortable doing both of these things. I have to proofread words and numbers as part of both my jobs and my hobbies. It’s in my best interest to be a knowledgeable snob about both.

Maybe they aren’t the best examples for me.

I always say, “music is like calculus to me.” Yet, I’m a musician. I don’t have wonderful pitch, and I am not a natural singer. I can’t pluck perfectly in-tune harmony notes out of thin air like E or Gina, each of whom I refer to as “The Harmony Jukebox.”

When our band learns a new song I usually have to play along on piano at first, and when I sing harmony in the car E has to sing with me the first few times. And I have to pay careful attention to breath support, shaping, and phrasing to stay in tune.

At some point I have to sing the notes myself in an effortless way. If I never eliminated the piano, or E, or the careful attention to every note, I wouldn’t be much of a musician. I mean, yeah, they have auto-tune for that now, but what about performing live.

Bottom line: being a musician is hard work for me! Sometimes it isn’t any fun at all.

What if math was that hard for me? Would I sometimes just whip out the calculator? Probably. But just like music, I’d still want to know how to do it myself. I still want to possess that knowledge.

What about you? Forget grade-school antics like math and spelling. What is a difficult skill that you have to reproduce daily? Do you use a tool to assist you? And, can you still perform the same task without the tool?

a rewarding life

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This is a story about rewards. Sort of. I’m not sure how to tell it, so I’ll just start at the beginning.

A little over a year ago I met Britt Miller – comm professional, digital native, and visual artist. Once Britt learned about my blogging she egged me into using Twitter. The rest, as we are accustomed to saying, is history.

It’s frigging crazy-ass history, actually. Playing streaming concerts, jumping out of planes, accepting awards, attending conferences in NYC – all of that borne out of Britt’s pestering me to get to know Twitter.

Skyline by Britt Miller (@brimil)

The two of us now share a “Fame 2010” plan of promoting and improving our respective arts all year. Last April, before all of that happened, Britt mentioned she was showing her art at the first ever “Earth Saturday” block party on South Street – an eco-friendly festival thrown by Big Green Earth Store and Whole Foods.

I asked Britt if she wanted some music to go with her art and the end result was that I wound up playing a block party along with some of my local favorites like Christie Lenee and Dante Bucci.

It was my first solo appearance in a long while, and it surprised me – even in the limitless space of an outdoor gig my songs felt big and sure, with just a few stumbles. It wound up being a major force in getting me into shape for playing and recording more than ever in the rest of 2009.

This past Saturday was the second Earth Saturday block party, again at 9th and South, and again featuring art from both Britt and I. My set felt even bigger and surer this year, and Britt had a table of beautiful prints of her art – major Fame 2010 success!

Britt is always pulling hilarious quotes of mine out of thin air, and before my set she had a great one. We were chatting with some twitter friends about my songwriting, and I made my usual disclaimer that it’s taken me a long time and a lot of work to get to where I am now – from being forbidden to sing in my high school halls to playing sets at eco-festivals. And, Britt said:

Peter, you said this awesome thing once. I heard someone tell you that you were a great singer, and you said, “Thank you. I’ve worked for thirteen years to hear that compliment.”

I don’t even remember saying that, but it’s indelibly me. To hear someone compliment me on my voice or my songs strikes me with awe – awe at what I’m hearing, and awe that nearly half a life of effort means I’m able to play music that people enjoy.

I wish I could take that feeling and transport it back to 15-year-old me, plucking out the strains of “Dilate” on his first guitar almost this very day in 1997.

Failing that, I’m sharing it with you. I hope you have something in your life that makes you as happy as my music makes me, and Britt’s paintings make her – especially when someone else stops to appreciate them.

Daily Demo: Icy Cold

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Here’s a brand new HD video of “Icy Cold” with beautiful hi-fi multi-track soundboard audio. It comes with a story.

Okay, story-time.

Ten years ago (less 24 days) I was a freshman in college, and I wrote a song called “Icy Cold.”

It was an odd one – very oblique lyrics in one of my more unusual alternate tunings (at the time) made it a challenge to sing and play. I left it off my 2000 demo CD Other Plans and, curiously, also did not consider it for my 2001 studio disc Relief. It remained bound to my apartment, where it factored in to a few of my favorite Trio recordings.

Around the same time I wrote “Icy Cold” – 86th in a rapidly-expanding list of songs – I decided that it was time for me to start playing shows.

Being rather ignorant as to what that entailed, I assumed that I would just phone up a local, mostly-acoustic venue where people I liked frequently played and explain that I wrote tons of awesome songs, and then they would invite me to play. (Later, after my initial flush of success, I could upgrade to playing the TLA or the Electric Factory).

The Tin Angel being the only local mostly-acoustic venue that I knew of at the time, I sussed out their booking information and rang them up.

That was the extent of my year-2000 booking experience at the Tin Angel. No follow-up. No booking. No flush of success.

To be fair, I would have been an utter disaster. I know some people so wonderful that their first ever show was at the Tin, but I was not that kind of wonderful in 2000. Sure, I had the awesome songs, but I could just barely sing, and I was playing a guitar that didn’t even especially stay in tune!

Over the course of the past ten years I’ve done a lot to rectify my singing and guitar-playing issues, and I’ve played in a lot of amazing Philly venues – including the Tin Angel, as part of a showcase with Arcati Crisis. Yet, I’ve never fulfilled that original goal of ten years ago – being featured solo on the bill at the Tin.

Well, that’s going to happen on Friday at 10:30 p.m., so when it came to choosing the first song to post in 2010 in this glorious new HD audio/video combo format it seemed natural to choose “Icy Cold” – especially given the slights it experienced in 2000 and 2001.

Plus, it’s really freaking cold out.

That’s my story.

PS: I owe the hugest possible shout-out to Tim Jahn for explaining Adobe Premiere Pro compression codecs to me via Twitter at the eleventh hour (literally) to make this beautiful video possible. Tim writes a blog of occasional, thought-provoking bulletins that I have been enjoying for months. You can also follow him on Twitter.

2010, pass or fail

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In perusing the new year’s resolutions of my bloggy and tweety friends, I’ve noticed a lot of hate on 2009.

I suppose a lot of terrible things happened to a lot of people last year, which makes me almost embarrassed to admit it was pretty awesome for me. I don’t have to explain why, because you’re reading my blog, AKA Peter’s Awesomeness Tracker (e.g., wedding, Paris, music festival, skydiving, #bdc, etc).

I also accomplished a lot of personal goals. Not resolutions, mind you – intangible, mutable agreements with yourself that you might choose to honor on any given day. No, real goals – like, “Keep a balanced budget,” “Record X songs,” and “Convert home office to recording studio.” And each goal came with an associated amount of points, altogether adding up to 100 – which meant I could grade myself on my year.

(I know, right? Only I would take delight in making new year’s resolutions into an academic endeavor with a grade.)

I didn’t get a 100% on 2009, or even a C. It was more of a pass/fail thing, and I certainly didn’t fail – in grade or in the obscene amount of important things I accomplished.

The goals were good for something else, too – they let me know what wasn’t important. If I cannot bring myself to tag the last 800 posts from CK’s first three months even with my grade hanging on the line, it’s just not gonna happen.

I kept that in mind as I designed my 2010 goals. I focused less on esoteric personal requirements and more on things I could accomplish and view a product of.

It’s hardly a secret that many of my goals are related to my music – over a third! Last year one of my big goals was to get out regularly to open mics, which I did! For 2010 one of the biggest goals, with the most associated points, is playing shows where I am featured on the bill.

What a coincidence, then, that I am playing my first solo gig at the Tin Angel this Friday.

201001tinangel

I have some more to say about that (CLEARLY!!!!!), but it will keep until the week begins.