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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We are zeroing in on the infamous Turkey Day, and i am just barely sure of what i am not thankful for, let alone what i am. Erika and Jack are both trekking towards New England with people they really care about, and Lindsay has Kate here for the weekend to keep her company. And i am grudgingly going home, just as much to mooch groceries from my mother and do laundry for free as i am because it’s Thanksgiving. So, chalk one more up to crass commercialism and living through the eighties, because i forgot what the thanks was all about.

Most of you have a significant portion of the eighties as part of your palette of experiences … what’s your primary Thanksgiving memory? I turned nine in 1990, so most of those precious formative years were already moving farther and farther behind me. My memory of Thanksgiving is all about my Beta Machine… countless pre-Christmas holiday special recorded on those pint-sized tapes while we were in the dining room merrily chowing down our Italian feast. The meaning of Thanksgiving to me is tied up in that silly B.C. cartoon special that i’m sure i could never quite locate on purpose amongst my nearly hundreds of beta tapes in the 3rd floor closet at home. Thanksgiving is not consumer, and it is not corporate, and it should not be intricate; thanks giving is a simple thing. There shouldn’t have to be a festival, or a parade, or even a turkey. God knows i don’t do any of the above, that’s for sure.


Tonight it’s just me in me — stuffed up and alone in my flannel pajamas with only the echoes of laughter from elsewhere in the apartment to keep me company. I’m trying to pick out what in this mess that surrounds me i’m happy about. The thing is, it can happen any day of the year, and if you put it off until tomorrow you definitely don’t have enough time set aside between the Macy’s Parade, dinner, football games, and leftovers.

Think about it.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/11/7310539/

Trio: Season 2, #6

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Season 2’s Trio #6 came from an unexpected place; i meant to do some sort of fun event with my newly reclaimed 1960 electric hollow-bodied guitar this weekend but had the bad fortune of losing a solid half of my upper vocal register to the various parties i attended. Tonight i sat down to Trio a new trio of songs and found myself utterly disconnected from all three of them… they were in the wrong range, not the right sort of aggression, and not really what i was feeling. And, so, 4 days of careful planning got the flush as i dropped a D and raised a C, and suddenly i found myself smack in the middle of an unusual fifteen minutes.

I had a similar experience with Trio #5 last fall, where i was too stuck to do anything but meander my way through a familiar group of songs. The difference was that here i was actually reinventing with force rather than meandering aimlessly, and having fun in the process. “Lost” was awarded an extra refrain so it could mold itself to the year and a half since i wrote it, and ends in a mock thrash; “Crashing” akin to its beginnings on my bedroom floor, emerging with the most spectacular ad-lib section i’ve ever mustered (short of when it unexpectedly broke into “Say My Name” last summer); “Under My Skin” was classically playful and free — i even venture into a superbly flat falsetto at the close of the song. Electricity and fun are somewhat unusual feelings for me, but tonight they clicked.

Very unusual. Especially the electricity. Give this a listen… what sounds different to you?

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Under the cover of my sacred blue checkered blanket i was wishing for wind, with my face pressed up against my square back window. My bed had been migrating towards it for over a week now; it’s a curious obsession i have, staring into my neighbor’s windows. I think i am jealous of him because i want to watch him but he does not want to watch me. Tonight my bed moved altogether, so that he could see as much of me as i can of him. I was looking to trade lives: my nights for his.


I tempt him. I play guitar in front of the window as soon as the roommates leave in the morning, half-naked, thrashing and strumming loud enough for him to hear. I flicker my string of lights on and off at night while feigning sleep to see if he looks my way. I sit, postured, on my wooden stool, glaring at my broken webpage.

At first he would slip me into sleep with his idle routine and the way he lazily cuddled with his dog, but lately he has been keeping me awake. Tonight i was lying there wishing for wind and rain because i wanted to hear the sound of it pressing in on my room, unable to enter, and i didn’t care if it would make my spying any harder. It was just past four when i got what i said i wanted, with a tiny tinkling of drops on the pane. I found myself unthinkingly focusing past them to see his yellow light and blue walls.


At five he turned over and looked right at me; i had thought he had fallen asleep with his lights on. I self-consciously flicked the lights on and stood up, suddenly naked and vulnerable in the harsh florescence of my bedroom. Maybe i don’t like the tables turned as much as i thought i would. Up out of my bed, i slid on a tee-shirt and stalked over to my kitchen stool to check my email, and he turned back over.

I’m starting to realize that no one wants you to put on a show; they just want to see what you would do if they weren’t there.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/11/7262320/

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So, if you couldn’t tell from those two (very non-lyric) pieces, i spent my weekend intermittently curled up with my collection of Sylvia Plath poems. Lately just about anything i’ve read has impacted upon my writing pretty clearly, and Plath’s ability to gently turn the obscure into the common as well as the other way around is something that makes her my favourite non-lyrical poet by far.

Of course, i didn’t spend the entire 60 hours that i classify as ‘weekend’ curled up with a book and some bottled emotions; my sitting on the floor of the fourth row of the strange auditorium at Shippensburg with a notepad on my lap furiously copying down Plath poems while the fraternity people chirped away endlessly was probably the last thing i intended to talk about upon my return. In fact, i had written a pen-and-paper blog just minutes before then, but reading it now it doesn’t seem to be saying anything at all.


It would be one thing if i were to write you my Bell Jar, but i haven’t read that in nearly a year. Instead you are stuck with poetry, dancing around the things i wasn’t planning to say anyhow. I’m obtuse like that, i suppose.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/11/7260104/