Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Year 02

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The first time it goes off is around six in the morning, for no discernible reason. I mean, it obviously goes off because i set it to go off then, but Lindsay is constantly asking me why i set my alarm to ring four hours ahead of time. No reason other than it’s like a two-minute warning for having to wake up and deal with another day.

I was happy to have the warning this morning, since the day seemed especially dreary. I didn’t even need to look out of my tiny back window to know; i could feel the chill sliding in through the cracks and twisting up to raise goose-bumps on my legs. Deciding to sleep through my first two classes was not the most wrenching decision i’ve ever had to make.


The other thing Lindsay can’t seem to understand is why my alarm rings over and over again. I tell her it’s a warning… life ahead in four hours… three hours… until finally it’s just “Time to wake up. Fucking Blastoff.” Apparently, one ring is enough to convey the message to her. Today the blastoff ring was #6, and the reason i got me out of bed was because the sun had decided to accompany it. I was up and navigating the mess of my floor to turn down the alarm before Courtney could start screaming, and i could feel the diffuse runny-egg yellow of a damp sun on my back. The day had made an ugly duckling transformation for me, and i felt as though i was headed for something not entirely dissimilar.


It’s strange to go from kneading a palmful of shampoo past damp curls down to the suffocated scalp beneath to sliding a dime sized drop down the middle of centimeter long strands on the top of my head. It’s the shortest my hair has ever been. Stepping out past my fish-curtain i caught my nude reflection in the mirror, and something seemed different other than my hair. No new pimples, no unexpected muscles. It was something about how the slope of my shoulders changes, the line of my neck becomes smoother. And, something else as well — as if my haircut was emblematic of some greater change that was working its way out from my heart and up through the skin.

I wasn’t sure of what the change might be, but i hoped it would go well with my grey turtleneck and sexy jeans.

It wasn’t until i had gotten halfway to my destination of skipping class that i started feeling the way my reflection looked. Nothing tangible, but my change in carriage had seeped down from my neck and shoulders and out from my gut to pervade my whole being. By the time i got down to the Green Room i definitely felt different, although to everyone in the room it read as something closer to narcissistic conceit. Really, could i help wanting to have attention paid to me? I had Changed and they wanted to talk about midterms. Ridiculous.


Amazing what a $10 haircut, losing three pounds, and being in my scientifically determined sexual prime can do for morale. Whatever. I try not to dissect the positive moments of life too much. I just felt … fuckable. And, not just hot or easy or anything like that, but like someone covetable. Someone other people have strong opinions on. And, well, fuckable sounded like a good adjective at the time, but now that i’m looking at it in writing i can see where that narcissistic angle came in.


So, maybe it wasn’t so different from most other days, really, but usually i’m more of a pity fuck, you know?

Nevermind.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/01/9028072/

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The feelings i have are these slippery things, and i wish they were more like velcro. I wish i could throw words at them and have them stick. I feel… slighted, continuously slighted by life despite my attempts to make it worthwhile. I feel unappreciated for being someone i enjoy being and over-valued for things i despise. And, of course, alone on a Sunday night my immediate reaction is to try to write a song about how i feel and, failing that, to blog about it.


The thing is, i’ve written this song already and blogged about it a hundred times. Yesterday Lindsay and i had a ridiculously deep conversation while watching the Eagles game, and i said something about getting married and having children and a house, and i meant it. But, i can never have any of that so long as i live within this private universe i’ve constructed, with all of its own symbolism and meaning.


I’m usually not shy with my lyrics, but this week i wrote something that says how i feel and i purposefully tucked it away. It Says how i Feel, but i can’t sing it or play it because for it to really come out and do justice to all the slippery feelings i have inside i need to make it perfect. In my head i hear the sighing melody and the double bass beat on the chords in the chorus, but try as i may i can’t get even a line of it to come out like that at all. Anyway, i don’t know what to say about this feeling other than what i already said in these lyrics last week, so here’s the latter half of them:

Imagine my whole life as Technicolor — with someone painting the shades into the scenes, and everyone acting from scripts with each other. They’re all off-book except for me, so every day is a stumble-through rehearsal, and each night is an actors’ worst dream because i never know the right thing to say, and i’m left silent in the spaces in-between. So, my front porch is a consolation, my door is a sigh of relief. The stairs are invigorating, my room is a reprieve. It’s then that i open my mouth, and the room is filled — the words come pouring out. My guts are spilled. It’s a shame i can only find my voice between four lonely walls of brick and concrete, but i don’t really have any choice: it’s just something about emptiness and me. Outside i feel just slightly out of focus; around other people i sing a little off-key. I wonder all the time if anyone will notice that i seem to be coming apart at the seams. I am coming apart at the seams.

It’s a one-dimensional representation of what i’m trying to say… my words stripped of inflection and tone. But, it’s the closest i can come to opening this up to you, so take it for what it is.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/01/8889949/

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Although she has been known to veer sharply in either direction, my mother has always been just the perfect shade between crazy and inspired. I look back upon my childhood now and try to figure out what was going on on her end of things… what adult motivations were playing out behind the benevolent ‘mom’ i adored.


My mother took endless pictures of me up until i started grade school — almost enough to make up for my nearly undocumented puberty (thank the lord). Up until my parents got separated i don’t think she worked at all, and i’m sure she found herself with all sorts of odd times during the day while i napped, played, or sat through endless repetitions of The Making of Thriller. So, she sat down with rolls of film and colored paper and yarn and elmers glue and came out with these odd books… like easy-reading version of my toddling life. Peter at the Zoo. Peter at the Beach.


Construction paper shades that make up the primary colors of childhood and sentences with one subject and verb each, plus the occasional adjective. They used to live in the bottom drawer of the desk in our dining room, and every so often she would get them out and read them back to me. I suppose she would be feeling lonely, or reminiscent of when i existed without any kind of premeditation. Grade school and GI Joes make a kid grow up fast. Eventually she altogether stopped mentioning them at all, and i haven’t seen them since we moved in 1998.

I don’t know what i’m talking about. If i was four today, those books would be something like Henry’s Diary, which alternating makes me want to cry about the fact that i’m two decades old and inspires me to one day be a dad as awesome as Henry’s dad.


And a mom as awesome as my mom.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/01/8703510/

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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/

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The trend in weblogs for ringing in the New Year seems to be a dead split between resolutions that might not be upheld and a litany of excellent things about 2001 that never came to light through the actual process of blogging. So, in the spirit of my general disagreeance and spitefulness this past weekend, here are the reasons why my year sucked (in roughly chronological order):

  • My grandmother dies; i proceed to get so sick that i miss the funeral (never to be forgiven by family). (!)

  • I have to drop a class for the first time. (!)

  • The weekend of my dress rehearsals for Good Woman of Setzuan i am diagnosed with Pneumonia and Bronchitis. I have to argue not to be admitted to the hospital so i can start going to rehearsals again. Upon my return I forget an entire verse of my big song on opening night (at this point being generally attributed to my medication, which i will neither confirm nor deny). (!)

  • My first girlfriend wound up being somewhat of a psycho/bitch; horrible breakup ensues. (!)

  • I managed not to fail anything despite all of the above circumstances, but garner my first C (in Recording Class) (!)

  • I have no spring vacation; i immediately started work at Admissions after classes ended. (!)

  • I am totally miserable in my apartment; i don’t speak much to my roommate. (!)

  • I miserably quit blogging for an entire week when my archives disappear. (!)

  • I do not leave the city once during the entire summer. (!)

  • I spend the majority of the summer wondering where i’ll be living in September. (!)

  • I sign up to attend the Philadelphia Folk Fest and then have to back out because of work and moving into my new apartment. (!)

  • I step in to give the counselor-of-the-day presentation one Tuesday in September, because the counselor in question was to horror-stricken to speak. (!)

  • I enter a rather depressive haze and let details about it slip to my mother, who becomes physically ill at the thought of my mental instability. (!)

  • I am admitted to the hospital for four days only to be told absolutely nothing is wrong with me. (!)

  • I endlessly deliberate over a first date with someone who lives across the country from me and who i like very much — only to be romantically rebuffed. (!)

  • I spend the entire last weekend of the year in the most dire of blah moods. (!)


    • So, that’s my year. At a glance, 2001 looks as though it might have been my worst year ever pound for pound. However, lest we all despair for my miserable year, click the end of each phrase for the happy ending that i might not have hinted at while blogging. And, in case i haven’t mentioned it, Happy New Year.

    https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/01/8335446/