Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

krisis

Krisis has been creating Crushing Krisis since 2000, writing songs since 1996, and reading comics since 1991. He is a Customer Success and Digital Brand Strategy executive, serial organizer, parent, and feminist, among other things. Based in Philly through 2017, he now resides in Wellington, NZ.

Emptiness vs the Slim Grey Book

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For those of you who are slightly new to this whole shebang, you should know that Trio has effectively become my get-out-of-blog free card. How it works is, basically, I lay my artistic soul bare for you in a 10-12 minute concert that, despite its sound of carefree ease, involves hours of sweat, profanity, and occasional blood to produce. Flush from my artistic efforts an enamored with my new tuneage, I typically let Trio sit at the top of the page for a week (or more) so that my barely-existant fanbase has no trouble locating and clicking upon the special feature repeatedly to satiate their listening desires.

Right.

In related news, I’m having trouble writing about anything lately, because I don’t know what to write about. I am happy. I am sedate. I am routine. These are the makings of a dull, repetetive folk record, not my next rock opus.

Last week I finished my book of lyrics.

I feel just as odd reading that sentence as I did shutting the book last week. The book, my book, that slim grey volume I bought my first week of college, and furiously jotted into that week after I had my first drink, is finally finished. It’s over. Done. Complete.

What’s funny is that I didn’t even know it was full. I knew I had about a dozen blank pages left, and I had been scribbling songs out elsewhere, on other pads, so as not to put any irrelevant junk-lyrics in my book. When I finally piled all of my scribblings up for transcription I realized I had more than enough to complete the book. Enough, in fact, to make a decent start on a new book.

Not only is it full, but the last song that would fit was “A Little Bit,” the (bouncy, self-depricatingly optimistic) song I wrote the day before I moved out of my college apartment – the perfect bookend to “Crashing,” the (plodding, drearily pessimistic) song I wrote after my first college party.

Paging back through favorite songs and discarded lyrics, I realized that I can’t really claim that all my good work came from conflict or tension. “A Little Bit” came from an almost perfect zen, “So Hard” came from a poetic IM conversation, and “Punk” came from out of nowhere. Lately I have mistaken a reluctance to write something for an inability to write anything, but maybe it’s for the best – I have songs I’ve never really finished, or never really learned – why am I in such a rush to add any more?

Anyhow, I need to decide what my new book (my third) will be, so I can move on with my life and writing.

Mornings in Carolina

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I can’t help that I am naturally enthusiastic to meet someone new, fascinated with their life story, and immediately inclined to invite them to see a concert or a movie or a show. It isn’t flirting, it’s my obsession with finding like-minded people.

There is a woman who rides the trolley with me, if I am running five minutes behind schedule. She is pretty, with a slight frame, lightly freckled with dark hair that seems meant to be tucked behind ears, and lips so thin that they disappear when she smiles.

A few days ago she waved me down from across fourty-third street. “I thought I was running late,” she said breathlessly as she matched pace with me, “but then I saw you.”

I’ve been fascinated with her for a month now, her thin-lipped prettiness and her mysterious destination after she gets off the trolley at my stop. In our last conversation I learned she was from North Carolina, which explained her slight accent. I went fishing for more.

“Where do you work, anyhow? You get off at nineteenth, right?”

She works, as it turns out, at the Art Museum. She made her job sound clever and enviable, talking about scurrying around the photo archives like a mouse, climbing up two stories of filing cabinets to just barely glance the sun peeking through a basement window. It sounded altogether romantic, and she seemed to think so, describing the tunnels that connect from one building to the other – catacombs. As as she spoke I found myself utterly fascinated, wanting ot ask her for coffee or lunch so I could listen to that wonderful romanticism some more. And then I realized that that would sound an awful lot like asking her on a date, and that the last time I did something like that the girl in Borders though I was either stalking her or actively advertising that I was hoping to cheat on my girlfriend.

So, I suppose I’ll just have to wait until the next time I see her on the corner.

Oh, What a World

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Despite the dreary day, I was singing to myself as I left the house. What’s a dreary day in the face of good sleep and getting paid today? Nothing, I say.

Anyhow, the day, it was dreary, and I was turning the corner, being Rufus Wainwright under my breath when, quite suddenly, a squirrel comes tumbling down the screen door of the pizza parlor on my corner to land at my feet, a nut secure between it’s jaws.

We exchanged glances.

Not wanting the squirrel to go into a mad panic when he would effectively have to run through me to get away, I continued my musical stroll.

Much to my surprise, the squirrel began to follow me.

Odd, I thought.

Still singing under my breath, I returned my glance from my new companion to the ground in front of me only to noticed a smattering of tiny birds pecking away at the sidewalk. As the squirrel and I approached them, they sedately looked up at us and then took wing – not in a mad escape, but to rest in the limbs of the tree I was about to pass under. And, one of them began chirping a lovely, regular melody, which caused me to pause in my walking (but not my singing).

Yes, in fact, it did sort of work as counterpoint to the Rufus Wainwright song I was singing under my breath.

Rodent sidekick, check. Flock of cooperative melodically gifted winged friends, check. Unassumingly singing a beautiful song, check.

Life was playing some sort of peculiar trick on me, and that I was in the middle of a Disney cartoon musical. A very peculiar, live-action, Disney cartoon musical, with “Gay Messiah” on its soundtrack. So, really, more like Moulin Rouge.

Taken with the whimsy of the moment, I began singing out, and sweeping my overcoat around me, which seemed to fairly alarm my squirrel friend, still with nut in mouth, but he did not flee. As he had yet to be spooked, I went into all-out pirouettes, now singing more or less at the top of my lungs.

It was around then that the construction workers renovating the house on Osage must have noticed me. I felt their dreary-world glares weigh in on my cartoon musical extravaganza like sopping wet cotton blankets. I stopped mid-spin, letting my voice catch in my throat, and looked to my animal backup-singers for some support.

Squirrel had fallen several steps behind me, and was idly munching his nut, paying me no heed. My aviary chorus had ceased their song, and were nowhere to be seen.

The construction workers continued to stare, quite dumbly.

Hands shoved into pockets and intently showgazing I resumed my walk.

I hate musicals.