Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

my music

Whoever’s Listening

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You know, back in the day i might not have understood what chords i was fretting, or what key i was playing in, or even how to sing, but god bless me, any time i didn’t think i’d remember how to do one of those things i made little notes in the margin of my lyrics or recorded the song. Which is more than i can say for my current state of affairs.

My goal for this week’s free time (made even more free because E isn’t even here, so i’m completely alone and to my own devices) is that i had to play each one of my 140 completed documented songs all the way through – researching how to play them, when necessary.

It’s funny, spending the better part of your free time listening to lo-fi recordings of yourself from six years ago trying to pick out the bass notes of chords. If i’m ever famous enough to warrant one of those The Early Years collections… oh boy, there’s plenty of crappy early years to choose from. I mean, aside from the hundreds of recordings from the beginning of CK forward. Early.

Anyhow, after 20 minutes of fruitlessly rewinding a real audio file from 1999 that i think was recorded in a spectacular 8-bits of digital sound in a futile attempt to figure out the bridge of the song i wrote on my last day of high school i finally pulled my old lyric book off the shelf to discover that the four weird alternate tuning chords i had been so desperately trying to replicate were printed in neat numerals at the top of the page, dated 6/19/1999.

That makes song 48 of 140 complete.

Fingers just starting to get sore.

Like I Love You

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Maps – Playing with new toys – stomp distortion for guitar, and compression to keep it at a constant level. Oh, and singing like a girl, but i’ve always done that.

Thick Skinned

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The point isn’t really that I have to wear in some new callouses by Saturday so that I can make it through the four sets I’m playing on, but that my callouses grew. Thickened.

I’ve been playing guitar for eight years at the end of this month. I remember when I had been playing for two and a half years, and I would watch Anthony, who has two years of playing over me, and think “Wow, look what I’ll be able to do in two years.”

And, well, maybe I can do some of the things Anthony’s done now. Who knows? I realized that the path is not linear, and it’s not parallel to anyone else’s. Early on I learned how to churn out chunky, thumping chords, Ani-fying any song in an attempt to make it my own. Just now I am learning the strength of learning something note for note, rhythm for rhythm. Isn’t that backwards? Don’t most people play along to the disc first and then figure out their own way to do it? That’s what I’ve been told, anyhow.

On the scale of great I’m sure I hardly rank – plenty of practice left on that front, no disputing that. But, not only can I get better, but even with as much playing as I’ve done, there are new callouses to be made.

Bleed Like Me

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I am always more the rock star when I draw blood, and last night was excruciating. After a week of practice had thickened my skin to new levels of callousness i spent the day nervously picking at these foreign fingertips, leaving them as naked and vulnerable as a tiny baby’s for my rehearsal with Dante. Our first time through “Volcano Girls” I winced and dropped the tempo, eventually giving in and playing the chords as a sevenths to rest my battered pinky.

“Bucket Seat” solved the problem, though, so fun to play, and with drums! Real, live drums, doing what I’d imagine they’d do – propelling me into choruses and matching my crescendos. And, after, inevitably after my spirited performance, I found that I had drawn blood.

I think it was the turning point in the rehearsal, really. Everything rocked more after that. Saturday at the party I’ll have nearly half an hour of rehearsed(!) set, with drumming(!) throughout. For most of the guests it will just be background noise; for me, a little victory.

Nostalgia Attached

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Packing always makes me feel like blogging, perhaps because my first week of blogging featured ongoing packing.

Packing for me is never just about putting things into boxes. It is about reviewing, reflecting, and reconsolidating. Boxing my CD collection goes fast (four boxes, now), desk stuff slightly slower. Slower still is looking through a box of “peter papers” to see if anything can be disposed of yet. Nothing can be, of course, but i take the opportunity to reread almost everything inside.

At the bottom, wedged beneath a battered purple binder containing a hand-scrawled short story that only Gina has read, is a summary of a day of media-deprivation i did for my first class with Ron Bishop. My sentences are sprawling and glib (a clear precursor to this diarrheal exercise), and reading through their words to their naiveté is pure nostalgia.

I was tempted to throw this paper out, as it was just a glorified diary, but something i say in the conclusion stopped me. Feeling as though all intrusive messaging had been flushed from me at the end of my media deprivation day, i apparently sat down to write a song.

Attached to the back of my paper, for Ron’s perusal, is what had to have been the first ever printed copy of “Under My Skin.” He might have even been the first person to read the lyrics.

Amazing. So, yeah, i’m keeping that paper, and all of Ron’s wry comments therein.

Somehow, this move feels as if it’s already over. Maybe that’s too much faith to have when my solution to every problem so far has just to throw money at things, but the idea of moving into an entire house where Elise and I rule every room and closet is just too tingly and wonderful to be diluted with any anxiety about the move itself.

I keep saying that we’re moving to a house, and i keep wishing that we were buying it instead of renting it. All in good time, though.