Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

college

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My one and only final begins in three and a half hours; it is for my Philosophy class — a subject i have a rocky history with. I don’t seem to be especially concerned about it, as i have already secured my required B and would need to get a perfect score to wind up with my beloved 4.0.

There’s two points that i want to make here, two forking paths from that simple introduction that very well might lead to the same place.

The first is that classes are grinding to a halt and i am left with a wide expanse of life in front of me. It feels Strange. I know that this break from worries and scholastic commitments only lasts three weeks, and that i have umpteen personal commitments already set to eat up my time. Still, i love the idea of living without pressure… it’s been literally an entire year since i’ve had even an entire week where i could forget about things like work and studying. Suddenly i am finding time for friends that i didn’t even realize i had shut out, and i’m happy to have them back. As if that wasn’t good enough, opening up on the other side of it is a quarter that is nearly exclusively populated by Communication classes that i am sure to love. It seems like a downhill glide from here back to co-op.

The other side is that One Year has gone by since i walked into this same situation. A year since that tiny apartment with its inescapable mess and my first flight in years looming on the horizon. I’m not so much concerned with all the things that happened in the time that intervened so much as i am concerned with the length of time. A year only represents one twentieth of my life now… a number that’s not nearly as significant as a tenth or a fifteenth. Lengths of time contract rather than expand, and the nearly two years it’s been since i first kissed someone doesn’t seem materially much longer than the over a year it’s been since i first played “Relief.”


I don’t know what i’m saying. Something to the effect of life keeps going on no matter what i tend to be doing with it. I should go study; somewhere in the pit of my stomach i really do want that A.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/12/7834517/

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For Creative Writing i had to put together a portfolio of all the work i did this quarter, and at the last minute i decided to substitute some recent lyrics in place of a second free-verse that i wasn’t especially pleased with. Theoretically this was entirely fair game, but the thing about my lyrics is i didn’t really revise their content so much as i revised the context in which i used them. So, teacher’s pet that i am, i turned in a cd along with my final portfolio. On it were the following four songs… first grabbed out of their respective trio appearances, and then in these more essential versions.

Until You Awake – This is a song that was always meant to be delicate and intricate, but i never got the chance to strike the right balance in my previous attempts at it. Here is sounds nearly as i imagine it… cascading and balanced. I’m very happy with it.

(just an) Excuse – This is actually the original demo of the song, predating this season’s first Trio. However, it displays some of the directions it was meant to go in a little more accurately than subsequent recordings because here i had more time to prep the guitar-sound and recording range. This isn’t evolved the way “Awake” is; instead, it is more of a suggestion of where the song could be going.

Tangling – This is like a tease of a song… quiet and faded around the edges where the song is usually rambunctious and crackling. The reduction does it some amount of good … you can more easily see what i’m trying to achieve without having to look past the clipped microphone and stressed vocal chords. “Tangling” could very well be the simplest thing i’ve ever written — a sort of retro Beatles-imitation that pits that nebulous concept of “word on the street” against the notorious unnamed “girl.” I know for sure that i like the song, but i suppose the whole point is going to be where i go with it; this could be your only chance to hear it without having to be pulled in all of the various directions i’m trying to go in.

Tangled – Written as a twin to “Tangling,” this song got lost in the rush that was vying for a spot on Trio, yet somehow managed to turn up this week in (what felt like) an incredibly solid rendition (considering i had only played it once, previously). This version is perhaps more tentative then the Trio recorded the day before; it wasn’t meant for display the way the Trio was. This is a more static version, less magnetic … i am settling into the space of the song instead of filling them up so they can be better heard. It’s a simple thing, and much like “Tangling” it’s eventually going to become more about what i can add than about what i can strip away. For now, though, it’s as bare as the day it was born.

This is a nearly definite third of the material that i’ll be recording whenever i finally haul my ass back into the studio, and i’ve tried to distill it down to the most basic of its elements. As such, anything you might have to say about it will be welcome.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/12/7777772/

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The sneaky sun was just spying over my shoulder, trying to catch a glimpse of what i was furtively typing down tucked behind my absent boss’s desk. Nothing special, i assure it, and clack away.


Last night was a peculiar sort of emptiness that i have every so often, and even though i feel that same vacancy inside of my life today i do not feel that same desperation. That’s what makes my misery so very complete — the desperation of knowing that nothing matters at all and that i can’t seem to change any of it.

I’m sorry if i offended anyone yesterday by saying that no one’s concerns about me mattered … i’m not trying to belittle your emotions, i’m just pointing out that not even concerned loved ones were really making a dent in the place where i was. Or, where i am. But, things about today are subtly different … suddenly, those hard fought papers and tests began to mean something to me again, because one of my teachers went beyond just assigning me a grade and a number. I suppose that’s the difference between something mattering or not … whether or not i have any context to go along with it.

The sun set back behind some clouds, so i can get back to work. That sneaky thing… brightening my day from just over my shoulder.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/12/7673950/

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Maybe what’s really getting to me is how different life actually is from television. Of course, we all know that television is just fiction, even when its plotlines are ripped from the proverbial headlines. Still, i know that i’m guilty of always expecting life to be a little more like teevee: constructing killer teasers and opening scenes in my head to neatly wrap up all of the threads my friends and i are tangled up in. Not surprisingly, there’s a theory of communication to match this sensation, and it was coined by a Dean from just down the street.

No, not from Drexel (ha!), from Penn. The man’s name is George Gerbner, and my academic obsession du jour is his Cultivation Theory. Gerbner’s entire study is based around acts of violence that consume a frightening amount of the television we watch every day. His hypothesis, which has been proven again and again through extensive field study, is that the amount of violence we watch regularly on television is an accurate predictor of the amount of violence we expect in our day to day lives. Gerbner even accounts for such an occasional addict as myself, accurately assigning me a low level of anxiety about real-life violence (and, i’m mostly just afraid of being ambushed from around dark corners by vampires).

My current kvetch isn’t about violence, though, it’s about sex. My textbook’s condensed version of Cultivation doesn’t address violence’s sordid little sister at all, and i somehow doubt that good’ol’ George would invite a visit from a random Drexel student just to talk about making whoopee, so i guess i have to field this one on my own.

Does the sexual content of television affect my expectations about life? I’d say that it does, without a doubt. I’ve watched a lot of boob-tube in my life, and i have to say that i expect out of romance what i have been taught to look for. I expect torrid affairs and even more torrid breakups … i expect magical first kisses and even more magical first times … i expect random hook ups and even more random pairings with friends i’ve had forever. Sometimes life comes through for me, and sometimes it doesn’t. All through high school i was waiting for that magic catalyst that all of my favorite characters seemed to have received to get my love-live jump-started. It never came. College came on hotter and heavier, but with a bit of deceit: those big-kid parties weren’t what i had been lead to expect. Despite that, some things actually did come out perfect. And, some breakups are just as torrid as the affairs that precede them.

If life complies just once out of an entire year with what we’re hoping for, suddenly we are infused with a sense of resonance … the feeling of our existence actually breaking down and mirroring the media just like we were secretly long for it to do. Every time we get what we want, we immediately want more; why shouldn’t we get more of what the onscreen couples have? I’ve been sitting on my couch like a proverbial potato this week watching a slew of beautiful people bed down with other people… i’ve watching scenes jump from a few tentative kisses to the morning after. I watched Buffy decide to have sex and follow through on it without coming up for air from her violent kiss. In a way i really do want it… all of it, and i feel like i’m missing something just because i don’t have it. Not because i am missing the companionship they have, or the happiness, but the raw energy that lies between the first kiss and the next morning.

The only problem is that characters don’t seem to worry about consequences, mostly because consequence is what keeps them on the air. In reality, people pay for consequences with more kinds of currency than i like to keep count of.

And, here i am, all alone in my room putting off another phone call to the one person i have the tiniest inkling of any relative interest from at all. What am i more afraid of, that it’s bound to fizzle out unlike my onscreen brethren — or that it might snowball into something i’m not ready to deal with faster than i can deal with it? I suppose it’s just like asking if i’m richer or poorer for hanging on to so much of my so-called currency.

One thing’s for sure… George Gerbner is right about television: it isn’t necessarily about real life, but it colors our perceptions of it a lot more than we initially let on.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/11/7491037/

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For a Communications Theory treatise on my weblogging liaisons with Rabi, truck on over to this post and check out the comment chain. I just wrote a rather long (4000+ words) paper about “Interpersonal Communication Theory and Its Application to Initially Text-Based Relationships,” which was basically just my wordy way of saying i was writing about how bloggers wind up being friends with one another. I’m still working on editing the paper appropriately for public consumption (obviously i’ll need to be a little more explanatory about some of the theories), but in the meantime you might glean something interesting from Rabi’s post. And, anyway, you shouldn’t need an excuse to read her page :p

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/11/7452765/