Crushing Krisis

The Newest Oldest Blog In New Zealand

Engagement

Choosing Your Family, and Cheers

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(This is the toast I gave yesterday at my mother’s wedding, prefaced by my extemporaneous introduction of “I’m Peter, and I’ll be your toaster.”)

Every family begins as a unit. The family you find yourself born into; the family you are given.

From there, how you define your family is up to life, to circumstance, to chance, and to you.

Whoever else we may have begun with, there was no questions that E—– and I were a unit – a matched pair, mother and son, adventurer and sidekick, driver and navigator, friend and peer.

We existed as that unit for years, occasionally inviting others (who are here today) into our fold. L—, the first person to ever lay eyes on my face. A—–, hers the first babies I ever held. M— and me, holed up in a blizzard, lip-synching to MTV.

Through all of that E—– raised me to be an overachiever, and in my immediate family there were precious few. So, it was at first with trepidation and then with increasingly welcome relief that I re-met J— in our merry carpool to community college, me getting a jumpstart on the next step in my education and J— rekindling a seemingly insatiable desire for knowledge.

Nothing against E—–, who to this day has committed to memory the names of all of my favorite Thundercats, G. I. Joes, and rock bands, but that summer J— was something almost entirely new in my life: an adult peer who would follow my wandering conversations on any topic and through any debate, and who – if I may be disarmingly frank for just a moment – did not (and does not) hesitate to call me on my teenaged bullshit.

As I broke away from our unit to go to Drexel I began to find my own family, and I wondered what E—–would do with herself in my absence. But, I had no need to worry: she took a class in world religions, became a fitness instructor and a realtor, and finally purchased her own home.

I know many of these actions were inspired, supported, and appreciated by J—, because how can you help but be inspired by him? He has one of the most inquisitive minds I know, and he was one of the few people I knew with a GPA higher than my own.

L— said a very true thing to us on the way to us on the way to the ceremony this afternoon, only slightly undercut by the fact that she was wearing a glue-on-moustache at the time in her capacity as our chauffeur.

She said: She and E—– and A—- were sisters who found each other. Sisters by choice.

That concept is meaningful to me – family by choice – especially now, as Elise and I are creating a family unit of our own. Because, aside from common eyes and noses, what reason do we have to be connected to the family we are given? We have to find them, to choose each other, because the true members of your family are your sisters and brothers… your friends and lovers… by choice.

So, here’s to E—– and J—, B— and E—, M—-, D—-, L— and J–, Elise and I, and all of the other families we have chosen to be a part of, today celebrating with one voice the creation of a beautiful new unit: J— and E—–.

Cheers.

Trio Season 6 – Suite #3: A Confidence Game

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Trio: Season Six, Suite #3: A Confidence Game
Unengaged, Tangling, Wonder

A sample of what I had to say in this Trio…

Unengaged
It wasn’t the lack of confidence in doing that thing, but the lack of confidence that came in the wake of that – like, “Oh god, what have I gotten myself into?” … It’s also about [lack of] confidence in performing it: I wrote that melody almost just as an exercise in getting it up into falsetto over and over again. I didn’t ever think I was going to perform it that way. … If it’s your song, and you wrote it that way, then there must be a reason it’s in falsetto.

Tangling
It was the anchor of this set … Somebody moves out of your life for some period … and you think, “wow, we’re so connected.” And then they get back and you don’t feel that connection immediately. And you wonder – was that connection so tenuous that it dissipated with the distance? … People change over a period of time, and you have to take some time to retune that connection.

Wonder
I think anyone can identify with that walking down the street – or, in the case of this song, in a train station – and you see somebody, and in your mind you have a whole fantasy about them in a split second … and then they get on the train. Or, maybe that’s just me?


Trio – the original singer-songwriter web session – returns for its sixth season featuring my original music, recorded live and DIY in my bedroom. You can download this Trio, or listen to a previous Trio:

Not Dead, Just Floating

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February tends to be a pretty sparse month on CK, aside from the first two, whose blogging were fueled by infatuation with the Queen of Darkness and Elise, respectively.

Actually, February tends to be an infatuated month – a 28-day Fat Tuesday of topical gluttony – which is maybe why the blogging tends to drop off. In 2004 it was SongFight; last year, consuming media. 2006 was… being scruffy? I honestly couldn’t tell you.

I bring those three years up specifically, as they’ve dictated much of my month so far. The scruffiness aspect finally ended this morning, when I shaved off what I think (if we’re being fair) I can say was my first ever mustache. It was charming at first, and looked dashing in photos, but the prickliness of it finally got to me (just as Elise was claiming I had progressed past Brillo-pad stage, too; oh well).

The mustache was, in turn, indicative of my preoccupation with things other than self – as typically I am much too busy examining myself in the mirror to allow any such deviation from core residual self image – and those two things correspond to the other two years I mentioned above.

Like a square to a rectangle but not visa versa, SongFight is to Arcati Crisis. SongFight was perhaps the first time Gina and I masqueraded under our proper name, though we had certainly recorded together before as an entity. And, from our fours-years-ago SongFighting emerged “Moscow, Idaho,” which we played an utterly stunning version of on Saturday ever-so-shortly before my voice-losing escapade.

(“Moscow” is a curious story unto itself, but I’m saving a recap of that for when we have a better demo of the song.)

Like 2004’s before it, this February so far has been a very Arcati Crisis month. We performed three separate times, and this last one marked a major milestone that we just realized this morning: we’ve now played every one of our current songs in front of an audience. That’s sixteen tunes, which represents a nearly indescribable leap from last February when we knew just three or four.

In fact, with the exception of “Fisher Price” the songs which we now consider to be the most “solid” and “reliable” didn’t even exist as duo tunes this time last year – they were still relegated to the various demo discs and Blogathons from which they originated. Suddenly we find ourselves with thumb-twiddling time at rehearsals where we once were dreaming up new riffs to catalog tunes, and so far this month we’ve filled it with new songs and rehearsals with cello (!). Tomorrow we’ll be recording the few stragglers who haven’t yet made it onto one of our Live @ Rehearsal discs, and then I’ll be spending the rest of the month mixing.

I know that other bands have come farther in a shorter amount of time – after all, of those sixteen songs all had been written prior to 2007 – but I still can’t help but be infatuated with our progress.

Not just our progress, though – that’s an old-Peter model of infatuation, that restless addiction to revisiting a process and its product, rather than living in the present. This time I am actually infatuated with the present tense of us, and all that we are capable of. Could we have imagined in 1994 that one night we’d wind up on stage at Doc Watson’s a hair shy of last call with our friends bouncing and singing along to every word of our songs?

Well, maybe we could have, but in that mental image I probably still had my Spock haircut, which is not nearly as ravishing as the current one, AKA “Dean Winchester.”

Which, in retrospect, probably prompted the stubble.

Meanwhile, there is the aspect of 2007 that I am repeating – I’ve been very much absorbed in media consumption. It’s partially because I have been following the primary elections on various news sites, but really it’s just an input/output thing. I’m outputting riffs, harmonies, new songs, project plans, site maps, engagement party thank you notes – all manner of creativity. And if I don’t ingest and digest input from some other sources I’ll be left with nothing to output.

(Or, worse, I will return to my past-process addiction and just output recursive, painful feedback. Sort of like this post, but more shrill.)

(Okay, while we’re parenthetical already I just need to point out that I started talking about that whole input/output deal almost seven years ago, and at work we’re reading this horrific business book that I won’t even do the justice of name-checking, and it has a whole fucking chapter about how you need input in order to maintain output. Like, with a chart of a Pac-Man-esque circle eating and shitting information. I kid you not. So, yes, 20-year-old-me could teach this business guru a thing or two about a thing or two.)

(Any, mucho digression; do you see what February causes?)

My increased intake of media – particularly election coverage, which has been nigh-unavoidable the past few weeks – has re-awakened my love of media critique. Especially after nearly four years of freedom from the bonds of television I feel like I’m seeing messages for what they really are for the first time – often just inelegant, thinly-veiled agendas meant to obscure the actual meaning behind the message:

Disney loves to sell its girl-empowerment, but don’t look for it to offer a fair payout to the author behind one of its hugest properties, The Cheetah Girls.

Similarly, CNN trumpets its bottomless cadre of cell-phone equipped i-Reporters, but when one of their segment producers runs a hip, snarky blog that gets too opinionated he is promptly fired.

And, in perhaps my favorite example, our favorite brand names and supermarkets re-purposed plain old oats in increasingly portable and nutrionless forms until we are paying dozens of dollars on the pound for curiously un-oat-ish cereal bars, with MILK INCLUDED (TM).

I’m not sure if the sudden transparency is coming from me, or coming from the internet, or coming from the world at large having finally gone in for a look at its cataracts, but I’m loving it.

And, with ten days left to go, that is my February, so-far.

In Pursuit of Bliss, pt. 3 – Rock Shopping

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(Continued from Planning To Be Surprised)

Elise and I had flirted with the idea of ring shopping for ages but – much like my attitude towards the engagement itself – the idea of premeditating our shopping trip seemed queer and uncomfortable.

Plus, pre-meditation would lead to discussion with friends and co-workers, and another one of my (slightly less nonsensical) maxims is a firm belief that a relationship is entirely between the couple. Which, aside from meaning that I consider it arch betrayal for either of us to talk about our sex life to a third party, also seemed to preclude even talking about an engagement ring to someone in a store.

After a month of aimless internet shopping I decided to create a loophole for shop attendants, so as to render our hypothetical eventual engagement something other than an impossibility.

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I suppose this is a post where I should be imparting seasoned fiancé advice on other men about to embark on the same journey.

Let me get back to you on that one.

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In preliminary, non-binding discussions about our inaugural shopping trip we seriously considered making up stories and accents and disguises to make the outing less threatening. Elise was going to be British? Or, was I going to be from Florida? Something about us meeting at a convention and falling in love at first sight?

When it came down to it we just had a couple of mimosas for breakfast and charged right in – tipsy on a Saturday and four blocks from Jewelers’ Row with no other plans.

No plans at all, actually – we didn’t have a specific shop in mind, and we stood in awe of various dormant neon jewels hanging over a block packed with at least a dozen jewelry stores.

I turned to Elise.

“Pick a sign, honey.”

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When it comes to engagement ring shopping, there are three kinds of jewelry stores and, by extension, three sorts of store attendants.

Suppressors do not want you to be armed with information or opinions. Or taste. In fact, if you are armed with any of those things they don’t really want to hear about it. They aren’t interested in educating you – their only interest is to be your one stop shopping center for multi-thousand dollar hunks of rock. They just want you to like what you see and buy it.

Passives understand that you might be armed with information or opinions – that’s okay – buy they don’t plan to do anything to encourage the further development of either. Often a Passive sees ring shopping as an arcane or mystical experience that cannot be approached scientifically. They want you to browse in their store and find the ring for you. If you don’t see it, it’s not for sale – don’t even think about asking for anything customized.

Empowerers hope that you come armed with information and opinions, and if you don’t have one or the other they’ll help you establish them. They want you to understand your purchase, and they’re confident that if you understand it well enough you will shop with them. However, some Empowerers get drunk on their empowerment, which can make them a bit pushy – especially if they are stodgy old men.

The tricky part is telling these people apart, which you might not be able to suss out on your first trip. Sometimes you find an empowering store but draw a passive staff member. Or, you find an empowering employee schlepping the products of a suppressing store.

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As it turned out, our first store was a terrific choice, we knew a lot more about diamonds than we suspected, and our opinions were a lot more specific than we knew.

I had a certain carat weight in mind for a solitaire ring, but when Elise tried one on it dominated her delicate hand in an unsightly way. Elise knew she wanted a princess cut diamond, but it turned out that she preferred settings other than the basic cathedral she had previously dreamed of.

It was giggly, nervous business. For a while it felt like we were impersonating a happy, marriage-bound couple, until after a few stores we realized that we were a happy, marriage-bound couple.

Our strategy emerged quickly. We’d enter a store, reap the basic hellos and sales pitch, and then get down to business. By store number four we started to come to an understanding about the different types of attendants, and were easily extricating ourselves from undesirable shopping situations.

Teamwork; the sign of a potentially, hypothetically, eventually happily married couple.

After winding our way through a string of unremarkable stores we wound up in Robbin’s 8th and Walnut, which to me is a timeless Philadelphia landmark as much as it is a jewelry store. And, though I was skeptical that it wouldn’t live up to its reputation, it easily did – friendly staff, a huge selection, and warm cookies refreshed at regular intervals.

Any remaining nervousness about shopping melted away – we paced the case with our attendant wearing a half-dozen potential rings on her fingers, handing them to Elise one at a time for comparison. Two hours prior the sight would have seemed surreal, but in the present it seemed completely normal.

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So, about that advice.

There’s no right time to shop for rings. You don’t have to wait until it’s dawned on you that you’re dating your wife. However, even if you do it in the most casual of ways, it will always hang in your relationship.

That’s not to say you should only shop for rings when you absolutely mean to buy one soon. Just be aware that – much like kisses and “I love yous” – you can’t take ring shopping back. It can mean as little or as much as either of those things can, but it can’t ever be meaningless.

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We emerged from the trip breathless and armed with ideas. More importantly, we emerged feeling a distinct lack of pressure.

That would come much later.

In Pursuit of Bliss, pt. 2 – Planning To Be Surprised

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(Continued from Permission)

When does a plan of engagement first transform into an Engagement Plan? When you first move in together? On your first anniversary? During the first kiss? On the first date? At first sight?

According to our firmly-established personal mythology, Elise’s side of the plan began – with tongue planted firmly in cheek – somewhere between the latter two occasions in our long and storied relationship.

It was at a theatre party over six years ago. I was in one of the darker territories of my life, but from the outside it looked as though I was on a flamboyantly giddy joyride, which lead to Elise’s infamous remark, “If he’s not gay I’ll marry him.”

My own engagement agenda didn’t get initiated until much later. At the time I was more interested in dating her roommate than the possible ramifications of her comment.

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My life operates on a well-established network of arbitrary, sometimes nonsensical rules, like that I have a physical aversion to navy blue. It’s sort of an elaborate solitaire game of Simon Says. I like to think of it as “OCD Twister.”

Unfortunately for Elise, a lot of the rules manifested themselves as ridiculous hurdles for our burgeoning relationship. I would not say “I love you” until it came out spontaneous and unbidden, and refused to degrade the phrase by using it over the phone.

We could not make overt public displays of affection at parties. I was adamant that we not plan our lives more than two times the length of our relationship into the future. And, I would not even consider getting engaged until we lived together for at least a year.

Despite that last maxim, I lacked a rule for exactly when to get engaged. And, also generally lacking for happy, stable relationships to draw examples from, I hadn’t the vaguest idea of how I would know the time was right.

As a result, when the “living together” requirement first approached being fulfilled I solidified a new, previously informally considered rule. A moronic, obstinate, paradoxically difficult rule that I obeyed to the letter and don’t regret for a single second.

Our engagement would have to be a surprise.

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As our relationship wore into it’s third – and then fourth – year, Elise, her family, and our friends certainly couldn’t be blamed for wondering when we would ever get engaged. As a result of my “surprise rule” I seemed doomed not to know myself.

Maybe “surprise” isn’t the right word, especially since early in our relationship Elise specifically barred me from ever proposing during a performance or via a jumbotron, which – given my flair for all things dramatic and flamboyant – would have been odds-on to occur if she hadn’t said anything.

I suppose the rule meant that engagement had to be a revelation. An epiphany. A moment where I realized I was meant to spend the rest of my life with Elise.

Being me, I constantly used the vague nature of my rule to disqualify any conscious thought of engagement as a pre-cursor to engagement. If Elise brought up rings, even in a non-threatening conversational way, any forward motion towards engagement would be halted. And, paradoxically, planning to start a bank account to save for a ring would disqualify me from planning to save for a ring, which seemed to mean I’d be doomed to buy it entirely on credit.

I had seemingly painted myself into an OCD corner – I was trying to plan to surprise myself with an unplanned surprise.

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Last fall Elise and I both started new jobs, and Elise’s afforded her (literally and figuratively) her first chance to take an extended vacation. Having used my vacation days and accompanying budget earlier in the year to attend Bonnaroo, she opted for a solo excursion to California.

It was the first time I would ever be Eliseless for more than a long weekend, and I relished the thought. Finally, a house to myself. I would play loud music, leave the heat off, invite friends over to watch Aqua Team Hunger Force, blog all night, sleep on the couch, get drunk alone, and order lots of takeout. Sometimes all in one day.

After a week basking in the hazy glow of bachelorhood I was surprisingly relieved to have Elise back from California. I hadn’t expected to be quite so enamored with her return, and in my excitement I dragged her out for a day of wandering through the Italian Market, punctuated by our first visit to our now-regular local haunt, Cantina Los Caballitos.

There was a tangible excitement to our idle walk through South Philly. At the moment I would have told you that I was simply giddy to have her back home, but with even a few days of retrospect I realized that it was my reaction to seeing my future wife for the first time.

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I finally had my epiphany. Now I just needed a ring.