Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand
by krisis
It’s funny… i started writing something entirely different… i was convinced that “There is no sense of logic in the pitch leading up to our kiss.” was the line to end all lines. It wasn’t, though, and halfway down the page i ran into the paragraph i posted below, and in reading it back just now it clicked. Now, if only it had another verse, a chorus, or music i’d be set…
by krisis
The room is teeming with other conversations as i zoom in on your smile and the words that you say. Funny how the whole world can reduce down to just one person like the fractions we studied back in third grade. And this is like recess out in the schoolyard; I’m wide eyed and laughing, so out of breath. I’ve got the same butterflies so tightly jarred in my stomach, their wings flutter in my chest
by krisis
I wear my headphones for the entire walk from here to the theatre, and from there back to the apartment. This week i’ve been singing the whole way there: Pinkerton, Garbage, Return of Saturn, Jagged Little Pill. I investigate each record in thirty minute intervals, picking apart the melodies in high-definition sound and finding their places in my own range. Rivers comes out strained in chest voice, i solidly match Shirley’s alto, Gwen brings me up to falsetto or down to my lower register, and Alanis tends to hover over my break point. I cannot keep my voice inside my chest.
I never really try to imagine myself from outside. I suppose it’s a problem i have … why there is such a disparity between my interior image and what i actually allow people to see and hear. Today walking home at midnight belting out “you’ve already won me over, in spite of me” i finally stopped for just a second to think about the picture. The image. My whole frame dwarfed by my round black earphones, shrinking me even farther away from my twenty earned years, swinging my arms and stretching my baritone voice, planting one foot in front of the other. I draw stares from plain pedestrians and pretentious Penn kids alike.
I hardly ever picture what i look and sound like, even when i’m doing the most outrageous of things. Last night i caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror in the middle of “Like a Virgin” or “Material Girl,” and – suddenly – my voice matched up with that writhing image of me as if audio had just been synced up to a projected movie. I had to stop singing for a moment so as not to cry. The boy i was looking at wasn’t at all the one i felt i was being at the time.
I really don’t mean to be any of this at all.
by krisis
Weird spectral gray overlapping spring-like warmth wrapped in wind that delivers howl upon howl. Isn’t it supposed to be warm, she kept asking as i slung my scarf over one shoulder (as if we were owed another down payment on spring, you know?). It was supposed to be something else, of that i’m pretty sure. Strange five second downpour erupting so fast as to catch my back with its stray drippy claw as i slid into the main building. Later i found it clawing at my roof as i was lying curled in my bed under the eave, just listening and playing Dorothy. “Somewhere,” you know? But, there weren’t any blue skies to be found at the time, and just the normal amounts of technicolor outside when i slid out to check. The gray had given away to purple night, and accompanying it was just wind … bitter wind delving in-between my fingers and down to my toes.
I can wait like this, i thought.
I stood out on the front porch and sang at the top of my lungs — first songs i love, and then songs i wrote, and then just riffing backwards over myself in a human loop of feedback. I wrapped my voice around me as if it would keep me warmer than my slowly disintegrating mod-squad jacket, letting each quaver wrap me tightly in another sonic layer of warmth. People on the block were playing an open/close of musical doors so that someone was on another porch at any given time, but no one seemed to hear me.
You’ve got a very nice voice, a man said as he walked by wrapped tightly against the wind. My surprised thank you took flight on the breeze like a single snowflake, unique and forgettable.
Hands back to pockets, keys to unlock door: maybe i would rather wait inside.
by krisis
Songs have been absolutely blindsiding me lately, and it’s exciting and frustrating all at once. Suddenly i don’t seem to be writing about myself anymore, but those oft-invoked nearly-fictional characters that all songwriters have wandering around in their head. It’s exciting because i seem to have suddenly inherited the mystical powers of an actual writer, but it’s altogether frustrating because i can’t seem to write about what i’m feeling. I wrote “So Hard” based on a single line i had written in a blank IM window, and it seemed as though it would be a throw-away lark until i found myself playing it every time i picked up my guitar. Similarly, last week i began to write “Seams” simply about how the cold makes my walk home seem twice as long, but it transformed into a lament that was entirely indicative of my feelings while being about someone not quite myself.
So, tonight when Andy quipped via IM that he had intentions on writing a song with the line
“You have no proof I said I love you” in it for his non-existent grad-student band i should have known not to joke about writing it. Cause, well, what started out as idly typing a handful of phrases into an empty window wound up writing a whole damn song… all the fault of the following few lines: “Another envelope taped closed. Sharpie marker employed to print out my address. The shredded letter inside leaves your message fairly clear: Return to sender, i guess.”
Actually, Andy had intentions of “You have no proof I said I love you” being the title of his song and, while i’m not sure if it is anymore, we’ve definitely wound up with a song about torn up letters, battered old shoeboxes, accidental hand jobs in the back seats of sedans, and a vitriolic serenade from a suburban front lawn. And, well, since i generally seem to avoid titles longer than four words, let’s just call it “proof” for now, okay? Audio forthcoming, as soon as it stops being 1am :p
Meanwhile, it’s late and i may be a total moron, so here’s a reminder of what i need to read when i wake up tomorrow: CityStories, GlacierGrrl, Andy’s new post.