Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Creative

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Last year Wockerjabby won the Bloggie Award for “Best Kept Secret” blog, which made the Bloggies worthwhile for me. A lot of “popular” sites that i haven’t ever read won for things that they are only somewhat spectacular at doing, but all in all it was a fun time and i feel as though Rabi got recognition that she definitely deserved.

Cut to 2002.

In addition to their weblogs, some people write essays, make games, do photo-journals, or any other number of things. All of these people are eligible for the “best non-weblog content of a weblog site” award. Last year the winner was Zeldman, and of the other nominees was bloggie-creator Nikolai Nolan — who creates a “feature” each month for his log. You can scope out the other nominees from last year here

To this day there are only a very few webloggers i’ve ever heard of who write songs. Former blogger Jack Saturn does, as does Adam from Tweebiscuit. However, not only do i write songs, i demo them for everyone to hear, i play weekly concerts of them live and unedited, i posted audio from my studio cd as it was being mixed, and i put all of that together for my 54 song spectacular ’25/24′ over the summer.

It is my firm belief that there are very few other bloggers out there who have a more personal or interesting piece of “content” on their site, and as readers of mine i would like to ask you to please take a minute to click to here and nominate CrushingKrisis.com in “Best non-weblog content of a weblog site.” My music is something that i put my heart and soul into every week while receiving comparatively little thanx or attention, and so i’d like to try to make it a little more widely known. I don’t want to win, necessarily, i just want to see my songs in the company of undeniably amazing work from people like Nikolai and Zeldman. Voting closes on SUNDAY night, so please make sure to register your pick before then. In fact, tell all of your friends. Start a petition!

Honestly, it’d be an honor just to be nominated. And, meanwhile, if you have any suggestions for other nominations (or, if you want some suggestions for yourself) please comment!

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/01/8558394/

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Two years.


Seven hundred and thirty one days, exactly.

Nearly right down to the minute.


It’s hard to say something important or unique about a song that comes up in nearly every conversational context possible. I’ve already described writing the lyrics, talked about the recording process, uploaded take after take of developmental recordings… and here i am two years later at a loss for what i’m supposed to be saying.


All i can say is that i’ve spent one tenth of my life living with “Under My Skin” … not only living with it as a song, but living with having written it and with why i wrote it. Living with the song is sometimes the hardest part; “Under My Skin” is easy to like, even for me, and i feel like it eclipses other songs that i’ve worked much harder on. Living with having written it isn’t so bad: at first it felt like a wall i had built to avoid having to express myself in any other way, but now it stands as an emotional landmark rather than a roadblock.


Living with the reason i wrote it is still strange. In the past I would agonize over it, asking myself “how do you kiss someone and then just let it go?” Now i know exactly how, because i’ve done it. It happens. I guess the real question i have is “After life crystallizes for one perfect moment, how do you go on living imperfectly?” I don’t really know the answer to that one, and i don’t expect to find it out any time soon. Sometimes that one moment i lived is almost like a fantasy in my head that never really happened, and sometimes it’s the only thing i can see. It is still both, and all the shades found in-between

“Under My Skin” became more than what i originally intended it to be when Laurel came into the studio to sing it with me last year. Ever since she willingly added her voice to mine i feel as though i don’t wholly own my words… they aren’t only mine anymore. Laurel’s voice singing them on Relief, and any other time i’ve caught her humming along, suddenly transforms “Under My Skin” from a song in the first person to a shared narrative — with its words and all that they are saying awkwardly shared between us both.


It doesn’t bring the moment back. Life doesn’t suddenly make sense the way television does. But, one moment that seemed so selfish and impossible when it first happened is now just a tiny seed that has sprouted into a flourishing garden of songs, friendships, and memories that will last me a lifetime.


And one very good song.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/01/8531862/

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Blogging is not a daily column. I don’t even have to post everyday, as one of my readers just reminded me as i lamented my headache-induced writer’s block. I don’t have to post every day because i’m only posting for me… i’m putting up the effort, and the editing, and the $30 a month that keeps my website functional as my bank account gets inexorably smaller and smaller.

Are you starting to see where those other posts were headed? I am tired… tired of having to learn all of the foundations that lay beneath the successful artifice of art, and having to be responsible for them all on my own. I am tired of spending endless hours programming my site and weeks in the studio just for a paltry 100 copies of my demo and a thousand readers a week. I am tired just at the thought of having to create a new layout or having to mix down another demo. I don’t want to do it. I just want to play, and to write, and to have an amount of attention paid to me that has some relation to the effort that i put into my work and the quality that emerges. Even double the readers, or five times the listeners, probably wouldn’t be enough for me … because even after my in front of the scenes work is paid adequate attention i’m still stuck behind the scenes like the Wizard behind the damned curtain, sweating away as he produces such a spectacular show.


I don’t think this means anything… i’m obviously not quitting or going away. I’m just so tired… tired of having to spend a year on music courses so i could have a key to the studio that i hate, and tired of earning A’s in programming just so i can properly sort out the PHP i program the site with. Tired of having to beg to be a mere assistant stage manager when we all know i’d rather be in front of any curtain, anywhere. I just… i don’t know how i’m supposed to be heard at all, otherwise. Maybe you could call it paying my dues, or maybe it’s just my own particular burden (and not such a bad one, at that), but the charm is wearing off … what was once exciting is now my dread of quarter inch to eighth inch cable adapters, and my absolute dread of photoshop, and my remorse over spending half of my education learning how to make what i want to do work, instead of doing what i want to do.

Conclusion? Who knows… either one step closer to sending out demos, or one closer to subway busking. Two steps forward, two steps back, same old me.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/01/8396050/

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I’m going somewhere. I am.

I am nothing but frustrated thinking about my 2002 demo. I am a faithful student of the Ani DiFranco school when it comes to songwriting, and that means that when i have enough songs to track an album i have to start actually tracking the album. Of course, for me (and Ani), this tends to result in having a surplus of songs once i get to recording them, but that just makes the selection on the record stronger.


I am not frustrated because i’m going to have to leave songs that i like off of the album, though. I am frustrated by the thought of recording. I do not want to go through a repeat of last year… locking myself sweating and cursing into the studio for an entire week of claustrophobia and flubbed starts and sweating and hunger. It isn’t fun. The whole act of keeping my wires straight and making sure i have all my volume knobs right and setting up the compressor totally drains me, and all i am left with is the urge to get down some solo performances as fast as i can. It doesn’t make me want to play any more music than i have to play.

Having developed a downright fear of the studio (which i (lamentably) have to enter eventually if i ever want to hear the single i recorded this summer), i am suddenly interested in making other plans. Plan A is to set up my home computer with a new sound card and buy a microphone and just do the whole thing in my room; i could work on it at any hour, and make endless edits and and overdubs. I like the idea… it seems like the way that excellent playful records are made, and i’m sure i would wind up with much stronger material if i got the chance to take more than a handful of shots at each song.

On the other hand, i don’t even want to worry that much… i want to just give up my power and send out some three song demos to record labels both small and large and wind up signed with a producer who can worry about what tone the bass need to complement the acoustic guitar and what side it should be mixed to. Of course, that goes against everything … against my possessiveness of my songs and against all of the independent music i listen to. However, there comes a point where i am tired of trying to be heard all on my own, and i just want someone to be able to listen to me… and sometimes the easiest road to that isn’t sitting in my room recording Trios.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/01/8395796/

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As for resolution… in seventh grade i resolved to be attractive. I was going to pay more attention to what i was wearing and how i brushed my hair, and i was going to make an effort to talk to the girls i liked. I could make it happen. I resolved to make it happen.

Six years later i had my first kiss.

You can’t really resolve to do anything except for those things so explicitly under your own power that you could and should be doing them anyway. I would resolve to see my friends more, or to cook more, or to be more organized … except all three of those things got under way well before the drop of the ball because i realized how easy it would be for me to do them. Other resolutions are less finite… losing weight, seeking out a meaningful relationship, or getting straight A’s. I’d love to do any or all of those things, but they’re circumstantial — i can try my darndest to accomplish them with nary a result if the fates don’t intend it to happen.

So, what am i resolving to do, you might wonder? The only thing i can responsibly resolve to: resolving. I can’t promise myself to make anything happen that isn’t directly within my own power, and i’ve already began to work on things about myself that i’d like to change, so all that is left is to make an attempt to be at peace with all of those nasty circumstances i brought up in my last post so that i can face the new year fresh and ready for anything.

I’ll be sure to let you know how it turns out…

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/01/8337271/