Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

college

My Secret Rock Star Life

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I suppose that last post bears some explanation of my secret rock star identity.

It is so secret that hardly anyone is aware of it. Hopefully that will soon change.

I started writing original music in high school as a hobby – not something I defined myself by. In college i was a part of a group of extremely talented actors, singers, and musicians. But, though i could rightfully identify myself in all three categories, i never felt as though what i was bringing to the stage was as valid as what other people did. After every audition or performance I was my own harshest critic, and as a result I slowly disappeared from performances, relegating myself to a off-stage role.

However, there was still one thing at which I was better – maybe best – than everyone I knew: writing songs.

It wasn’t a matter of pride or self-confidence – it was just something i knew. My best five or ten or twenty songs stood up against the songs of my friends, and even the songs on albums I bought every week. I could remain a performer as long as I had my songs, so I labeled myself a singer-songwriter. I played at parties. I recorded songs for my webpage. I walked from my apartment to campus, playing guitar and singing the whole way. As long as i had a song to stand behind i was fearless.

As college wore on, some of the more multi-talented friends in our extended group gained an amount of local notoriety as singer-songwriters fronting bands. I finally had people – peers – to compare myself to, and it was immediately clear that I didn’t sing as well, or play guitar as well, or record as well, or work the stage as well.

This was especially demoralizing because my songs were still great – it was just me that wasn’t good enough. I let it get to me – right down to the very core of me, and as a resultI graduated having not played an original front of people for over a year (with one exception – poorly received), and I had even stopped recording – frustrated that my voice never came out how I heard it in my head.

I decided that for my first year of professional life i was leaving my creative side behind – i had to focus on working hard, and on being a good boyfriend to Elise, because that’s what was important. Creativity, music especially, was a lark I could afford to ignore.

My resolve was strong, and even after the year was over and I starred in a successful bit of post-collegiate theatre i was still holding out on music. I still hadn’t performed anywhere, and even my once-prolific writing had ground to a halt.

I can pinpoint the exact moment when everything changed.

Last December I made my yearly appearance at the Shubin Theatre Holiday Revue. I appear not because of any great talent, but because I am friends of the Shubin family, which includes Gina, my sometimes co-writer. In 2005 I was performing on relatively short notice, and so instead of my typical cover or collaboration I decided to play an original – Seams – a song all about my imperfection, my lack of confidence, my reticence to perform anywhere outside of my own bedroom.

In that tiny theatre with forty or fifty people watching I rediscovered me as a musician. I was singing words I had written, words I still very much meant, and as they left my mouth I could feel – even see – them connecting with members of the audience. At the after party people asked where they could see or hear me perform and, slightly embarrassed, I told them that they couldn’t.

As I said it I realized the ridiculousness of it. I had these great songs – catchy songs, witty songs, meaningful songs – and here I was refusing to play them because I didn’t deem myself to be good enough. It seemed rational to me for years, but that night I realized how unfair it was to the songs.

I am no longer a part of that disproportionately talented college friends – I’m a part of the world at large. And, in that world I am unique in my ability to sing and play at all, let alone with some amount of skill, and I am unique in my ability and willingness to document my life through song.

In this much wider world I am done with hiding my songs in my bedroom, and with that newfound confidence i find that my singing, playing, and performing are suddenly not so bad as i thought they were. I can play in front of friends or strangers knowing i deserve their attention as much as anyone else, and sometimes i even win it.

Today, and tonight at The Sidecar Bar, I am a singer-songwriter. And, it’s not a secret anymore.

Nostalgia Attached

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Packing always makes me feel like blogging, perhaps because my first week of blogging featured ongoing packing.

Packing for me is never just about putting things into boxes. It is about reviewing, reflecting, and reconsolidating. Boxing my CD collection goes fast (four boxes, now), desk stuff slightly slower. Slower still is looking through a box of “peter papers” to see if anything can be disposed of yet. Nothing can be, of course, but i take the opportunity to reread almost everything inside.

At the bottom, wedged beneath a battered purple binder containing a hand-scrawled short story that only Gina has read, is a summary of a day of media-deprivation i did for my first class with Ron Bishop. My sentences are sprawling and glib (a clear precursor to this diarrheal exercise), and reading through their words to their naiveté is pure nostalgia.

I was tempted to throw this paper out, as it was just a glorified diary, but something i say in the conclusion stopped me. Feeling as though all intrusive messaging had been flushed from me at the end of my media deprivation day, i apparently sat down to write a song.

Attached to the back of my paper, for Ron’s perusal, is what had to have been the first ever printed copy of “Under My Skin.” He might have even been the first person to read the lyrics.

Amazing. So, yeah, i’m keeping that paper, and all of Ron’s wry comments therein.

Somehow, this move feels as if it’s already over. Maybe that’s too much faith to have when my solution to every problem so far has just to throw money at things, but the idea of moving into an entire house where Elise and I rule every room and closet is just too tingly and wonderful to be diluted with any anxiety about the move itself.

I keep saying that we’re moving to a house, and i keep wishing that we were buying it instead of renting it. All in good time, though.

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We’re moving on Friday. I’m not sure how many times I’ve moved that I can remember.

Moving out of 64th Street was a novelty – having never moved before in my conscious life, the idea of categorizing and packing things seemed fun.

Moving from Reed Street to college was a move of efficiency – the dorm room was only oh-so-big, and the hurricane was oh-so-bad. Two carloads would certainly be all that we could manage. I reminisced at length about it previously.

Moving from Kelly Hall to Calhoun hall was my first introduction to desperate, anxious, nerve-rending, nail-biting moving. The orientation leaders hoarded carts and monopolized elevators for each other. Where were my belongings supposed to live, if i was to be out by noon and in at… four? Five? We sat in the piano lounge on our collective piles of stuff and waited.

Ahh, now we come to moves i’ve documented on blogger.

Moving out of the dorm to my first apartment (with a half-week stopover back at Reed Street) was pure misery – i was sick, my future roommate was being less than helpful, and at one point i didn’t even have a lease to prove the apartment was mine. It was also the only time I’ve technically lived with my mother since 1999. A wonderful example of our uneasy alliance can be found here.

Next comes the move of legend: me from Spring Garden Street, and Lindsay and Erika from Race Street. This recap makes it sound rather pedestrian, but it still inspires only-slightly-hyperbolic stories from the five of us whenever anyone moves.

(in here i help Elise move from dorm to Melon’s to 3216 to Baring to here)

Moving from The Grotto to here was disproportionately easy, considering it involved more possessions and stress than ever. How i managed to get all the stuff from there to here, i’ll never know. The day was honestly a sleepless blur.

Six moves in seven years, and also in twenty-three (if you don’t count when i was three).

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2005/04/111404524386168409/

The Bitch is Back

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Jett Superior, one of my all-time favorite peddlers of snark, is back online with an astounding new layout. While she was on her extended hiatus, she asked her readers to put an old set of her lyrics to music, promising to post them upon her return. She hasn’t yet, but here’s my version.

Here at CK we don’t go on hiatus, we graduate, take long naps, try to buy cell phones that take pretty little pictures that we can display while not on an aforementioned non-existent hiatus, and play City of Heroes until 4am (thus necessitating longer naps). We pretty much being me, along with my omnipresent sidekick slash new roommate slash built-in fanclub Elise.

She finally met my dad the other week, he who owns a gun shop and a flock of plastic lawn flamingos, and makes “boop boop” noises when he pulls a U-ee in the middle of Market street. She has not met my cousin Cary, age seven, but the lass is nonetheless intrigued by the concept that my partner/roomie/stalker has “Chinese Eyes.” My aunt claims that this, though perhaps verging on offensive, is a reflection of unspeakable jealous curiosity, as said eyes are a particularly fashionable favorite of my cousin’s. In the car on the way back from the el Cary politely enquired if “Have you kissssssed her?,” to which i responded “Oh, a few times.”

Otherwise, life is similar to how life was last time i mentioned life, except for the piece of parchment with the shiny Magna Cum Laude sticker sitting on my mantel and what seems like eleventy-thousand people trying to make me feel anxious about whether or not i really have a job (don’t worry, it’s not working). I think Elise is appalled at how much time i spend a) listening to music, b) doing nothing but looking productive, & c) being so frighteningly productive that i cannot stop talking or moving, sometimes all at once. Still, things are fine, especially now that i unpacked my Ani DiFranco mugs.

Transmissions from the planet Peter.

Death March

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I don’t like graduation ceremonies. I never have. Not since kindergarten, at least.

For me, the excitement of a thing comes when it’s really over. In high school, i had to go to two more days of class after my graduation ceremony; it wasn’t really over yet. I was sour at graduation, grimacing in pictures and grudgingly displaying my diploma case, which did not yet contain that immortal document.

I woke up later than i meant to today, though i wound up meaning to wake up late. The apartment looks like a war zone between IKEA and Home Depot, as last night Elise hung drapery brackets while i threaded her maddeningly complicated sexy blue sewing machine. The obsessive organization of our first week has given way to a more laissez-faire approach to apartment decorating, where we move things closer to their presumed destination incrementally in case they find some other suitable home on the way. It’s fun. I want to stay here and work on it.

I finished my last graduation requirement last Friday at 10:03AM. I went through all the emotions that day – the glee, the sudden sense of freedom, the irrational tears. Today is an afterthought; i am already apart from the Drexel family. I know the week was meant for getting your requirements in order and moving out, but i got my life in order and moved on. I don’t want to go back to that gym to sit and listen to Taki – i have earned the right to avoid it.

But, otherwise, what would they take pictures of?