neighbors

Happy Birthday To This

August 26, 2009 by krisis

I. The 27-Club.

Last September I turned 27.

It made me nervous.

Being a major music fan and devout lifetime subscriber to Rolling Stone, I am all too aware of the so-called “27 Club” – a musical super-group headlined by Robert Johnson, Brian Jones, Jimi, Janis, Jim, and Kurt, all of whom met their untimely ends at age 27.

My nervousness wasn’t an actual, rational fear. Just a fringe anxiety, like my utter terror at putting my hand anywhere near the blade of a food processor, even if it’s disconnected from its power source. A mere superstition. Anyway, my musical acumen certainly isn’t at risk of rivaling any of theirs, nor is my level of excess. –> Still, it hung there. The 27 hurdle. A year it would be a challenge to survive.

In the months after my birthday the challenge of surviving gave way to the challenge of getting from one day to the next. Planning a wedding and a honeymoon. Making music solo and with Arcati Crisis. Organizing benefit concerts for four separate charities, all while holding a senior position at work.–> Honestly, I was so preoccupied with life that the whole 27 Club concept didn’t reoccur to me until I was getting ready to jump out of an airplane last month. And, since that failed to kill me, I assumed I was in the clear with regard to the whole untimely end angle.

I continued thinking that until the past few days, when I began re-reading my entries from the past year in anticipation of the ninth anniversary of Crushing Krisis.

It was then I realized that it happened. I died.

If that sounds like hyperbole, it’s meant to be, but only a little bit. Truly, the past year of my life was so vastly different than any that came before that it was hardly lived by the same person.

If that sounds like hyperbole, it’s not. One of the benefits of your blog celebrating it’s ninth birthday is having the ability to make frequent, sweeping, and entirely-accurate generalizations about the state of your life.

In fact, that’s my favorite thing to do on August 26, the birthday of Crushing Krisis.

II. Running Long.

I first floated the assumption that I was the longest running blog in Philadelphia six years ago today, and I verified it last November (with a footnote).

Having finally taken the time to vet my claim to blog-fame, I began to talk about it. At first it was clumsy to get it off my tongue, but slowly I improved from, “Oh, um, I have a blog that’s been around. For a while. Really long, actually,” to “I write the longest-running blog in Philadelphia.”

Even though I now say it with ease, it still has not stopped sounding strange. As I discovered this year, Philly is a pretty plugged-in town. Bloggers, podcasters, twitterers – the city is swimming with them. To be all three, and to be the one collectively doing it all the longest, stopped seeming like a passive achievement (like, “I lost my last baby tooth!”) and more like an active one (more like, “I pulled out my last baby tooth with my bare hands, because that little fucker was annoying me!”)

–>In truth, it took a lot of effort to get through nine seasons of Crushing Krisis. I had to learn stuff that normal people apparently don’t know how to do based on their day-to-day lives, like being able to offer pros and cons for all of the major blog CMS platforms from present back to 1999, or revising PHP arguments on the fly to get the results I want. Similarly, I know all sorts of silly details about audio production that make even my eyes cross.

I didn’t mean to get this way. Honest. It just happens when you write the longest-running blog in Philadelphia, which is also the longest-running platform for a singer-songwriter to podcast and embed his or her work.

III. Greatest Hits, The Expanded Edition

A year ago today I wrote that I felt “as though the vast majority of my personal greatest hits record is contained in the last year of my life.”

I’m happy to report that the hits have continued – in both life and song. Significantly, I crossed off two of my biggest goals in life – seeing the Nike of Samothrace in person at the Louvre in Paris, and jumping out of a plane.

The greatest hits of my year weren’t limited to those two events. Hardly.

I planned a wedding and a honeymoon, an all-encompassing circus that stayed relatively fun right through the end, just as I predicted and insisted it would. I recapped dress shopping with my groom’s party in two parts, the first of which hilariously features my near-ejection from David’s Bridal. I recorded a song that would become so synonymous with our wedding that its lyrics wound up in the fortune cookies at my bachelor party

Then there was the actually bit where I got married. Subsequently, I reported our honeymoon adventures in words and photos.

The novelty has not worn off.

I made music both solo and as Arcati Crisis. As AC, Gina and I headlined a show and then co-hosted an open mic for over half a year, in the midst of which we recorded a Live @ Rehearsal record so definitive that it approaches being a studio album (download it free!). But, some of the most fun we had was while driving and breaking traffic laws.

Meanwhile, I realized I had an entire album of new solo repertoire waiting to be played, and I began to get out to perform it more than ever before – particularly Small & Lonely, Saving Grace, Tattooed, and sometimes Gone Baby Gone. Confidently. I even captured me on video, for once.

(Also of note, Elise now fronts her own band, putting me in the position of band-aid that she has occupied faithfully for so many years.)

I planned four benefit concerts for four separate charities – Lyndzapalooza’s Back Yard Music Fest, my own first ever live web broadcast as part of my support for Danny Brown‘s #12for12k, and a pair of impending shows for #blamedrewscancer and at work for the United Way.

Speaking of, work bled into my digital life more this year than ever before. I had the good fortune to join a project with one Ms. Britt Miller, who cajoled me into joining twitter, which in turn lead me to meet like-minded folks at Social Media Club and Tweetup events.

In turn, that resulted in my winding up a part #blamedrewscancer, for which my personal and collaborative efforts have contributed to almost $10k raised in less than 100 days!

Oh, and I jumped out of a plane. Did I mention the jumping out of a plane?

And, as usual, I did a lot more that was hard to categorize. I realized that I’ve been planning events for about two years straight. I shared personal reflections, from the election of a new president to watching my neighbor freebase cocaine at his kitchen table. I visited Erika and her fiance in Boston for a madcap adventure that wound up with us giving each other drunken facials during the Emmys. I tossed off a cover of “Dress You Up” in a single take. I wrote a social media essay on “Network Agnosticism.” I discovered that I’m living in my own teenage superhero novel. Someone even told me I’m not mean enough, which isn’t something I hear too often.

If it seems like an impossible amount of things to do in just one year, well, it is. At points it turned my life into a sort of a joke, whether that be slapstick or black comedy, as I juggled all of those responsibilities. And, amazingly, they lead me to be genuinely happy more times than not.

I flashed back on a younger me, and how I can relive his depressions through my blog (https://crushingkrisis.com/?p=3411 ) just like Sebastian gets sucked into the world of the Never Ending Story https://crushingkrisis.com/?p=3412) I began to think of my family as Asian, even before the wedding ( https://crushingkrisis.com/?p=3364 ).

IV. The Year of the Phoenix.

I have a different opinion on the 27 Club now than I did on my birthday.

Twenty-seven isn’t a litmus test. It’s a proof of concept. It’s a year that that the self-realization bell curve reaches its pinnacle, where the majority of people begin to realize that the path they’ve taken can lead into a tangible future.

I can understand how that could lead you to your end, intentional or not. It leads to excess and over-extension, and to fear and doubt. You can wind up as a phoenix just as easily as you can wind up ground down to ash.

For all the successes of the past year, it contained many challenges for me too. I died a lot of deaths. In the case of my wedding, it was a rebirth as something greater. In other instances, it was just the end.

It was also the year I started shaving with an electric razor. If that’s not a major beginning I don’t know what else could qualify.

For the first time in years I am writing my anniversary post less enamored with the year that passed, and more enamored with the year to come. I seem to have finally escaped the fear that my best work is behind me instead of beyond me, farther down the vector of my life.

That is a death – finally ending my obsession with re-assessing my past in favor of a future view.

Thank you for helping that come to fruition.

Thank you Elise, for transforming my life into something real. Thank you Gina, for following this line with me, a vector connected to our destination.

Thank you Lyndzapalooza, for forcing me to innovate excel as a communicator and as a musician. Thank you Britt, Drew, and everyone else at #blamedrewscancer, for not only testing my limits, but forcing me to reconsider them altogether.

Thank you, on the other side of this screen, for reading my adventures, and for caring if and when the next installment might turn up. Thank you for watching me die 3,528 tiny deaths – once for every click of the “POST” button, and thank you for waiting for me to come back to life with every subsequent visit to this little white box.

Thank you for having the patience to watch and wait for me to finally take myself as seriously as you’ve always taken me, as a professional, a songwriter, and a blogger.

Thank you. And, happy birthday to this.

pipes and glass

March 9, 2009 by krisis

A long time ago I had a neighbor, freebasing cocaine at his kitchen table.

That came later, though.

Curled around my first guitar on the front step, maybe? Must’ve been. I don’t remember how else he knew I could play. I remember our porch, and his hammers on Ziggy. That’s exactly what I wanted.

We became a pair in his basement from time to time, him showing me barre chords, my explaining why you might retune.

I didn’t have that in my life at the time. I had Gina, still several months of skepticism about my guitar playing before she’d be of much help. No one else to take an interest. Certainly not an adult example.

(My mother’s boyfriend had played guitar, maybe, in the 70s? Some distantly removed time. He had sliced the tendon on his pointer, and could no longer play barres. Useless to me. He had a clumsy way of making a C chord, remembering it a half-fret at a time.

Inwardly I swore: no forgetting.)

So there I was, in the neighbor’s basement. We had known him forever, anyway. He was fifteen years older? Feels like he was much older than I am now. At least seventeen, if he remembered Bowie like that.

I noodled on his ancient synthesizer and he restrung his Yamaha 12-string. “Like Bowie’s.” And he told his story.

He was heavy into music, writing his own all of the time. He went on a cruise ship or some other inane vacation, to play. And someone said, one night, to him – very serious about his music. They said to him he sounded like something or some other thing. It was probably the 80s, so probably some other awful thing. Richard Marx, let’s say.

And he said, “Peter.” He said my name in this very convivial way, like, we’re just two Italian guys shooting the shit. It was not a way men usually said my name. Still not.

“Peter, I didn’t know if it was a compliment. I hadn’t heard anything new in a year. All I would listen to was myself.”

I was incredulous, still a fan more than a musician. How could he turn off everything else? It seemed likely a lie.

I got too familiar, I guess. The whole family lived there, and I got used to poking my head in if I got home late from rehearsal and the light was on.

I put my head in, and there they were, him and his best friend. Hardware on the table, but not the tool box like usual. Pipes and glass?

Pipes and glass, and he said, “do you want any” or maybe “you don’t want any,” and I, numb, just walked back across the porches to my door.

Figures, the one guy who could say my name like that and mean it and play those little hammers. But I knew what my goal was – I would have to learn my barre chords before there’d be any excess.

I forget him for a year or so, here and there. There are other stories – driving to the music store in South Philly, the time I almost cut my finger off and he came over because my mom was at work. That bass in pieces in my closet.

I’ve still never been that freebaser at the kitchen table. I must not be good enough at barres. But, now I know what it’s like to only listen to myself, to not want or need anything else.

I understand him that much.

fear and loathing in the back yard

November 23, 2008 by krisis

Our neighbors are keeping two small dogs in their back yard. They look like they could be puppy dobermans, but I’m really not sure. However, they’re definitely being kept – they’re not strays.

As far as Elise and I can tell they are living exclusively in the yard – to the point that it’s been cleared of various detritus and set up as a dog-proof enclosure that’s protected from access via the alley.

I wouldn’t mind any of that, except:

(A) Our bedroom is at the rear of the house, and I have been having trouble sleeping this month. It only takes a few barks to rouse me.

(B) It has been hovering near the freezing point for several days (it’s currently 29), and the dogs seem to have only a small carrier to retreat to for a respite.

These are not neighbors we ever speak to – usually they’re just standing around outside smoking blunts when we walk up to the house. At the same time, they’ve never been unfriendly or threatening, and they’ve never once complained about us playing music.

Elise looked into Philadelphia’s policies on animal control, and we’re within our rights to submit a report about the barking if it persists more than 15 minutes on an hour. Also, clearly we can call at any time about the cruelty situation.

I know what normal Peter – mouthy, empowered Peter – would do. I would ask them about the dogs when I come home from work tomorrow, advise them cheerily that the barking is keeping me up and that I’m worried that the dogs are cold at night, and advise them that I could call the SPCA on their behalf of they can’t find a solution.

Except, that Peter doesn’t live here anymore. Not since this summer, when a slight mouthiness resulted in our home being vandalized in a hate crime.

I haven’t talked about it much, here or to anyone else, including Elise. But, for the first time in my life, I’m afraid of being me. I don’t know how to speak up. In fact, I don’t really feel safe anywhere unless I’m surrounded by friends. I’m afraid to sing karaoke or talk to people in bars or on buses or travel to any suburban or rural area because if I am the wrong combination of soft and assertive and they don’t like me they’ll just try to degrade me or something that I hold valuable.

I’m stuck. I’m afraid to talk to the neighbors, even though signs point to their being at least a little friendly. I’m afraid if I call in the dogs the neighbors will assume it’s me, even though it could be any of the five yards adjacent to them.

I’m afraid if I’m me people will hate me.

It was hard enough to sleep for a month after what happened – constantly bolting upright every time I heard a sound anywhere adjacent to the house. I’m already nauseous every time I walk up to my door for fear of what it might contain. And, unrelated to that, I’m already ragged and tired at home and at work, verging on sick.

I don’t need barking dogs to compound the situation.

RE: You Rock

June 26, 2004 by krisis

I expect Saturday mornings to be loud in the apartment. It’s a day off, a day to wake up early with too much energy, a day of errands and industriousness. Upstairs they are vacuuming, here we are learning harmony, and there is a wonderful rock coming from downstairs. So wonderful, in fact, that i was sure that i recognized it.

Opening the door to our stairwell i discovered that Zoe, our downstairs neighbor, was playing my traditional airplane-landing accompaniment, PJ Harvey’s “Kamikaze.” This from the same neighbor who was blasting Madonna the day we moved in, and whose best friend is an abnormally pretty drag-queen named Dave, who occasionally chats with me in the hall.

Basically, she is the best downstairs neighbor ever. To show my appreciation, I left the following note, written on leftover coochie-snorcher-pink paper from the Vagina Monologues in red sharpie, taped to her door:

From: Upstairs

RE: You Rock

I noticed you were playing my favorite PJ record. I have everything PJ has recorded; feel free to borrow some. -Peter

ps: It’s nice to have neighbors with good taste!

April 4, 2003 by krisis

My spectacular view from the 35th floor has proven itself to be no solution to today’s pervasive dreariness. A panoramic image of my city opens up just past the faux-mahogany lip of my cubicle, displaying clearly every still, gray eave and chimney from here to the nearly-obsolete Stadium (a distance that was almost infinite to me as a child, now seemingly so simply to fly across).

Honestly, the view left me longing for my lunch break; i’d much rather be inside the fog than above it.

In other news, Elise has confirmed the existence of my rooster after the debut of its new 7-7:30am time slot. Not only did Elise hear it in person today, she kindly offered to strangle it with her bare hands. At least now the crowing actually overlaps with a time that i have to wake up. Meanwhile, corroborating reports have emerged from Meg and Amanda, the former of whom lives over two blocks away.

Lindsay and I conducted a sparkling discussion on the height of cubicles as a status symbol over a health-conscious lunch of salads & Snapple. (Oh, the difference a year makes). In my first nearly coherent attempt to describe our director, i claimed she was “Like Karen from Will & Grace (except not shrill or drunk) if she was surreptitiously being made to listen to Strange Little Girls in her sleep.” Not the most succinct description, but i’ve only been working on it for five days now.

Life isn’t so bad, is it?

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/04/200098268/

April 1, 2003 by krisis

There definitely are not any reasons for me to be awake right now, was the first thought to pop into my head at four-thirty this morning, when i found myself awake two and a half hours shy of my clock’s scheduled alarming. After i fully resigned myself to the reality that, yes, i was no longer within the depths of my dreams, my second thought was: What the fuck is making that godawful noise?

Obviously, the noise was not one that i could immediately recognize — not car alarm, nor overloud stereo, nor cat in heat. Actually, it sounded something like the first and the third intertwined and broadcast over the second, but that piece of information did not leave me any closer to knowing what it was. In case you haven’t already gathered, it was not a pleasant sound.

As i rose to a fuller level of consciousness, i initiated an internal round of twenty-questions to attempt to the identify the noise’s source. Where was it coming from? It was not interior to my room. It was not coming from inside of the rest of the house. It was not coming through the wall that i share with our neighbors. It was definitely from outside. It was coming from out back, maybe from the northern side of my block. It was coming at slightly irregular intervals, but with no discernible variations: squw-aw-aw-ah-ack … … … squw-aw-aw-ah-ack … … squw-aw-aw-ah-ack … et cetera.

What was making the noise? Certainly not a naturally occurring phenomenon. Probably not electronic, given the interval length. Could it be animal? Hmm. Would have to be vocal in nature. Not barking, not yowling, not chirping …

Just shy of my twentieth question, i ventured an internal guess that the sound must be that of a rooster who had found himself running slightly ahead of the sunrise schedule. However, i failed to locate any such creature upon poking my head out of the window, and was hesitant to climb out onto my spring-board-of-death/roof in my post-unconscious state. Lacking any other option short of throwing things out of my window, i closed it and retreated to my bed. Whatever it was, it couldn’t possible go on like that for much longer; i could tune it out.

I could not tune it out, and it would not stop. It was awful and piercing, pausing just long enough to raise my hopes that it might be over and then dashing them with another resounding squw-aw-aw-ah-ack. Soon i found myself grinding one ear into the sheets and capping the other with a pillow, altogether enveloped by my heavy blanket. Still, it came. And came. And so forth.

After a short while i began to entertain the idea that if i was forced to lay awake much longer i might get out of bed, dress in several layers of dark clothing, wrap a towel around my face and neck in a burqa-like fashion, go outside and around to the back of my apartment, scale some fences, and confront my nemesis/rooster. Clearly if i could not shake it from its activity i would be force snap the damn thing’s neck. Sleepless, i convinced myself that i would be able to do it. After all, it wasn’t as if i was a vegetarian because i like animals especially much. And the owner ought not to even have it in the city, let alone give it free vocal reign of the pre-dawn hours. It couldn’t possibly be hard to break a rooster’s neck; the trick would just be to catch it. And so forth.

I have no recollection of the noise ever ending, but after nearly an hour of imagining myself as a member of an elite ninja poultry-extermination squad i finally fell back into sleep. When i awoke (at the expected time) i could detect no trace of the noise and, upon reflection, decided that it could not have possibly been a rooster. A rooster? Just the delirium of being woken from deep R.E.M.-sleep talking. Probably some weird foreign car’s alarm. Anyhow, i had to get dressed and be on the way to my second day of work.

A short time later i was outside — halfway down my block, in fact — when i spotted an vaguely familiar neighbor leaving her house. I resolved not to involve her in my ruminations, but as she joined me on the sidewalk my curiosity got the best of me. I blurted: “Can i ask you something very peculiar?” She regarded me skeptically, but apparently decided from the look of my shirt and tie that i could no no worse harm than try to bum a cigarette. She made no move to break stride or reply, so i continued: “Did you hear anything odd last night… around four thirty in the morning?”

Another skeptical look. Today is, i realized, April Fools. She let my question hang for a moment and then wryly (though not icily) replied, “Like what?”

My mouth opened (certainly not a rooster, that’s for sure) and closed (nevermind) and opened again and, seemingly of its own volition, said “Perhaps a, erm, a rooster,” and, emboldened by her lack of immediate ridicule, then amended, “or some other animal that regularly greets the dawn of a new day with a terribly piercing squw-aw-aw-ah-ack sound.” (The sound came out perfectly … as if i had spent all night rehearsing it rather than being tortured by it. I hadn’t spent the whole night rehearsing it, had i? No, i had heard it … heard the rooster/ /foreign-car-alarm /unidentified-squw-aw-aw-ah-acking-object. Right… right?)

Her gaze suddenly renounced its skepticism, leaving a warmly-smiling face in its place. (Her rooster, perhaps?) Then: “Probably just one of the neighbors who’s involved in cock-fighting.” She sounded unconcerned; nonchalant, even. “I’m Dawn, by the way.”

Oh. Sure. One of those. “Oh. Sure. One of those.” I sounded considerably less unconcerned than she did; decidedly chalant, if you will. I quickly attempted to save face in the light of my seemingly puzzled reception of her very succinct answer by adding, “Right… right? (very smooth… for a jackass.) I’m Peter.”

After my incredibly comeback, Dawn and I carried on a sparkling conversation all the way to our bus stop, rooster-free save for her comment that “I’ll hear something more peculiar than that from one of my clients today, that’s for sure.” Which, i suppose, makes perfect sense if you are in the know about the neighborhood cock-fighting ring — which Dawn is. And, if you counsel weird people for a living, which Dawn does.

In comparison, my second day of work seemed entirely normal. Which definitely wasn’t the case…

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/04/200082420/