Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Creative

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Somehow today rendered my entire life empty, and i cannot explain the process of it at all.


It all started with an argument about how i really don’t like theatre despite the fact that i’m regularly involved in it, and how if it was worth something to me i would take it seriously but in reality it is just a placeholder for my being able to have people watch me based upon my own creative work and not some mere interpretation. Somehow (although in retrospect it isn’t such a leap) the conversation ballooned out into being about how i don’t like anything inside my life at all. Well, that’s what i said, even if i didn’t quite mean it. Of course, that’s a misrepresentation and i corrected it immediately: i love creation. I love to write and to compose and to sing. You’d think acting falls under that umbrella but it doesn’t… it’s just a shadow … a directed interpretation of someone elses work.


Sometimes i say that i hate everything about my life and it feels like i’m just trying to be dramatic to get attention; i know too many of those people. But, really, there are days that my life is really just a shell and all that’s inside are some tiny songs that no one ever really hears and me plugging away at my classwork trying to make a dent. A difference. Whenever i get to this place it comes down to… what is the point? And, i can tell you right now that i don’t believe there is one. Is there any point to existence as we know it? Each of us is the product of the almost-hubris of our parents … so sure of their love or lust that they created a physical product of it. And we, as that product, are trapped here and all we can do is try to keep ourselves happy, or to better the environment for anyone else who might get stuck here without much choice in the matter.


It sounds like a defeatist view, but it isn’t. I have goals, and things i enjoy doing, but when it comes right down to it there is positively no reason for me to exist – except for the effects that i have on other people’s lives. I am not the biggest fan of It’s a Wonderful Life (or, Scrooged, for the more skeptical set) and i am not so full of myself to think the world would be inherently different without me, but i recognize that i have left marks on the people that i have passed by and that i’m here for them as much as they’re here for me. So, it’s not like i’m perched on the edge of a roof … this isn’t a suicidal kind of raging depression, just a contemplative one.

Sometimes when i am in this place the only way out of it is to evaluate … what is it that i have and love and why? Tonight i am a reductionist… i have my narrative voice, and i have a handful of friends who i can honestly talk to without ever watching what i say. And, so, i told Jeff honestly that the only thing i ever enjoy is writing… how i can write 3500 words about something i love and not even notice and then reread it endlessly. The same with writing songs. Jeff is a communications major a year ahead of me, and he has already found what he wants to do with his life and he’s doing it. I think he was trying to tell me that i can’t ever get there while i’m busy torching the bridges i’ve crossed and the one’s i am on.

Jeff ultimately understands my point, but he won’t concede it: I have goals and places to be, but i am 20 and life is already over even if i get to do everything i’ve ever hoped and dreamed for. The world is the container of a finite amount of possibilities both big and small, and i don’t think any chain of events will ever make me truly happy even if you substitute in all of the right jobs and friends and lovers where there are just empty spaces right now. The only true choice that i have is to do something that will make anyone else forget about how pointless their life might be… to make them forget about everything i’ve just said – because i know it’s here and no one seems to care whether i notice it or not. My goal shouldn’t(can’t) be to go back because there isn’t any such thing; i need to move forward. In a way, i am meant to be a distraction.

Not such a bad job, really.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/09/5943263/

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The first day of fall on a college campus is always a memorable experience… yesterday was that in two respects: the first day of Fall while on campus, and the first day of Fall term. Freshmen were everywhere, lines for food and books were long, and i spotted nearly a hundred people i haven’t seen in months (and lamented easily another hundred that i didn’t see). I ran into Gina with former roommate Michelle and walked them to the bookstore where i had a sighting of Laurel and Ben before i was distracted by Kathe who was eventually joined by Selina, but then i had class with Karen and afterwards ran into Matt A. before headed back to class, this time with Gina. And, that was only in the span of an hour.

Sometimes you anticipate your relationships to all of these people changing, and sometimes you expect them to stay the same. Or, at least, i do. I’ve been finding out that sometimes i’m right and sometimes i’m not – sometimes in cases i didn’t really expect. Who knew that one biting comment from one of my favourite friends would leave me seething and writing a nasty song about them on the first day of having them back in my life? Who knew that someone i generally despise would put a broad smile on my face while i was walking around aimlessly? Who knew that people would change so much, or stay so much the same?

I haven’t really thought about my ‘blogging schedule’ … last year i took alternate weekdays off. Today i am headed to International Business Law, Critical Reasoning, Basic Production, and Communication Theory. We’ll see how i feel about blogging after all of that.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/09/5903942/

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Yesterday was impossibly full… two or three different days all slipped deceptively into the packaging of one. Shopping turned into lunch, which turned into a deep conversation about what made me who i am, which turned into a concert for my mom that ended with a concert that pulled out notes and chords from places i’ve never been before. That was one day… happy deep family day. Then there was my day to myself, with guitar and internet and music and napping and food. And, then, came my day with friends, which typically started out happy and fun and quickly descended into misery. I’m usually introverted enough towards the middle and end of big parties, but this time i had headphones with me so i just turned on the good bits and let everyone at the party do their miserable little social dance to the sounds between my ears. Eventually i got tired of waiting for the people i wanted to be with (the story of my life) and i went out on the front step and turned it up all the way until finally i set off for the apartment.

So many blogging things happened in there… things i’ll have to say eventually for me to make more sense. Somehow i explained to my mother exactly why i like to be thin and why i like the girls who i like and why i have to be successful at something and she understood it all with this wane little smile and tears welling in her eyes. I can’t imagine what it must have been like seeing me from the outside… i wanted to thank her for everything and so when she asked me to play “under my skin” i shut my eyes and opened up and poured things into it that she had never even heard before, and afterwards she sortof just stared at me and i was just sweating and breathing and smiling because somehow i opened the song up again just when i thought i had used it all up.


It’s hard to quantify 20 years in any kind of way, but somewhere in between my nearly mathematical proof that i’ve never had a male role model before Peter Mulvey and my gut-wrenching concert i think i was having a happy birthday. The only happy one out of the three.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/09/5862553/

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I haven’t been saying much about my songwriting lately other than my notoriously weepy comments of last week, and i’m not sure if it’s because i haven’t had anything to say or if it’s because i have too many things. While i am still in an intake phase, it is slowly giving way to some tiny forms of output … guitar riffs and quickly scribbled verses that are slowly coming together as my new songs. One thing that is entirely clear is that i am once again lacking in an emotional center to orbit around in my writing (which is almost amusing, since between that post and now i had a long period of only having a center and not too much else). I think the new songs are frightening me a little bit because they are actually doing things i’ve been wanting songs to do for a while… using different types of chords and strumming, narrating differently, being about the same feelings but from different angles.


The reason i mention this at all is because i was bored on Saturday and decided to make a list of songs that either just missed being on Relief or were written since then. The list quickly grew to over 30 songs, and as of this morning the current final tally seems to be 44. I’d point out (as always) that easily half of those songs are only half-decent and that i might never take the time to make them decent (or better). But, anyway, click if you’re interested in titles:
[Album Songs][All Songs]

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/09/5742112/

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This morning i was walking down Walnut street listening to The Green Album and “Hash Pipe” came on and i swear i just started crying right in the middle of the intersection of 39th and Walnut.

For those of you not familiar with Weezer’s vast musical catalogue, “Hash Pipe” isn’t a very sad song. In fact, it’s a song that for all intents and purposes is an emotional flatline; it hardly makes narrative sense to begin with, let alone exuding any sort of sentiment. Yet, there i was in the middle of the street at eight thirty five in my Drexel polo shirt shedding tears (and probably being the laughing stock of every Penn student that passed me on their way to class).

Although i’ve always liked Weezer i was never really a “fan” due to that fact that the band is all boys, and i was only into girls. However, last year Gina and I inexplicably were able to obtain tickets to their sold out warmup show in Philly, and to honor the occasion i bought their eponymous album so i could refresh my memory of their most famous songs. For the vast majority of the intervening year i was happy to sit and listen to the familiar blue album, and to sing it at parties and appreciate it as classic modern alternative rock, if there is such a thing.

I bought Pinkerton for Gina years ago when it had just come out, but i had never really listened to the album all the way through. As a result the only songs i really knew “El Scorcho,” “Good Life,” and “Pink Triangle.” With the impending release of Weezer’s 2001 disc i began searching for Pink only to discover that it was nearly impossible to find… chain stores were out of stock and Weezer is virtually nonexistent in Philly used cd stores. Finally i broke down and ordered from Cheap-Cds. It came in on a quiet day in admissions; i put it on and it sounded nice.

At some point the album came home with me and was left indefinitely in my stereo and the songs started seeping into the nooks and crannies of my brain as the disc spun and spun again on repeat. By the beginning of June i had decided that Pinkerton was the answer to Ani DiFranco’s Dilate: wronged, raw, desperate, sexual, and loud (not to mention self-produced). Suddenly i found myself with a relationship album that i could actually identify with – frustration and breaking it off from the boys’ point of view.

Back to this morning. There i was crying in the middle of the street trying to sniffle away my tears or pass them off as an allergy attack. And i found myself wondering: “Why didn’t i cry yesterday when i was listening to Pinkerton?”

The answer is not an easy thing to nail down. At some point during my identification with Weezer’s second album i decided that it was something that i should be able to do… it was something that i should be able to sonically and emotionally recreate in my own fashion. In the virtually listenerless vacuum that my music exists in i should be able to have those songs and to create that sort of sonic equivalent to an open wound.

Some people just identify with an album because they can chill to it, or because some of the lyrics seem to apply to their life. When i identify with music it suddenly becomes a part of my own catalogue, with each song potentially mated with one of my own as a fluid a-side and b-side or as the ebb and flow of a live performance. There are plenty of albums that i like and love, but if i don’t picture myself onstage singing the songs they are not works that i have a large personal overlap with; i just dig the music. Whereas i typically make mismatched or gender-bending pairings between myself and other artists, with Weezer there are songs that are truly twins of my own progeny, separated only by the physical age and emotional distance between Rivers Cuomo and I.

My bitter pairing of “Splinter” & “Hold On Me” is just a weary attempt to escape from someone else’s bed, while “Tired of Sex” laments that being stuck there doesn’t do one much good in the end. “Unstrung” shares its broken heart and strings with “Falling For You.” “Over You” plays with the pushing/pulling gravity of an imploding relationship, but it cannot admit to enjoying the pull the way “Getchoo” does. “Up & Down” is the culmination of the emotions… the breaking point that nothing on Weezer’s album ever gets to but everything seems to inexorably lean towards. My songs aren’t as mature as Rivers’, and it shows in that i am so focused on the breaking while he is focused on the emotions on either side of it. “No Second Chance” laments a relationship that fell apart without ever directly identifying the person its addressing; its mirror is the tangled web between “Across the Sea,” “El Scorcho,” and the mournful “Butterfly” – songs that are more concerned with lusting, liking, and losing rather than just with the snap of a heart torn in two. Each song in that trio is tied into someone and their life more than i’ve allowed any of my songs to be with the possible exception of “Up & Down.”

Or, maybe i’m full of it and i get off on comparing my meager songwriter existence to today’s darlings of rock. I am by no means a great fan of Weezer’s new disc, but today on the street the oohs and claps of “Photograph” were sucked backwards into feedback and out came “Hash Pipe” and i unexpectedly felt that sudden tug of identification. It felt as though i was watching a video of myself after i write my Pinkerton (or my Dilate) as a cohesive album and then casually discard it to move onto crunchier guitars and more fun. “Hash Pipe” is Weezer taking itself less seriously as a band but more seriously as a production. I have yet to let go of the emotions of “Under My Skin,” and i am still writing from the trailing emotions of this year’s wounds… when will i ever be able to tie them up neatly, package them, and then move on to write something that will in its own way supersede them all?

Heaven only knows. Until then i suppose we can just blame my allergies…

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/09/5604037/