What's new?
Happy Christmas and all... but I've got about a half dozen diary entries to write... most of which involve past events... so... time warp! :) By which I mean, I'll write about Christmas later, if I choose to do so.
Oh, one thing I will mention in case I don't get back to Christmas -- Jessica registered www.cyranojoe.com for me. Yay!!!
So much to talk about -- might as well plunge ahead. The first thing I did tonight was return the "missing entry" to its proper place. That entry is/was about Daina, and the intro that I added promised more info in this diary, so...
After a few weeks of not holding audition-rehearsals due to Scott's work and Daina's classes/finals, Daina and I found an hour or two to sit down and go over our situation. Our primary goals were to figure out whether she was still motivated and whether there was a better way to be doing this whole thing, but I also wanted to tell her about my increasing bias (i.e., that I was getting attracted to her).
Turns out she's lost a lot of her motivation for being in the group. Her main reasons for this seemed to be that it was all "too forced" and that she had reservations about the voices we had. The latter speaks for itself; I can't blame her, but my view on it is to acknowledge and work on all our weaknesses, rather than throw in the towel at the start. As for the former, she said I was trying too hard... that it shouldn't be so hard to make a band work.
I tried not to laugh.
It would certainly be nice to have the situation she described as ideal -- a bunch of great friends who happen to have great voices decide to get together and be a band, and it all falls into place just right. No worries about genre, about singing skill, about egos or anything.
Damn that would be nice. But it's not real.
Not that that doesn't happen at all, but it sure doesn't happen often. Groups, like all relationships, require effort; oftentimes, though not always, the more effort the better. I want this band to work, so I want to plan out and anticipate every problem, and at least face down our issues, if not solve them all. I'm tired of groups and relationships (mine and others') where people fail to communicate thoroughly, and fail to face their problems.
Anyway, Daina has come to realize that our group has a goodly number of issues, perhaps too many for her. I understand that. Especially since she hasn't been in a small democratic group recently (sorry, Chamber Singers doesn't count -- that's a benevolent dictatorship). I respect her concerns, and I even share in them. I'm not sure that all my fretting and working won't bring the group to its knees as surely as avoiding all our problems did for Ecphonema last year and two years ago. But I'm sticking with it until then.
Now, as for the other thing -- you know, the bit where I said, "I'm attracted to you, sort of."
It would have been stronger to simply say, "I'm attracted to you, want to go see a movie and see how things work out?" but it wouldn't exactly have been true. Go read the "lost entry" to get the background on why I say that.
I was and am leery of Daina -- I could still fall for her, hard... maybe. She's pretty, she's friendly, she's got incredible energy and incredible smiles... her hunger for the romance of Moulin Rouge thrills... she seems so ready to run to the stars, fly with passion in her wings... but when it comes down to it, I simply don't trust her. I don't know if what I see in her is true, from the big to the small. And I need to trust someone before I date them.
I theorize that in the normal world, where you just barely meet someone before you decide to ask them out (at a bar, on an airplane, wherever), the level of trust established is rather less than what I've always needed.
For me, though, most of my relationships grew out of friendships that had already lasted for anywhere from a few months to ~6 years. I'm used to learning about someone -- liking them deeply -- caring for them -- and then asking them out. I'm currently re-evaluating that "system", but for now the needs established by that pattern remain.
Add to this, I suspect that Daina doesn't trust me, or at least she has significant philosophical objections to a couple of my basic tenets... we're currently in the midst of a discussion of the nice guy lament of last month, wherein several beliefs that I am reevaluating and beliefs that I hold as fundamental are receiving significant resistance. I won't go into it right now -- mainly because I haven't yet gotten permission to share our emails -- but suffice to say, there are a few points over which we're butting heads pretty furiously.
God bless women who have the will and the mind and so forth to argue with me. I wish/hope there were/are more out there.
That said, I'm doubtful that Daina and I will come to an "agree to disagree" compromise with this and other issues. At least, not to a compromise that allows us to become effective, happy members of the same group.
On the flip side of that coin (how many sides are on this coin?!!?), I could very well be projecting our current tension into the future irrationally. Like I've said time and again, I don't feel I actually know Daina, so all of this is theory, surmises, and nearly-blind guesswork.
As for the possibility of our dating... I think I approached the whole "I'm attracted to you, but not" in the wrong way (although I'm none too sure there was a solution to the problem of finding the right approach), and it's irreparably intertwined with her issues about the group, especially the "you're making it too hard" complaint.
Ergo, I think too much.
(Damn, I want to go into what she and I are talking about right now. It has direct bearing on this, at least I think so -- among many other things, I think she's worried that I'm going to go into freakazoid glom-boy mode.... Damn Caltech and its ridiculous microcosm!)
What does all this ball up into? I hardly know. Such is life -- it's too much in the air to call. In the meantime, we muddle through.
And think about lots of other women... ;-)
Peppy, punky, bitter...
Rough, wistful, lyric...
Captivating, friendly, distant...
Potent, energetic, blind...
Quirky, fond, sensual...
Giving, tempting, chatty...
Literate, dreamy, doubtful...
Elegant, skilled, married...
Innocent, hungry, sweet...
Giddy, gorgeous, golden...
and so many more, and so much more...