Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Creative

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Victory! Sweet, sweet, blueberry victory!

In other news: last night i played guitar for what has become a routine four hours, breaking only for the penultimate episode of Buffy and white pizza courtesy of Ross’s new credit card. This morning the skin on my fingers is rind-like and impervious to pain.

You could say that i’ve become a little obsessed with my practice regimen, ostensibly because i’m playing at a backyard festival this weekend and have vowed in public earshot to blow away all of the other performers. Really, though, it’s because i don’t know if i actually can. The recently revealed running order of the event finds me sandwiched between a duo of golden-throated music majors and a terrific a cappella group that i arrange for, with the entire day both book-ended and dotted by talented multi-instrumentalists and Philly pub performers. And in the middle is little old me.

At this late stage drilling finger exercises until i feel as though i’m going to vomit if i have to stretch my pinky to the seventh fret again probably isn’t going to do me much good, which is why i typically leave that until just before bed. The regimen begins as soon as i have stripped out of my corporate skin of shirt and tie, sometimes finding me strumming the opening chords of “Tangling” in an undershirt and low rise briefs. The run through the current iteration of my set quickly (and seemingly inevitably) descends into seething about my inability to pick complex patterns or endless fiddling with my amp tone, and rarely features more than a single complete song. Alternately, i could probably just look in a mirror and scream “you are worthless” for thirty minutes to achieve a similar effect on moral.

After this inevitably crushing warm-up routine, i turn to my Bible, The Complete Beatles Scores. What better comfort could there be to my inability to play my own misbegotten songs than to learn how to play some of the best songs ever written? Last night was a medley of Let It Be‘s A-Side, none of which i can carry all on my own. Still, the practice is useful because i am trying to match a specifically scored and recorded sound rather than some elusive cipher of a rhythm that only plays inside of my head.

After a solid run at the Beatles (always including thirty minutes on the riffing of “Dig A Pony” and at least two renditions of “Blackbird“) I am ready to perform my own set, minus the sniffling and whining. Or, rather, the sniffling and whining is restrained only to lyrical appearances. This set is typically much more affirming, though as a rule “Apart” sounds like utter shit. “Under My Skin” is placed strategically dead in the middle to remind myself that, yes, i can actually (write / play / sing) with some modicum of professionalism on a consistent basis. This is necessary, as my shot at “Seams” typically breaks down shortly after the key change.

I end with “Little Love,” because for a month i had intended to start with it and so bootstrapped it up past all of the intermediate levels of (total shit / shit / lyrical Alzheimer’s / inability to cross bridge / endless descent into ad-lib and riffing / constant Simon-Cowell-ing of vocal performance) to the point where i spent an entire hour last week walking around Center City with a guitar strapped on over my shirt and tie playing it and being asked my name and if i could be heard at any local bars or pubs. It isn’t “Under My Skin,” but it allows me to ignore (or, at least atone for) the two dozen false starts of “Apart” from earlier in the evening. It allows me to believe for a second that the forty or so friends that will be enduring me for a precious half hour on Saturday will perhaps clap out of something other than obligation.

Only after that do i brutally work my pinky fingers until my stomach knots with each effort. And then, sometimes, i go to bed.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/05/200290435/

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I’m having trouble deciding what i feel about anything except for sitting holed up in my room protected by womb of thick walls and loud music. Yesterday on my way home from class i walked a block out my way – out of boredom, i guess. I had never been on it on foot before, just in a car passing by. The feeling was indescribable, as if i had stepped off of my front porch and onto the set of a television show (because i had never seen that block before except for through the glass of a window/screen).

I think that sometimes Elise feels bad that i don’t write so many songs anymore, as if it’s her fault. It guess it is a little bit, because i am happy and not creating stupid scenarios in my head to connect me to every person that i pass by on the street out of utter desperation to be a part of someone else’s day. It’s confusing to look at the entries in my little grey book from a year ago, while Elise was still new and confusing enough to evoke my typical lyrical ramblings. At a point not too far after that there is a disconnect, and suddenly i am not writing out of my gut anymore, from where my songs used to spring covered in bile and blood. Every time Elise gets used to me not having anything new to sing at all i surprise her, the other night with four new songs that she had never even heard a hint of before. They make me uneasy — i have trouble feeling them and so they are hard to sing.

I have thirty four weeks of college left after i complete my last co-operative learning experience this summer. I said a funny thing last night to Erika about that. I said that i wasn’t returning my mother’s phone calls because she would have to get used to not hearing from me and being worried once i left Philadelphia. I talk a lot about what i may or may not do after i graduate, everything from going abroad to going to grad school, and usually it has an air of fantasy and speculation about it. Last night, though, i said it without thinking. It felt like singing one of my old songs, half diaphragmatic support and half a punch in the gut. I don’t know where i’m going to go, or what i’m going to do, but apparently it’s not going to be here.


Or so i say. But, for as many streets there are in this city that can make me feel alien there are other cities on this planet that i’ll never see. I really ought to start working on that.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/03/90595788/

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Such a strange feeling to be actively blogging again, reading and writing and interacting again. After two nights of messages from Rannie @ Photojunkie, the other other day i received a hello from Dave @ Acerbia. And, before i go on, need to emphasize that you really ought to click that link, if only for an example of how shwanky a blog layout can actually be, which entirely ignores the hilarious writing that you are bound to encounter. But, i digress. After having fairly meaningful conversations with them both, i am both shocked and delighted at how downright enthusiastic they are about my linking to them despite the fact that they are both nominated for Bloggies and being linked by nearly hundreds of other pages right now. That’s not what i’m here to talk about, though.

Early in our conversation Dave asked me the surprisingly succinct question, “What do all the music links have to do with crushing?” I was more than a little shocked by it, at first. Back in the day i think it would have been obvious… the sobbing and moaning about my life in the middle of the page had a direct connection to the sobbing and moaning about my life in that week’s trio … it was a direct one to one relationship. However, here in 2003 faced with that question staring at me from a gapingly white instant message window, i found myself drawing a blank.

I can’t exactly claim that music is my life, but it has always been a big part of it. I have always been a music consumer, ever since i would perform my choreographed floor exercise routine to “I’ll Tumble For You” as a child. However, it was my guitar that made it a part of my life; my ability to recreate a song anywhere and at any time via my own body. Soon that wasn’t enough for me, though, and i began writing my own songs. At first they were halting and barely melodic, relying solely on the the chords that i knew and a few that i dared to make up. Eventually, though, i had played enough songs by other people to begin to know how to get the right sounds out of myself, and that is when my songwriting truely began.

This website is obviously a living document of writing — it’s past exists in perpetuity while it’s future begins anew with each post. In its existence i have deleted only a scant handful of stray musings, and significant alterations are only ever the result of tightening my own editorial screws than any censorial hindsight. Soon after its inception, it also began a living recording of my music… flubbed starts, bad strums, and occasional shining moments … things that i remember hearing at the time more than i remember doing them.

My ability to travel back in my personal timeline via this page’s archives is magical to me — especially tracking my songs’ evolution via the song archive. Listening to the spectrum of sounds between my original conception and my current interpretation often provides a surprising peek at what my original intentions were and how i have neatly disposed of them. My choice of “World In My Hand” to open this week’s Trio was as much a nod to this as anything… this weekend i listened to its history, everything from my original by barely audible singing on its original recorded rendition to the flubbed versions from this weekend. The song itself is old, and it has barely changed… even less, perhaps, than any other song i’ve ever written. It has always been frenetic, challenging to play, and hard to remember. But, even when a song doesn’t change with time, i still do.

So, to belatedly answer Dave’s question, all the music links are an attempt to more fully record my transformation into something more than i was before. The fact that anyone ever stops by and checks in on my progress along the way is still shocking to me, and i continue to be eternally gratefully for each second spent on the task.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/01/390238127/