Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

consume

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Wow, that was a long day. I’m not sure where it all went… i ushered for two concerts and talked a little bit to her and wound up in the recording studio engineering someone’s Senior Project.


Have you ever seen the second Batman movie? You know how Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle are dating each other and fighting each other as Batman and Catwoman at the same time? The scene that always stuck out for me is when they’re making out at Bruce’s place and as they grope each other they catch all of the scars that they’d left on each other in their battles. Of course, neither of them says anything since their identities are supposed to be secret.


I was thinking a lot about that scene today. I don’t know exactly why, but it just felt accurate… like each of us had our Superhero selves in public and only ever revealed our secret identities to each other when we were all alone – and now when we’re alone all we can do is poke and prod at each others wounds without the other ever being able to say a damn thing about it.

Does that metaphor work for you? For additional metaphorical material, see Ani DiFranco’s “Superhero” or “Pulse.”

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/03/2737617/

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There’s a Tori Amos song from Boys for Pele called “Marianne” that is a partially fictionalized account of a girl that Tori used to be good friends with. The song portrays Marianne as a suicide, but to hear Tori tell the story she was just a beautiful girl who was too engrossed with the wrong people and eventually succumbed to some sort of overdose while she was still in highschool.

Recently a large discussion on Precious Things erupted over the details of the situation … people wanted to know who Marianne really was. While their interest was rather non-threatening at first, some members of the community kept on pushing … when the overdose was mentioned by someone who is familiar with Tori’s hometown community some people immediately wanted to know what the overdose was on and the circumstances it was under, and i found myself thinking … Is that fair? It’s none of our business who this girl was, and we only know anything about it because Tori decided to divulge something about her so that the song could be viewed fully in the context of what occurred in actual life. But, just because Tori wrote a song about Marianne doesn’t make her life public record, despite what some of the more obsessive fans seem to be thinking.

It’s like… i’m reading a book about a woman that Goethe wrote a novel about, and it’s all about how everyone hounds her over forty years later because of what they assume her to be from Goethe’s work, when she never intended to be written about in the first place. It’s one thing to open yourself to close examination by making yourself famous, but that doesn’t give the public a right to scour your entire life for the people who have motivated and inspired you – and to impose upon them similar treatment. It’s not quite the same with someone who’s passed away, because they don’t have to endure the inquisitive public but they do have to suffer the constant pressure against the memories people have of them.

I don’t mind the plotting out of my own Behind the Music, but i don’t know if i’m comfortable with the idea that every album of songs i write opens up the door for someone to track down the person they’re about decades later… it’s especially unfair when that person doesn’t even know what sort of inspiration they’re causing. Oh well… something for all of you overly chatty storyteller songwriters to think about…

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/03/2685854/

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Apparently i was supposed to “hunker down with a pair of headphones” and closely examine Kid A, but i frankly don’t have the time. I’ll be the first to admit that there are hundreds of albums that i would fall in love with if given the chance, but when artists like Sarah Harmer can grab me in a half a listen i don’t know why i should waste my time on an album that i spent hours listening to while only ever really liking two or three songs. It’s one thing to tell me that i shouldn’t just discard an album after a single listen, but i gave Kid A more than just a casual listen at work (where i’ve discovered tons of my current favourite discs, from Ben Folds to Portishead) and it never took hold. Maybe i’m just too into riffs and songs that can be broken down to a single acoustic guitar; god knows i loved Pablo Honey from the first time it ever entered the shop’s disc changer. or, maybe i just hated kid A more and more as i found out from Pablo that Radiohead really was the next best rock band and that they obviously failed us horribly before they could ever prove their point. Or something? I dunno.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/03/2669650/

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I’m eating turkey that reminds me of being a vegetarian.

Let me qualify that statement. Junior year of high school i was still on my normal poultry-heavy diet, and there were two events that led up to my turning into vegetarian. One was an awful encounter with an open-faced roast beef sandwich which i’d rather not revisit. The other was peppered turkey from the lunch meat department at Acme. Junior year I brought that turkey to school every day for lunch, with dijon mustard and some munster cheese. Every day. By May, my stomach was in full revolt against the spicy red edges of the turkey, and the mustard that kept it glued to my kaiser rolls. Every night i’d go to bed after having eaten other snacks and a normal dinner, and my stomach would still remind me of the turkey i’d consumed for lunch. I would lie awake at night because of it.

When i told my mother that i wouldn’t eat any more meat, at first she thought i was just being stubborn, and then she thought i only meant red meat. But, when she bought that next batch of turkey it sat in the refrigerator until it was spoilt. She was angry that i had wasted it, but she got the point.

Obviously she still buys the turkey from time to time, as it was in stock just now when i raided the fridge to make myself a sandwich. I didn’t really realize what it was when i took it out and pasted it down to my kaiser roll with dijon mustard, but one bite sent me back to sitting on the floor of the basement hallway at JR Masterman, opening up my bookbag and pulling out a turkey sandwich.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/02/2571509/

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Can i just talk about some of the stuff that makes more sense once you’re actually in a relationship? Good. Okay, first of all, Undressed: that cornball MTV show where lots of too-pretty 20-somethings posing as college freshmen have lots trouble that would be solved if they would just shut up and fuck? Or, alternately, if they had opened up their mouths before jumping into the fucking? Previously the show seemed lame and belaboured, but now i actually get a kick out of seeing how twisted a situation can be before i actually it stops resembling real life. And god knows that’s a pretty twisted place to be…

Other stuff i dig more now? Ani DiFranco’s Dilate as well as most of Out of Range, all of which has stopped just being good music and suddenly is intruding into my life and siding with the players therein. Jagged Little Pill fits neatly into that category as well. Also, erm… i like sappy movies more now, because it’s fun to hit pause and make commentary before the characters do the stupid things you know they’re gonna do anyway.


God, i need to get out more.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/02/2558580/