Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

songwriting

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In case you haven’t noticed, i’ve been pretty musical this past week. In fact, with the exception of the 36hours i spent out of the house i’ve recorded something every day since the debut of “Tangled,” and i don’t seem to be showing any signs of slowing down.

When it come right down to it, I still don’t really understand myself when it comes to songwriting. I don’t know why i do it; i do it now because i’m used to doing it — it’s something i do. I suppose i only ever started doing it because Gina took one of my few poems and set it to music, and i thought “hmmm… there’s an idea.” Even the idea to buy a guitar was something that sortof materialized, and i’m frankly still quite shocked that my mom even acknowledged it. The first songs i wrote were rudimentary — scavenged from the handful of chords i knew from songs i had been learning; i rarely ever play them now as a nod to both their immaturity in lyricism and composure. The first song i wrote where i knew what i wanted it to sound like was “Afterglow,” and in the months between that and my at-the-time masterpiece “World In My Hand” i had created that rock-arena in my head where i was on stage and people were watching… people who had favorite songs, who got my silly comments about tuning, and who would want an encore. In the back of my first poetry notebook i have a few pages devoted to these imaginary set-lists that i would devise every few days … now an interesting way to track what songs i played the most and how much i liked them.

What’s so different about Trio, really? I know for sure that i listen to Trio more than anyone else does, mostly because for me it’s a practice take that i can actually learn and grow from. But, why do i do it, and do it so regularly and fanatically? Why do i post my portfolio-mp3s to the page and leave a mostly-empty comment box up for them? Why do i bother to extensively provide an online discography in the song archive? Why do i talk about it all over and over again as if i have some large and attentive audience who follows all of my comments about the evolution of songs and how Weezer’s artistic development makes me cry?

I suppose for the same reason i keep on writing this : obsessively back-linking and spell-correcting posts from three weeks ago and worrying about what i’m going to write about and what will be in the next Trio. Despite obsessive stat- and bandwidth- tracking i still couldn’t really tell you how many people read me every day, or if more than three or four people listen to Trio or download mp3s that i post. I suppose i do them both for the illusion … the the illusion that my voice has escaped the vacuum that is the brick and plaster of my room … that maybe somewhere there is someone i don’t know at all listening with a half grin, humming along.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/12/7872506/

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For Creative Writing i had to put together a portfolio of all the work i did this quarter, and at the last minute i decided to substitute some recent lyrics in place of a second free-verse that i wasn’t especially pleased with. Theoretically this was entirely fair game, but the thing about my lyrics is i didn’t really revise their content so much as i revised the context in which i used them. So, teacher’s pet that i am, i turned in a cd along with my final portfolio. On it were the following four songs… first grabbed out of their respective trio appearances, and then in these more essential versions.

Until You Awake – This is a song that was always meant to be delicate and intricate, but i never got the chance to strike the right balance in my previous attempts at it. Here is sounds nearly as i imagine it… cascading and balanced. I’m very happy with it.

(just an) Excuse – This is actually the original demo of the song, predating this season’s first Trio. However, it displays some of the directions it was meant to go in a little more accurately than subsequent recordings because here i had more time to prep the guitar-sound and recording range. This isn’t evolved the way “Awake” is; instead, it is more of a suggestion of where the song could be going.

Tangling – This is like a tease of a song… quiet and faded around the edges where the song is usually rambunctious and crackling. The reduction does it some amount of good … you can more easily see what i’m trying to achieve without having to look past the clipped microphone and stressed vocal chords. “Tangling” could very well be the simplest thing i’ve ever written — a sort of retro Beatles-imitation that pits that nebulous concept of “word on the street” against the notorious unnamed “girl.” I know for sure that i like the song, but i suppose the whole point is going to be where i go with it; this could be your only chance to hear it without having to be pulled in all of the various directions i’m trying to go in.

Tangled – Written as a twin to “Tangling,” this song got lost in the rush that was vying for a spot on Trio, yet somehow managed to turn up this week in (what felt like) an incredibly solid rendition (considering i had only played it once, previously). This version is perhaps more tentative then the Trio recorded the day before; it wasn’t meant for display the way the Trio was. This is a more static version, less magnetic … i am settling into the space of the song instead of filling them up so they can be better heard. It’s a simple thing, and much like “Tangling” it’s eventually going to become more about what i can add than about what i can strip away. For now, though, it’s as bare as the day it was born.

This is a nearly definite third of the material that i’ll be recording whenever i finally haul my ass back into the studio, and i’ve tried to distill it down to the most basic of its elements. As such, anything you might have to say about it will be welcome.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/12/7777772/

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I’ve been having an ongoing conversation with a reader who actually listens and responds to my Trios named Grant since i got out of the hospital, and it’s brought something about myself to light that is central to my current unhappiness. In short, i am imprecise. It isn’t because i lack attention to detail, or the intelligence or skill to see such details through, but because they require too much time and energy. Why do i like to act but not to do shows at Drexel? Because i like the thought of acting as getting on stage and portraying a character, but i don’t like doing the same lines and the same movements the same way every time.

Of course, in almost any semi-professional theatre the entire point is to assimilate the direction and be able to replay it in a consistent fashion. Last night the roomies and I went to see Les Liaisons Dangereuses at the Wilma Theatre, and i was in awe of not only the acting that i saw, but the very precise physicality of the acting. The flounces, the scoffs, the deep breaths … all things that add tremendously to a performance, and all things i tend to gloss over without noticing.

I don’t pretend to be much of an actor; in fact, i quite hate it. Looking back at all of the shows that i’ve done i cannot honestly say that i enjoyed a single role that i’ve portrayed. In each occasion my happy memory is connected to the people i produced a show with rather than my performance itself. As such, i can hardly fault myself for not enjoying the intracies of acting … i simply don’t give a shit.

Where Grant comes is is my songwriting. I might claim to hate acting, but i don’t think anyone can be convinced that i dislike writing and performing my own music; in fact, most of the time it would seem to be the only thing i like to do. Grant has been listening to my songs in in his last email he posed the following question: What do i have against finger-picking? My composing is, almost as a rule, devoid of all riffing and picking unless it’s been specifically inserted. In fact, any song of mine that has acquired a set pattern of picking is by definition in a higher stage of evolution than a song without (see Under My Skin vs. Tangling, or an older Never Say Goodbye vs. its demo version).

My first response to the question was simple: i don’t like to finger-pick. It’s something i’m capable of, but if you listen to my musical influences they are not fluttery pickers — i don’t like the shimmery sound of it. However, there are a vast majority of Peter Mulvey and Ani DiFranco songs where they punch out precise riffs in the midst of their frantic strumming, and of late these riffs have been absent from my songs (examples of which can be found in Lost or Bridge). Suddenly my defense just isn’t; in the past i’ve riffed and rocked, so why don’t i do it all the time?

I don’t know where i was going with this. I don’t fingerpick; i don’t like to fingerpick. I don’t act; i don’t like to act. So, if i’m not doing the things i don’t like, why am i so miserable?

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/12/7703915/

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I have a slim gray book with wide college ruled pages that serves as my lyric book; most of the time i know how to sing what i intend to play, but on some occasions it’s nice to know i have a tidy volume to back up my occasionally unsure memory. Heading into Freshman year i decided that my old, red, spiral-ruled book was due to be retired; i had aptly filled the entire front section of it just as classes began, and i wanted a set of fresh pages to start all of my new emotions in. I literally put my creative impulses on hold for two months while i shopped for the perfect vehicle for my words, endlessly reiterating a practice set of “Bridge,” “Other Plans,” All That’s True,” and “Deadweight” while i held out for a new place to write. Finally, on a trip to South Street, i found the book. It stayed empty for a few weeks… i had this phobia that if i started it off with something terrible that it would always be affected by what dreadful thing i set down on that first blank page. So, i kept holding out.

It was a poorly constructed dam on my feelings, and eventually they burst out onto the margins of my anthropology notes — hardly heeding my attempts to herd them in the direction of my empty gray book. Each snippet just delayed my marking it up even more, because they were just that; snippets — nothing up to snuff. Ironically, it all changed the day that i skipped Anthropology, at the urging of Megan, who was skipping out on the 9am class we both had preceding it. Somewhere in the routine of talking to her and skipping class i managed to lock myself out of my room for a couple of hours with only my bookbag to keep me company, and i wound up in our lounge staring out into a gray and rainy day. That past weekend i had been to my first college party, and i had drank my first drink and smoked for the first time, and i had this endless swirl of feelings in my stomach … feelings just starting to develop about Laurel, feelings about what i had done, and feelings about what was to come.

I intended to have my slim book with me, but life is ironic; i gave birth to my first set of college lyrics sloppily on the backside of Anthropology notes, uneven and ugly. It didn’t seem like very much of a song, by my standards, but it felt like it should go into the book — it didn’t mean very much if i just read what it had to say, but it felt just like i felt.

Eventually Kenny returned from his class and let me into the room, and i promptly retrieved the book, my key, and my Ashland guitar. He was headed down into a nap, and so i headed back into the lounge. A capo here, a string retuned there, and suddenly it happened.

The book is plenty different now. By last fall i had already become too afraid to set any fresh thoughts directly into it for fear that they might besmirch the excellent average of quality material that i had established in my unprecedented streak of decent songwriting. I began to cheat — songs began on my computer, and if they were worth saving i would copy them into the book the next day. Soon i fell behind on my copying, and by last Christmas i had a sheath of songs stuck into the back of the book when i boarded my plane for Florida, hoping to get it all caught up to me.

Now the book and i work in shifts… sometimes there are a few consecutive songs that were obviously scrawled into it as quickly as i could think up lyrics for them, and then there are carefully printed ones that have been sung scores of times before i put them into penciled words. There is a difference, though, as i found in rereading it today. The bits from Freshmen year were… different. Frank. Reactionary. Unedited. Even the quality songs that i still play appeared in virginal and unretouched version that betray my original intentions for them. And, then there are things i don’t remember writing… my accounts of my misguided cancer scare, seeing Anastasia over Christmas break, and auditioning for Hair. Things that would never make it past the most basic of neurons let alone down to my fingers and out into the book.

In fact, my life hardly ever makes it into the book anymore… oddly enough, it stopped doing that at nearly the same time i started doing this. Which makes me wonder… where is my life going to go after i get tired of copying it down into here long after it’s already happened? Makes me wonder…

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/11/7360081/

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Okay, so, you can call it the after-effects of the spectacular Buffy Musical from this weekend which swept Garbage, Erin McKeown, DeathCab for Cutie, Rufus Wainwright, and Leona Naess right out of my musical rotation as soon as i finished downloading it … but i want to write a musical.

Hey, stop laughing. Just stick with me for a minute.

For my Creative Writing class i wrote this awfully belabored story, and i could have passed it off as excellent work to any other teacher, but my instructor leveled her gaze right at me and said “you didn’t like that assignment too much, huh?” So, after much negotiation we decided that i would write another short story and hand in a cd of a few songs to make up for some of my least favourite poetry assignments, and that my grade would somehow be triangulated from the both of them. Mind you, i’m getting an A in the class either way, but both of us agreed i should at least try to get some criticism out of the class for my effort, and i can’t really do that with a story i’m not feeling at all. So, once more with feeling…


Meanwhile, we have the new songs. Some of them are quite nice and i like them, but this year i’ve found a lot of them work just as much as stories as they do pop songs. For example, there’s the inverted pair of “Over You” and “Excuse,” the latter of which details a sexual escapade that might not have been the best idea in the world and the former pretty much saying that the narrator can’t get said escapade out of his head. While working out the puzzle of what songs are heading for my next demo earlier i found myself with a heap of these narrative songs, with an entire handful of them that are as good as those two but that i wouldn’t leave standing alone in the middle of an album.

And that’s when it hit me… i should turn in a one act musical to my Creative Writing class… or, at the very least, a story with narration via song. Yes, it sounds insane, especially since i typically hate musicals and writing drama, but it makes some sort of crazy sense in this post-Buffy world. So… we’ll see. (Nevermind that i just wrote the synopsis and the main character’s theme, we’ll see. Honestly. I’m not going to spend all night doing this instead of studying to retain my perfect score in communications).

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/11/7070555/