Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Creative

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Songs come from nuggets, moments, tiny subdivisions of time. Some of my favorite songs were written about a single moment of inebriation or a single flurry of kisses. “What It Is” was written based on a single ten minute argument. Tangling was based on a feeling in the pit of my stomach as someone talked right past me. I doubt that she meant to, and it was only for a moment, but in that moment my perspective of the conversation flattened down just to the relationship between the two of us, and then expanded to make that relationship out to be more important than it ever really was. But all it took was that one second of my stomach twisting itself into knots, and i had a song.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/07/85290550/

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Until You Awake was the last song of the Blogathon last year. For the entire week i had been stuck for something excellent to close with, and as i became more and more involved with reading Mollie the song starting coming to me, slowly but surely. I remember all of the stages: sitting on my bedroom floor, furiously scribbling down the words … on the couch with Gina, desperately trying to get the picking pattern right … in front of my computer, getting it right on the first take.


In the year between then and now a lot has happed to change everyone in the world, and a lot has happened to me individually. That song stuck through, though, and every time i play it for someone new i get to tell the story about last year’s blogathon and how i really felt as though i was having a concrete effect on something. And on someone. In a way i think it’s both the most personal and the most serious song i’ve ever written.

I hope you enjoy it. Thank you, Mollie.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/07/85290004/

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Life does funny things sometimes.

A little over two years ago i was sitting on a shag carpeted floor, tearing up. Across the room from me was Lindsay, who was directing her attention at our friend Kate, who had just decided to move a quarter of the way across from the country. Resting in Lindsay’s lap was a shiny hardcover of Dr. Seuss’s Oh The Places You Will Go, and she was equally tearful as she read it to Kate. In that second something in my head gelled, something about the way that Kate made me feel like i was really a part of something here at Drexel – and now she was leaving that something behind.


That night i sat in my dorm room and wrote Never Say Goodbye all in one sitting, revising over and over again until it resembled something very close to what it is now. And then i hid it… sat on it for the entire summer, afraid to play a song that was so directly personal and not just about some failed attempt at romance or a missed kiss. I finally played it for Kate the night before she left, and it felt like a load of creative bricks was lifted off my chest as the words finally reached the ears they were meant for. And then i didn’t see her for almost a year.

Flash forward two years. Lindsay is now my roommate living directly underneath me, and Kate is staying with us for the summer now that she’s back in Philadelphia. The two of them are moving out of our apartment and into a new one in the next few months. And the both of them are going grocery shopping for me since i’m chained to the computer all day.


It might not sound as though this is such an unusual twist in the light of how connected i felt to the two of them years ago, but i definitely couldn’t have ever predicted that anything would wind up in quite this way. So, life is sortof funny, friends are entirely wonderful, and “Never Say Goodbye” is for the girls downstairs; i love you both.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/07/85288286/

85287995

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Day 94 was a hard song to write, and it continues to be a hard song to sing. I wrote it as random scribbles on the back of a concert playbill i had in my pocket while i was waiting in a doctor’s office. Random enough? The inspiration was as much anything that song refers to as it was the fact that i was due to have my tonsils removed by said doctor within two weeks; i felt as though i hadn’t made good use of my voice for a while and wanted to work on something new before i has things taken out of my throat by surgical force.

Having written the first draft of the lyrics on it, the playbill then found its way to my floor – where it stayed for two weeks until i read them to Elise one night. I don’t remember the entire chain of events, but a few hours later i came out with the revised and arranged song that kicked off today’s event. It’s still rather young and rough around the edges (and has oh-so-many lyrics to squeeze in), but i definitely like it already.

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I am a bit deflated.

For the record, Radio Shack is Satan. Did you get that? RS = SATAN … Without going into exhaustive detail, the short of it is this: last night i want to my local shack of horrors to pick up some audio cables and a quarter inch signal splitter. After talking for a while to the sales person as i picked out my equipment it became obvious that i was buying things to make up for the fact that i don’t have a digital mixer to run mic and amp signals through. It just so happened that (surprise), the shack had just such a mixer on sale for $99, but at a different location. Biting the bullet solely for the quality of my Blogathon entries, i paid in cash and agreed to pick it up this afternoon. Well, i’ve just now returned from the downtown store sans a mixer, because the mixer had very little to do with anything i’m trying to achieve in my “home studio.” I understand that a lot of instruments and turn tables have a whole ton of RCA Stereo outputs, but i’m a musician and have nothing of the kind, so a mixer with 4 stereo RCA ins and 2 stereo RCA outs just means i need 6 RCA to eighth inch adapters. Did you follow that?


So, the very short of it is that, for the time being, the Blogathon songs will not be recorded in full-quality digital audio as supposed in the last post. Furthermore, if you know anything about home 4+ channel mixers for under $200, please contact me ASAP.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/07/85279554/