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.

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Here’s where i’m scheduled to say something profound.

This week was already shaping up as a busy one on Monday night, and so i made myself a neat little list of things to blog about. That way i’d have at least one thing to write about every night, and i could compose in my head over the course of the day. The list for the days that have passed read: Journalism Essay, Under My Skin, Bloggies. Electronically penciled in for Friday was one word: “Selina.”

A year ago today was the first night of that fateful week where i saw her every night, and we counted it as the start of our relationship. I didn’t even hint at it on here until a few days later, and uncharacteristically didn’t mention it outrightly for over a week. Tonight i’m in a similar place… i spent my allotted AM blog-time last night just staring into a white box, and then grudgingly heading off to sleep. I had something to say, but no way to say it. This morning evoked a similar reaction.

At the beginning, everything was magical and perfect… there i was with this beautiful girl who was smart and talented, and actually seemed to find me attractive. But, from the start there were tiny nibbling doubts that i ignored, just assuming that they were the natural followup to the initial butterflies in my stomach. Too many things have muddied my hindsight in the year that has intervened for me to objectively say what went right and wrong, but i do know that we both served as an important piece of each other’s lives. And that it wasn’t really meant to be.


I always say that i never regret anything… that i’d never take anything back. It remains true here; just because Selina and i ended on a bad note doesn’t mean i would take back the entire experience. What’s sad is that my life has been relatively empty of tangible romantic entanglements since then, and so i couldn’t help but become all the more embittered about the entire situation — especially when hardly anyone i know seems to be very fond of my ex. Suddenly, this week, i find myself having funny little conversations with her, and wicked jokes under the din of a cappella rehearsals. Despite all the emotional and lyrical fists that i have balled up and thrown since then, i finally seem to be able to see through it back to the person who intrigued me so much to begin with.


So, maybe we’ll wind up friends in the end… at least a little bit. All of my life a year always seemed to be such a large quantity of time… it always seemed to make such a big difference in how life worked. Some things don’t change; I might not ever miss Selina. I miss butterflies, though, and she is forever inexorably connected to them because she taught me how to get past them to something a little more real.

Happy Anniversary.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/01/8619575/

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Last year Wockerjabby won the Bloggie Award for “Best Kept Secret” blog, which made the Bloggies worthwhile for me. A lot of “popular” sites that i haven’t ever read won for things that they are only somewhat spectacular at doing, but all in all it was a fun time and i feel as though Rabi got recognition that she definitely deserved.

Cut to 2002.

In addition to their weblogs, some people write essays, make games, do photo-journals, or any other number of things. All of these people are eligible for the “best non-weblog content of a weblog site” award. Last year the winner was Zeldman, and of the other nominees was bloggie-creator Nikolai Nolan — who creates a “feature” each month for his log. You can scope out the other nominees from last year here

To this day there are only a very few webloggers i’ve ever heard of who write songs. Former blogger Jack Saturn does, as does Adam from Tweebiscuit. However, not only do i write songs, i demo them for everyone to hear, i play weekly concerts of them live and unedited, i posted audio from my studio cd as it was being mixed, and i put all of that together for my 54 song spectacular ’25/24′ over the summer.

It is my firm belief that there are very few other bloggers out there who have a more personal or interesting piece of “content” on their site, and as readers of mine i would like to ask you to please take a minute to click to here and nominate CrushingKrisis.com in “Best non-weblog content of a weblog site.” My music is something that i put my heart and soul into every week while receiving comparatively little thanx or attention, and so i’d like to try to make it a little more widely known. I don’t want to win, necessarily, i just want to see my songs in the company of undeniably amazing work from people like Nikolai and Zeldman. Voting closes on SUNDAY night, so please make sure to register your pick before then. In fact, tell all of your friends. Start a petition!

Honestly, it’d be an honor just to be nominated. And, meanwhile, if you have any suggestions for other nominations (or, if you want some suggestions for yourself) please comment!

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/01/8558394/

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Two years.


Seven hundred and thirty one days, exactly.

Nearly right down to the minute.


It’s hard to say something important or unique about a song that comes up in nearly every conversational context possible. I’ve already described writing the lyrics, talked about the recording process, uploaded take after take of developmental recordings… and here i am two years later at a loss for what i’m supposed to be saying.


All i can say is that i’ve spent one tenth of my life living with “Under My Skin” … not only living with it as a song, but living with having written it and with why i wrote it. Living with the song is sometimes the hardest part; “Under My Skin” is easy to like, even for me, and i feel like it eclipses other songs that i’ve worked much harder on. Living with having written it isn’t so bad: at first it felt like a wall i had built to avoid having to express myself in any other way, but now it stands as an emotional landmark rather than a roadblock.


Living with the reason i wrote it is still strange. In the past I would agonize over it, asking myself “how do you kiss someone and then just let it go?” Now i know exactly how, because i’ve done it. It happens. I guess the real question i have is “After life crystallizes for one perfect moment, how do you go on living imperfectly?” I don’t really know the answer to that one, and i don’t expect to find it out any time soon. Sometimes that one moment i lived is almost like a fantasy in my head that never really happened, and sometimes it’s the only thing i can see. It is still both, and all the shades found in-between

“Under My Skin” became more than what i originally intended it to be when Laurel came into the studio to sing it with me last year. Ever since she willingly added her voice to mine i feel as though i don’t wholly own my words… they aren’t only mine anymore. Laurel’s voice singing them on Relief, and any other time i’ve caught her humming along, suddenly transforms “Under My Skin” from a song in the first person to a shared narrative — with its words and all that they are saying awkwardly shared between us both.


It doesn’t bring the moment back. Life doesn’t suddenly make sense the way television does. But, one moment that seemed so selfish and impossible when it first happened is now just a tiny seed that has sprouted into a flourishing garden of songs, friendships, and memories that will last me a lifetime.


And one very good song.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/01/8531862/