Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

my music

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

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Sometimes it’s hard to think of myself as a musician when i’m not making any music. With my jettison of the tonsils impending i’ve been trying not to get too wrapped up in playing music & singing because i know that i’ll be out of commission for at least two weeks after the fact.

I didn’t have any warning when i broke my collarbone, and the following month with music was a horror; i had to sit with my back perfectly aligned to a concrete wall to even have a chance to fret chords, and anything out of first position was met with the indescribable discomfort of the internal versions of nails on a chalkboard. By the time i was healed enough to play again i had lost any sort of direction i had in July, and i had forgotten the chords to “Lost” to boot. It took nearly a month before i started writing and playing again, but what came then spoke for itself: “Will It Ever Come,” “Punk,” “One Way,” and others i can’t recall from the top of my head.

So, i’ve been ignoring my guitar, and it’s been hard. Worse is that i’ve suddenly become surrounded by gigging guitarists, professional vocalists, and one friend who is months away from a major lable deal. It’s become hard to stand in the middle of all of that with my impending loss of voice and to assert that, yes, someone should listen to me. When the blue layout went up i neglected to even add a Trio bar onto it – i haven’t done one since before i began the layout.

Somehow, despite this hiatus, last Thursday two songs happened. They caught me unaware.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2002/05/85130288/

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I was singing at the time.

I am getting used to her “hold it” as she tightens the focus and adjusts her shutter speed. I am beginning to learn to breathe down through my chest so that its expansion doesn’t ruin my pose. At the time i was just on Walnut street, though, with my extra black dress shirts slung over my shoulder.

So far Elise has mostly taken my picture while i’ve been playing guitar, or reaching for my guitar, or relaxing after having played my guitar. Last night was just me and the shirts, and a single red tie. Somehow the thought of it was a little threatening, as if i’m not worth photographing while i’m not running through my rock-star routine – which comes through alright in photographs even if it doesn’t sound up to par in person.


I needed to feel worthy of her photographs, and so i had my demo playing on my headphones during my walk to her room. I was really listening hard – wrapping my mind not around the lyrics and the guitars that are so familiar to be but around the arrangements that sprung up in the studio… the subtle changes i made to the songs on the fly that created the solid front they produced on the record rather than the random chance that they might turn out well when i play them live. I was wrapping my mind around the concept that i am worth listening to beyond the immediacy of my rhyming and strumming.

Somewhere inside of that thought i began to sing… not singing along with my record, but singing with it; adding harmony where i was too naive to place it when it was recorded, adding subtle changes in lyrics to deepen the songs that weren’t fully realized at the time. Just singing… singing out, singing loud …to songs that no one else on the street knew at all.

I’ve learned to turn off my peripheral vision in moments like that so as to ignore the bemused glances i draw from passers by, but i could hardly ignore the rumpled man on his ten speed bike keeping pace beside me. I am a jaded Philadelphian at best, and a guardedly hostile one at worst, and so when he motioned for me to take off my headphones i was hardly expecting anything other than him asking for directions or money. Possibly both. I slowed down a little, almost maliciously, since he would have an even tougher time maintaining balance on two wheels at such a slow speed. I offered him my attention.

“You should be a singer.”

“I am.”

Headphones back on, speed increased, and by the time he was out of my peripheral vision again i had paused just long enough to realize that i had said what i said not to put him off, but because i meant it. I was listening to honest proof that i am a singer, and was singing along. I am a singer.

Half a block later he waved again for me to take off my headphones. “I didn’t mean to be smart with you or anything, i just think you have a nice voice. You should sing.”

I replied with just as much ease as the first time: “I know. It’s just… that i am. I do. But, thank you.”

I am miles away right now, but she’s got my essence on paper right in front of her face.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2002/05/85103545/