Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand
by krisis
krisis: Do you have to be a real singer-songwriter before you get to write from the perspective of disturbing characters that you’ve created? Or, alternately, is it a turnoff if my new song is about killing my lover?
Carton: hmm. as long as people realize you didn’t actually commit homicide, you should be okay
krisis: Well, that would require me to have had a lover,… so i’m in the clear!
by krisis
So, Matt ratted me out in regards to how entrancing i believe Rabi at WockerJabby to be, and through the magic of referral logs she {of course} read it. I just hope she doesn’t think i’m stalking her or anything; i just think she’s really neat.
What’s sorta interesting in the light of Matt’s accusation that i’m obsessed with Rabi is that i’m not obsessed with anyone. No one. And, as much as i whine and bitch and moan about being only obsessed with myself, i tend to fall for people. I fall hard. That’s why this is called crushing krisis … it just works on so many levels. But, not being obsessed is a healthy phenomenon. As much fun as it might be, and as conducive to songwriting as it might be, if i can’t give a girl space just within my crush on her, how could i ever realistically be romantically involved with her?
This whole lack of an obsessive center thing made it hard for me to title the new layout for AMkitchen. I joke constantly that whoever gets the majority of songs written about them on my next demo will get it named after them, but in a way it’s true; i gauge the emotional center of my current performance staples by who they’re about, and inevitably one songs becomes the center of all the others. For the majority of this year that song was “Under My Skin,” but lately i’m just not feeling it as much as i used to when i played it. So, looking at the spread of images from this past summer that are currently illustrating my website, i found myself at a loss for a name or a title song. I wound up naming the new layout ‘resolve,’ because above anything else my writing recently has been showing a sense of resolution. I feel resolved, and I have resolve. Resolve.
by krisis
Trio is a unique and mostly spontaneous thing, and i’d just like to emphasize that point. This week marks the twelfth concert of three unedited (and mostly unrehearsed) songs i’ve performed for this site, and out of the 36 songs that have appeared so far there have only been 4 repeated songs and 3 covers (two of them in #3). That means i’ve performed 29 original songs. Now, i am both modest and honest, so i can tell you that not every one of those songs is amazing. Sure, there are ones like “crashing” and “never say goodbye” that stand out as great compositions and performances and all that, but then there are those songs like this week’s “fad” and “burn” that are just not quite there. Both of them have their moments, but they both have some other (clunkier) moments where they lose your attention or make evident the fact they they never got “finished.” But, that’s sorta the point of trio; obviously with as much writing as i do not every song gets “finished,” but whether or not the song is set in stone this lets me bounce it to a few willing ears. Last week’s performance of two brand new untested songs drew a ton of positive feedback and really encouraged me to work on both tunes despite previously giving up on them. So… you really are changing my sound by responded to my performances, and whenever my next demo disc is finished you will hear the difference. So, thanx. xoxoxox
by krisis
I hate writing a bad song. Not only do i potentially waste some good lines or riffs which i am then reluctant to recycle, but i more importantly loose a chance to voice an emotion. Sure, a lot of my songs cover roughly the same emotional territory, but not many of them come from the exact same inspiration. This summer i very badly wanted to write a song about my first kiss that would say exactly what i felt about it, but in reality it just came off as a too-shimmery Britney Spears b-side. I keep trying to reform it, and it is getting better, but i’m not sure that i’ll ever want to play it in the company of other songs like “relief” and “under my skin.” But, my inability to say or write what i feel, tomorrow’s trio is going to be chock full of good songs i haven’t played yet to make up for missing last week (which was totally unintentional). Ok… that’s all.
by krisis
When i used to write songs they were my escape. I used to be able to say so much inside of them that never existed anywhere else. I was a rock star in my own head. I conducted my own interviews. I tracklisted my imaginary new album once every month. But, in the end it was just another hobby; none of my friends even really knew i was into it that seriously. I still pick it up every once and a while, when i hear a song from back then. All the lyrics are still on the internet somewhere, and the sounds too, at some forgotten webpage i could find on my lunch break if i spent a minute or two looking. Yeah, i used to write songs. It was fun.