Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand
by krisis
I just picked up my old guitar, intending to idly strum something while waiting for my laundry to get clean, only to find that both my fretting and picking fingers are completely worn and i can’t seem to … well … do anything that sounds like music.
This is so cool. It’s been four years since my fingers were too pink and bruised to play a song. And, honestly, my voice doesn’t mind it so much either.
I rock. A little. I rock a little!
Rock.
by krisis
There is a mutiny building in my fingers; a resistance is gathering between my knuckles and around my wrists. They are not used to this sort of treatment… five hours of playing songs that i don’t have the option to fudge … songs that sound only how they sound. Towards the end my fingers were on automatic, picking out strings without my even having to think of it, but in the middle they were clumsy and tired as the muscles in my arms sighed with exertion.
There was a power to it — to making other people’s songs sound how they were meant, and to making my own songs sound out like i hear them in my own head. Kat sat on the bed mostly non-plussed, pecking away at her laptop, but Laurel seemed to be in a mild form of shock. And i… i wasn’t even in the room. The songs had filled it beyond its capacity to hold me.
Fingers aside, my voice amazed me. After having barely mustered up enough of it to power through my jury last week, imagine my surprise as it rose to the top of the staff and i was still hitting clean notes, open throated and howling. Sometimes a song finds one spectacular note inside of itself that my voice is attracted to like a moth to flame, willing to burn itself around the edges just to hit that one note and hold hold hold hold it over the four chords in the progression.
There is definitely a Trio brewing around here, somewhere.
by krisis
I am surprised when i do anything well.
I just got back from my voice jury … my hands did not tremble, i did not quake. I smiled. I sang the easier of my two songs first, letting my voice fall into the slack of the piano accompaniment — getting all of the unsureness out of my system. Better to be unsure on the easy one and powerful on the harder. And, so, without much ado, i was.
I am not perfect — it’s something that i’ve come to terms with over the years. But, sometimes i do things right, and when i do those things i am perfect for one barely measurable moment, and i am living from one of those moments to the next right now.
by krisis
by krisis
Art and beauty are so subjective that i’m sometimes frightened by them. A song that almost wound up going unplayed has become everyone’s new favourite. Last night someone told me they thought i was sexy. Some people read my page, and some don’t.
My audition was terrible… i couldn’t understand where the piano-arrangement fit in with my vocal notes, and i just kept shooting the pianist a befuddled look while my voice teacher sat in the back row and scribbled furiously on her legal pad. Corrections, for our next lesson. Rounder ‘O’ vowels, “remember” should be “ri-mem-bur,” breath before the phrases, don’t move my arms around so much. I don’t remember singing it at all, but i know what i did wrong. In fact, i thought that my audition was pretty terrible — panicked glances to the accompanist are rarely the mark of a chorus-member in the making.
At the end the voice inside my head said “Fuck it, Peter. Show them you can sing.” I shut my ears tight against the pianist and looked straight ahead. “Can lead to joy. And hope. And love… yes. Love.” C, D, Eb, E. Flawless. I just grinned as the piano roll to the end of the song began. The cheering was wonderful; i walked off as calmly as i could and proceeded to totally collapse in my chair hugging Elise and whispering “i did it, i hit it, i did it.”
No one mentioned my high notes, but everyone claims my song was wonderful. I didn’t think so, and i keep saying “But, what about the end?”
Tonight i’ll be at callbacks. Someone thought it was okay.