Crushing Krisis

The Newest Oldest Blog In New Zealand

Archives for July 2005

Whoever’s Listening

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You know, back in the day i might not have understood what chords i was fretting, or what key i was playing in, or even how to sing, but god bless me, any time i didn’t think i’d remember how to do one of those things i made little notes in the margin of my lyrics or recorded the song. Which is more than i can say for my current state of affairs.

My goal for this week’s free time (made even more free because E isn’t even here, so i’m completely alone and to my own devices) is that i had to play each one of my 140 completed documented songs all the way through – researching how to play them, when necessary.

It’s funny, spending the better part of your free time listening to lo-fi recordings of yourself from six years ago trying to pick out the bass notes of chords. If i’m ever famous enough to warrant one of those The Early Years collections… oh boy, there’s plenty of crappy early years to choose from. I mean, aside from the hundreds of recordings from the beginning of CK forward. Early.

Anyhow, after 20 minutes of fruitlessly rewinding a real audio file from 1999 that i think was recorded in a spectacular 8-bits of digital sound in a futile attempt to figure out the bridge of the song i wrote on my last day of high school i finally pulled my old lyric book off the shelf to discover that the four weird alternate tuning chords i had been so desperately trying to replicate were printed in neat numerals at the top of the page, dated 6/19/1999.

That makes song 48 of 140 complete.

Fingers just starting to get sore.

Anyanka

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One day i will be able to watch the finale of Buffy and not cry every time Anya is on screen.


If only we could get a little teevee running the finale at the side of the stage, i could cry in the play.

CarSeat Flashback

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When I was two and a half I learned that you only get credit for something you have the courage to do.

My mother contests my memory of this event.

I remember single frames of it almost more clearly than any other memory I’ve ever had. It was summer, and I was in the back seat, on the left hand side, in my car seat. The car was the Golden Nova, a two-door nugget of vinyl-seated glory from the mid-late seventies. We were at a gas station, but it wasn’t the Gulf station we always went to. We may have been in New Jersey.

It was hot. We may have been returning from a lake or pool. My mother, who does not like to pump her own gas (maybe because of this story), got out of the car to pump gas.

My mother, lest we forget, was only about two and a half years older than the mean age of my four favorite drinking buddies (i.e. she was pregnant at the age of my four favorite drinking buddies). What any of the four of them would do if they locked their two-year-old in the Golden Nova on one of the hottest days of the year I can’t say.

(That’s a lie. Two of them would McGuyver it open, one of them would have a panic attack and then do something highly logical, and the other one would helplessly flirt with someone who she suspected could open it for her.)

(I’ll leave the four of you to figure out who you are and which thing I think you would do.)

In any case, when mom got out of the car to pump gas she pressed down the lock on her car door before slamming it shut. Was it a reflex? Had she forgotten that tiny Peter was in the back, strapped securely into his car-seat, already beginning to die a slow death of asphyxiation?

It didn’t take her very long to realize our predicament. What had she done? I am missing the still memory picture to go with this part of the story, so have to extrapolate from the bits on either side. After yanking the door handle to no avail did she cup her hands to the glass, peering in and tapping frantically as if bothering an animal at the zoo?

I may have waved back at her as she peered into my vehicular cage. The whole situation was amusing to me – my mother now frantically seeking out a station attendant. Didn’t she know I could unbuckle own car seat and unlock the car door? Surely I had unbuckled my carseat in front of her before?

No, no, she didn’t know, because now she was back with a man who was wielding a curiously bent coat hanger. What was he doing with the coat hanger?

Never mind the coat hanger, mom. I tried to signal to her as she stood behind the attendant. Look at me! I was about to perform my toddler houdini routine, unbuckling the car seat strap and crawling up to the front seat to pull up the lock. How amazing a feat! Oh, the congratulations I would reap! She just had to watch… Watch, mom, watch.

I got her attention, I think, and I made a big show of reaching out to the lock, as if I was just working out in my toddler head that *I* could open the door for her. Yes, let her see the baby head wheels turning. Such a smart toddler. I would just have to… *gasp* unbuckle the car seat on my own! Could I? Dare I?

My chubby little fingers crept to the red release button on the car seat buckle, brow knitted in concentration. Would I be able to figure it out? Through the window my mother frantically motioned that I should release the buckle, though I studiously ignored her.

Then, there was a pop. The man’s wire hanger triggered the lock on the door, and the chipped metal knob had popped up into the unlocked position. Open went the door, the sticky outside air hardly a relief from the sticky inside air. My in-progress escape act quickly forgotten, my mother was all coo and apology for leaving me to suffocate alone in the Golden Nova on such a hot day.

To this day she insists I was too young to remember the story. I’m sure I’m making some of it up, though she confirms that it occurred. What I know to be true is that I *knew* I could unbuckle the car-seat and unlock the door, *knew* I could easily solve the problem myself.

But, I didn’t. I was too interested in making sure someone was looking on, as if only that affirmation would enable me to do anything. Having someone watch the process, though, wasn’t as important as achieving the result.

You have to be brave enough to try whether or not anyone will see you fail, because they will surely notice if you succeed.

Time/Money

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I have been budgeting my money for over a year now – keeping everything electronically balanced and tracked, graphing it so I can watch the impact of every CD and shopping trip.

After an entire year of watching my savings ebb and flow on a daily basis I feel as though I finally understand my money – even if I’m not always in control of it. I know exactly what I can and cannot do if I want to save $50 more a month, or $100. There is no mystery as to where my money is spent.

Having finally managed to take control of my spending, I thought, Why not my time? After all, what other commodity is more precious than the almighty dollar, and just as readily wasted?

It started out simple, four categories: rest, work, study/rehearsal, and leisure. The quadrants were concise, but not tidy. Doing laundry was placed incongruously into study/rehearsal. And, is eating dinner leisure?

Slowly I expanded the sheet to accommodate the more realistic shape of my day. Morning routines, evening commutes, theatre rehearsal, and internet use. Plus, laundry and eating dinner.

After two weeks of tracking I now have a beautiful graph, color coded and displaying the ten things I spend the *most* time doing. I spend a fifth of my life at work, and a third of it sleeping! That’s half of my life blown in just two dull categories. And, well, I can’t really work less, but I can certainly sleep less.

There were other surprises. Sometimes you think you just spend a few minutes a day doing something, not realizing that that adds up to 3% of your entire life. On the flip side, you might think you’re spending enough time practicing or studying or exercising, but in the grand scheme of things it’s hardly a drop in the bucket.

I won’t pretend that my beautiful rainbow graph is going to keep me from watching a half a season of Buffy at a time, or force me to feverishly practice my songs until my fingers blister. At least, though, when I’m doing either of those things, I’ll know exactly what they’re worth to me.

Filed Under: ocd

Rock and Roll Fun

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Ever since they left my ears ringing last Friday I have been living, breathing, and listening nothing but Sleater-Kinney. Their crackling new effort “The Woods” could be their worst album yet, and given the nearly universal critical praise it has garnered that ought to tell you something.

Sleater-Kinney is one of those bands that everyone will try to scare you away from. Boy rock fans will paint them as hopelessly impenetrable grrls – Ani DiFranco as a power trio. Even their fans might portray them to you as scary hard-to-like feminists, and some of the more possessive might imply that the girl fans will mock you if you get up close at their shows. (Nothing could have been farther from the truth: the show staff were reduced to asking people who were sitting and dancing politely to move for want of any bad behavior to break up.)

Personally, I think you should give All Hands on the Bad One a listen and decide for yourself (at this point, it’s a good mid-career snapshot). My feeling is that they’re like Veruca Salt, only not just haplessly wandering from one pop song to the next. While you’re listening, get some much needed background info at the The Sleater-Kinney Archive, including this Janet Weiss interview (probably the best interview with a drummer i’ve ever read), and a great oldie article by Terri Sutton, whose writing is fairly entrancing. Or, check out probably the best tab page ever at Tk’s – tabs are written on paper with measures and note durations and then scanned in!