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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The oddest thing happened to me wednesday night. There was a knock on my door, and i immediately was ready to scream “Jesus, Matt, how the hell did you manage to lose your keys?” but when i looked out the peephole i saw something that was definitely more girl-shaped than Matt (Josh chimes in: Dude, I’m more girl-shaped than Matt.) Sorry, anyway… I opened the door and there was a girl there. I asked timidly “Am i being loud?”, and in response i was handed a wine cooler, and the girl doing the handing said “I just wanted to tell you that i love listening to you through my ceiling and i wanted to give you something, so here.” I sorta just stood there dumbfounded for a second, opening and closing my mouth, and then said “Wow… um… thank you.” We chatted for a very strange minute or two during which i found out she lives directly beneath me, and then she left. I put the bottle down on my stereo and started working on my new song again, but the bottle was staring me down. It felt weird sitting there.

Bottle in hand i went downstairs and rapped on her door, and she opened it with a sorta bemused look on her face and i said “I don’t really take liquor from strangers, but i’ll come down and play you some songs this weekend and drink it then.” We wound up talking for an hour, during which time i learned that i’m “famous.” My next door neighbor apparently turns off his teevee at night to listen to me play, her entire family knows who i am from her commenting on me while on the phone, and her boyfriend was totally ecstatic to hear me bleeding down through the walls one day when he woke up. “I’m sorta like a teevee character, huh?” “Well, I didn’t want you to think i wanted to hook up with you or anything, but i just had to come up and give you something or say something. So, both”


We sat on her floor with her door wide open for a while and figured out that the weird italian looking guy in spandex from her dorm was actually Joey, and she even knows Selina from working in the language department, and i wound up promising to communicate through notes slipped under her door, and that i’d show up with my guitar over the weekend.

And to think i thought she was going to complain about me being loud.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/04/3185795/

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heartbreak even -ani difranco

it’s a heartbreak even situation

nothing lost and nothing gained

so i’m 10 years old again

standing in the backyard waving at a train

i feel you make love to me slightly

every time you let a little laugh slip too soon

and the moment passes over us so lightly

it feels like sand blowing over a dune

you try not to let your emotions show

but it ain’t a balloon you can just let go

it’s an ice cream cone dripping in the sun

sticky hands

    sticky arms

        sticky situation

it’s a heartbreak even situation

one part powerful elation

one part pitiful and frail

and i’m trying to feel my way around

a book of promises written in braille

there is pressure from within this

and pressure from above

there is pressure on our tenuous, strenuous love

and there’s wet wool blankets one, two, three

laid onto my chest

’til i just can’t breathe

and i try not to let my emotions show

but it ain’t a balloon i can just let go

it’s an ice cream cone dripping in the sun

sticky hands

    sticky arms

        sticky situation

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/04/3164936/

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Just when you think Ani DiFranco is just a folk-singer who knows how to funk things up, you listen to the first half of the first half of her new set of discs and are informed “No, really she’s a kung-fu fighter of sound, so you better watch your ass.” She’s so over the extraneous arrangements, cornball lyrics, inability to play a decent solo song in the middle of an album, and nonsense musical experiments. It’s as though Dilate was that violent hint of adolescence showing through the simplicity of youth, and Living In Clip was the treasured family photo album of all the framed little moments up until then, and the next three were all of those awkward teenaged years of trying to learn the way you want to live, with a misstep for every beautiful moment. But now she’s arrived at where she was headed all this time. Everything i’ve heard so far out of Reckoning fits exactly into her sonic puzzle, and while it isn’t what i initially bought into, it’s something i can’t help but like.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/04/3164836/

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By the way, it would seem that i come down against the idea of drunken flings afterall. I did get one comment about them that made me really think for a minute … one of my friends wound up in his utopic current relationship as a result of a drunken hookup, perhaps because the two of them would have never had the courage or momentum to join lips while sober. And, while momentum has never been my specialty, i’d hate to know that i only had the nerve to finally act on my feelings because i was just unsteady enough (in every respect) to lean in for that kiss. Yes, you’re hearing me saying that i’ll take crushing agony waiting here in my chair blocks and miles away over that one intoxicated moment that you’d never be able to explain away years later. Not that you can ever explain any of this stuff to anyone rationally at any point, but at least then i’ve just got the regular reason.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/04/3160819/

Filed Under: sex