Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Creative

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At first I thought that i was hungry. Two in the morning, lying on my back on top of the covers thinking that maybe, perhaps, i was hungry.

There was definitely a sensation of roiling unease in my stomach, and i had definitely jogged two miles between the last time i ate and the moment i resignedly turned to my side and pulled the covers over my midriff. I could go have a snack if i really wanted to, but i was already dangerously close to staying up for an entire twenty-four hours. I didn’t relish the idea of doing it twice in one week. I would eat in the morning.

I wasn’t hungry. The bowl of Cheerios stared back at me, scores of tiny unwinking eyes returning my blank gaze. Never a blink. Probably wondering why i poured them in the first place. The spoon and i were like a assembly line machine, working with deliberation rather than care to finish one task and move on to the next. I finished unenthusiastically, my stomach still adrift. I wasn’t hungry.

I claim to be immune to stage fright, but having a big mouth doesn’t equal star potential. In fact, it can be exactly the opposite. Lately, our entire apartment and all of our significant others (oh, and Ernie) have become hooked on Fox’s American Idol. Somehow the show avoids the nauseating generic pop culture that most other Star-Making programs of late have engaged in, instead opting to lead with the contestants and their voices. On each show they sing a song… they can dance or smile if they want to, but really they’re just there to sing. Live. In front of over 10 million viewers. For the chance to be a superstar.

Lindsay and i are invariably amongst the first people into our building on Wednesday mornings, and as we both delve through endless boxes of records we talk about what songs we would choose to sing on teevee. Underneath all the laughter and bragging, i know that i wouldn’t make it. Even with the quality of my voice left wholly aside, i know that i could never walk out on stage and stand still – knowing that a number of eyes beyond my ability to count were on me. And so i settle for watching, for being nervous on their behalf, and for dreaming about being in their midst.

Blogathon is not a top rated teevee show… last year my hits for the 24 hours were in the thousands, but people who actually listened to my songs were probably only in the tens. However, this year looks like it’s shaping up to be a lot bigger than last year, and i really have no way of predicting how many people will visit my page or listen to what i have chosen to invest: a dozen of my most valuable possessions – my songs – plus another dozen covers of some of my popular favorites. In three days they will appear, one per hour, for thousands of people to sample and form opinions on. And my stomach is aflutter. 72 whopping hours left until i have to go live with my my first song and i already want to duck out the stage door and either be sick or hide.

Elise pointed out i have to record a song every three hours to get all 25 of them done by Saturday morning. I would like to point out that thanks to two very generous pledges i have now raised as much money for Planned Parenthood as i have spent on recording equipment for Saturday. Which is now 71 hours away.

I think i might be hungry, but i’m not sure. Back to work.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/07/85277890/

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I am the sort of person that, once i have something fixed in my head, it overwhelms everything else in my life. That’s what happens when i ‘crush’, so to speak. I can safely reveal to you that this sort of attention is rarely paid to anything resembling work. When i’m at work i can become so focused on something that i’ll skip lunch breaks and leave later than expected, and i have been known to grow so engrossed in writing a paper that i forget to sleep or use the bathroom. However, the way crushing works is that it subverts other intended activities — and getting the records organized at work never crosses my mind when i’m working on a decent logic puzzle in the same way that writing a paper usually doesn’t distract me from writing a song.

Having spent all that time setting up what doesn’t usually distract me to no end, now let me (predictably) contradict myself: in the past week an official job i have has superseded everything else i could possibly be doing: working, sleeping, eating, spending time with Elise, and even getting near Blogger. The job, as it were, is to arrange Lisa Loeb’s “Stay” a cappella for eight or more women’s voices so that everything about the song – guitars, drums, harmony, et al – is represented in full by the singers.


It was not easy. In fact, looking back over the last week i would say i’ve easily spent upwards of fifteen hours on this barely three minute song with its half-octave of lead vocal notes and its five essential chords. Fifteen hours in front of my computer playing back the same collections of three and four measures back over and over as i first change a sixteenth note to an eighth note, and then from a major fourth to a major third of harmony.

Almost a solid day’s worth of arranging later and i have suddenly realized that Drexel had managed to teach me something, because i couldn’t do any of this three years ago – or even two. Possibly not even one. I haven’t mentioned it lately, but i’m currently in choir. Yes, choir. Singing in a group of over twenty people, some of whom are very highly distinguished singers who have been in such groups for well over a decade. I, by contrast, have been in such a group for going on five weeks. I start each session frazzled and rigid and end each one relieved and smiling and ready to belt out just about anything.

Conclusion? Some things do change, but the most basic of things always wind up the same.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/07/85252415/

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Tiny blonde girl, six or seven maybe. The mic stand was as low as it would go and she kept twisting it back and forth trying to get it even lower, her eyes crossing every time it centered in her field of vision. On every chorus her father would glance at her and nod, and she would grab the microphone and softly sigh into it – recoiling after each phrase with her hand over her mouth, giggling. Half babbling child’s nonsense but half assured harmony, after three songs she was done and she crossed her eyes at us a final time.


Every open mic i’ve ever played has been a little different from the one before it, and this was no exception. Northeast Philadelphia has an eerie quality that it lends to its residents, world worn and weary as they are, so that you can read their lives off of their faces without even needed to hear the songs they had chosen for that purpose exactly. One man, in a faded blue shirt with strong biceps and a cracked and weathered guitar channeled Tom Waits with his slow gravelly delivery, not a surprise at all. A woman, her long blonde hair trailing her and a half apologetic smile on her face, playing self-consciously narrative songs on her full size piano. A thirteen year old girl dressed like a gypsy, holding herself as though she was twice her age until she took the stage behind another piano, this time to play swirling piano compositions she meekly announced that she had “written when she was eleven.” Not so long ago for her, the MC reminded us.

Gina and I must have presented them a conundrum, not betraying our world in our faces. First Gina, shocking them as she revealed her range note by note, first tickling the very highest and then descending to a nearly bass hum as she slowly circled the most basic chords in Bb. And me, i suppose, energetically bounding up and back from the microphone with each line, sticking out my tongue when i missed my riff, and making steady eye contact with anyone who was bobbing their head along. I can’t imagine that we telegraphed our moves, our voices, our emotions as well as the regulars, because our faces just don’t have that quality. Even the tiny blonde girl in her staring cross-eyed at the microphone in front of her face told me all i needed to know before she ever opened her mouth.

I don’t know if i can go back.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/06/85206127/

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All this time people kept telling me my singing range would get bigger once i got my tonsils out, but right now it just feels strange and open. Not bigger, though. Everything is harder to say; i try to squeeze out queer Tori vowels and wind up sounding more like Bjork — all wide open and unpronounced. I’m just not used to that cavernous space, sound resonating, nothing to strangle it off.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/06/85167001/