Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Archives for October 2006

Success to the successful… oh, nevermind.

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Well, it took nine years, but i officially have learned my second guitar solo. I can even play it along with the record (with mild ad-lib).

Of course, now that it’s all learned i just watched a video of it being played and part of it is in a different position. Fucking Hal Leonard and their Authentic Transcriptions can kiss my authentic transcriptionist ass, i knew their tab was too easy to be true.

I swear, if i ever get popular enough to warrant a sheet music book it’s going to have full standard notation of all music and vocals, complete guitar tab, and piano arrangements for every song – all approved by me. I’ll arrange it all myself if i have to. You know, just like the Dresden Dolls book (which is amazing).

The Prestige

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To the magic of the The Prestige i merely say “eh.” It was thouroughly enjoyable to watch, and i’ll definitely see it again, but it ultimately was not very satisfying. At least, not in the way i wanted it to be.

Unlike Nolan’s Momento, which by its nature was mostly unfigureoutable the first time through, Prestige lays it all on the line at various early points and spends the rest of the movie just telling an engaging story while waiting for you to catch up. The ending might some tricky to some, but for those who caught up five minutes previous (or fifty (or a hundred) as the case might have been (or was)) the ending is an ultimate anti-climax – all confirmation, and no surprise.

I can think of three ways that the film could have gone that extra-interesting step; i’ll tuck each behind javascript so as not to spoil anything: 1, 2, 3

Go to this movie for the riveting story of intense jealousy and rivalry. Go for the tale of how no revenge is revenge enough. Go for outstanding performances by Caine, Jackman, and Bale, Scarlett doing what she can with a hobbled role, and marvellous turns from Serkis and Bowie.

If you go for the Nolan riddle wrapped in an enigma you’ll leave feeling as if you had been told a knock-knock joke.

In and out on this same path that I followed for years

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Lately I have been spending a lot of my free time perched in my chair, pouring over old poetry notebooks, tracking down lost songs.

Ever the archivist, when I built my first “artist” website back on Geocities I made it a point to unflinchingly catalog all of my songs – from the very first – noting the birth date of each one. That list eventually became a virtual discography that numbered each song sequentially running through the writing of “Under My Skin” during freshman year at Drexel.

Half a decade of intervening years has erased my memory of all but the “greatest hits” of those early songs. In some cases I can still recall a melody, or a few chords, but in others I’m surprised that I even wrote a song by that name. My longtime undercounting of my catalog at 140 songs was a result of this – fully sixty songs has been discarded or forgotten.

As I build my new MYSQL song database I have been slowly reconstructing and archiving those songs – their lyrics and chords, but also the stories behind them. In some cases its easy. A few days ago I unearthed one forgotten oldie from its original notebook, complete with lyrics, chord diagrams, and even some guitar tab. It held up remarkably well when i played it. Other songs are much more obscure – existing only as scraps of notebook paper – scribbled lyrics littered with strikeouts and arrows. Or, worse, just a single 8-bit recording, my tenative voice floating in from somewhere in the 90s to remind me I wasn’t always this loud.

Of course, even the most well preserved of these songs are still seven or eight years old, and my compositional abilities at seventeen are a strange match for my performance abilities at twenty-five. While some sound miraculously intact, others are fragments of some wholer emotion I couldn’t refine enough at the time.

On Tori Amos’s recent boxed set she reached back to the masters from Little Earthquakes to pluck a song – “Take Me With You” – that was only partially finished out of obscurity. Building from the original piano composition, she reconstructed the lyrics:

The truth is, there was a vocal on the 1990 take, and the lyrics to the chorus are the same. I’ve retained the chorus and parts of the bridge and used it as a skeleton. Then I worked around what was just humming in the verses. But the bridge was close to being there and the choruses were intact, so I haven’t changed a word. – Record Collector, Nov 2006

Tori’s idea is a seductive one – that of mining old material for new material, subtly updating a fragmented song to make it complete. Should I play the part of Tori to these unrefined tunes, shoring up the tentative framework of existing lyrics or layering in additional passing chords where once they were only implied? What if the identity of those songs is intrinsically linked to their naivite? Says Tori, “First of all you have to be able to think that you can almost channel yourself as you were then, and yet still be you now.” Is it worth it to interfere?

Just as alluring, there are two songs that seem to be entirely unfindable, even after pouring through every notebook, every folder of scraps. Interestingly, in both cases I remember exactly what the song was about. In one case I even remember the general shape and sound of the tune, and even the color of ink I wrote it with, but none of the specific lyrics or chords. If I were to reconstruct either of these song would they be something new, even though it uses the original idea as a touchtone? Are they better left lost?

I’m never sure why it’s so important to me to manage my catalog of songs so carefully, never letting one slip into obscurity. It reminds me of my childhood, how i would pour over the liner notes to every new cassette, memorizing credits, sourly disappointed if lyrics weren’t included. Even as I painstakingly transcribed lyrics from faded paper and chords from lo-fi recordings I find myself pausing to examine snippets of songs that were never finished enough to be included on the discography, wondering if they could be refurbished into something new and complete.

I suppose the correct answer is, “Yes, if it makes a good song.” But, I’m not really searching for good songs. I just want my catalog to be entirely performable, and listenable. If that requires some minor reconditioning, so be it. But, if I write in entire new verses by my 2006 self, can I rightfully call the song the same thing I did in 1998?

Lost! And, Found!

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I woke up with ambition yesterday morning (rare) and, after a brief (and cheap) Amazon shopping spree I decided to go for a bicycle ride while it was still early.

(This in spite of last year’s traumatizing bicycle hijinks, and instead of a mile jog, on the assumption that i could sustain my exercise much longer on a bike than wheezing and myocardial infarctioning my waya round Dickinson Square Park.)

I had an idea of the route i wanted to take away from my house, but hadn’t really decided on what streets to use to get back to my house. I considered bringing my wallet in the event that i passed anywhere interesting to have breakfast, but i couldn’t find my bike lock, so i realistically couldn’t stop anywhere.

Fast forward to the beginning of the fourth mile, as i realized that i would swing just two blocks from the Melrose. Maybe i could order out and sit with my bike and eat? I patted my ass to check for my wallet only to find that it wasn’t there.

No big deal… i didn’t bring it. Right? Right?!

I had to hope not, at least for the moment – it was no use backtracking. I could only retrace half of my path while covering the same ground before Pattison turned into a mile-long, medianed, blind curve on which i wouldn’t dare ride against traffic.

By mile five i still couldn’t remember what my ultimate decision on the wallet-bringing was. It would be just like me to not remember leaving it on my desk, or anywhere else in the house, for that matter – i don’t lose things so much as i leave them in places i don’t expect them to be left.

By the time i got back to the house i was sure that my wallet was still on my desk. So sure that i was shocked, shocked i tell you, to find that it wasn’t on my desk. Or on the floor in front of my desk. Or in the jeans i decided not to wear. Or in the basement where i keep my bike. Or in the refridgerator, or anywhere else i might have mistakenly left it in trade for some other item.

Yes, my wallet was almost definitely somewhere on the course of my seven mile route, which included well-travelled bits of Snyder Plaza and prime jogging territory in front of the stadiums. If it fell out of my pocket either of those places it was bound to be gone by now.

My first thought was that, clearly, a higher power was trying to convince me not to exercise via bi-wheeled cycle, as nothing good ever happens to me when i ride it. After i got past lamenting that I starting to get worked up thinking about cancelling my credit cards, and if my shopping spree would still go through. I had to find that wallet, if for no reason other than for the scandalously cheap Indigo Girls CDs that i had just bought.

Let’s think about this, i told myself. Up to where I realized I lost it I had stuck with my path with no deviation, and always rode with traffic when there was a bike lane. The wallet was in my back pocket. At points where my ass was planted firmly on the seat it had nowhere to go. It also wasn’t likely to slip out anywhere i was idly pedalling or mostly coasting. I had it have lost it somewhere bumpy, or somewhere where i was pedalling hard to speed up or change gears.

By sheer deduction this (in theory) eliminated all the well-travelled bits, leaving the Weccacoe-Pattison connection, which involved crossing both cobblestones and tracks, followed by a lengthy straightaway, and then the scary one mile blind curve of Pattison Ave that cars definitely took at more than the posted 35mph. I hoped it wasn’t on the curve, because couldn’t figure out how to stop there to pick it up without being killed. It was scary enough the first time while moving.

Well, it wasn’t at the curve … it was at the exact point where all three of my conditions were met – i was high above the seat to avoid getting jostled by the tracks, already pedalling hard heading into the straightaway, and fingering the gear shift. Actually, i almost forgot to keep an eye out for my wallet before i realized that i was doing all three things, and then i looked down and there was my wallet.

Serendipitous luck? The bicycle gods trying to entice me not to abandon their instrument of misery and destruction? Are my Veronica Mars-like skills of deduction honed to such a fine point that the location of the wallet was hardly a mystery? Or, am i just so deep into leftover good karma from this summer that i was bound to find it somewhere?

In any event, point taken – the wallet comes with me every time, safey ensconced behind a zipper or several buttons.

Gimme a Head With Hair

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I am emerging from my ugly phase.

Last trip to the hairdresser – just for a trim – my shampooer warned me. “You’re going to go through an ugly phase,” she matter-of-facted at me, before admonishing, “and don’t go cutting it off just because you’re in the ugly phase.”

Because, cutting it off means my hair has won our little battle.

The ugly was seductively convincing. Hair in the eyes. Messing with complexion. Head is too fat now to look good with long hair, anyhow.

The litany was in full-effect last week, and it became clear I would have to beat my hair into submission before it would end. So, I did something unprecedented (which cutting it off wouldn’t be, if we recall the Mohawk and other such endeavors). I walked into the bathroom, lined up my styling products, and took out Elise’s curling iron, hairdryer, and an array of brushes. An hour later, I emerged with feathered hair.

You have to understand that – long or short – hairstyling with anything other than a hand and some mousse is against my personal aesthetic. In high school I grew my hair into a pony-tail to avoid styling, and subsequently chopped it all off for the same reason. Every haircut I’ve had has been motivated by wanting to have to style less.

But, desperate times call for the most desperate of measures, and so style I did. My hair is perhaps a wee long for framing my face with feathers, so I wound up slightly more Farah Fawcett than John Travolta from Kotter. Before bed I carefully wrapped my work in a series of bandannas to preserve it for the night, and the next day I sported stylish (though slightly flattened) feathering at work. And, I didn’t feel ugly!

I have yet to reattain the epitome of my prettiness, but I have escaped the seductive “cut it off” allure of the uglies to inch ever closer to unspeakably desirable rock star look i’m cultivating.