Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

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Something right about being a Senior, being almost done, being so close i can taste the freedom on my skin and in my wallet, being able to say exactly how long i’ve got ’till i’m free. Something right about the shoot on the massive marble steps of the main building, the photographer’s nerdy grin as i grilled him on his long exposure shot, the way that i smiled and he said “we’ll be using Peter today.” Something right about going somewhere and not feeling like i have to be the life of the party or the center of the dancefloor, about just watching people move and smile when they don’t think anyone is watching. Something right about lazing around without television during the Super Bowl, making soup from scratch and getting drunk over a rousing game of Trivial Pursuit, just the two of us and Liberace staring back from his pink rectangle.

Nothing wrong about how different i feel, or how unconcerned.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2004/02/107576551476115309/

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My wants have always exceeded my needs, just as much as my reach has always exceeded my grasp. That’s the kind of person i am; always looking to the next step rather than delighting in the one i’m on.

I used to boast that i wrote so well because i wrote so much … 3000-5000 words a day. At the time it was entirely true; between blogging, record reviews, academic work, and personal projects i really was generating that much wordage daily, even if a lot of it was getting scrapped. It occasionally lead to a glut on this page, but i always had an easy time saying what i meant in a very assured voice.

Recently i’ve moved so far away from my three-thousand-word habit that when i sit down to write too much comes tumbling out. Each thing i want to say branches into five other things, and suddenly i’m creating more strands that i can plausibly weave together. I feel like the result is unfocused no matter how much i revise it because the intent is corrupt — i wasn’t sure what i wanted to say in the first place, so i never said it the right way in the end.

In a way this speechlessness posing as verbal diarrhea has expanded into my conversational life: i’m majoring in journalism, yet when people ask me what i want to do i hem and haw, eventually saying that i want to be in corporate communications. Do i? Well, maybe. But that’s not what i really want.

What’s completely shocking to me is that i’ve always known what i really want. What’s completely shocking is that it never occurred to me until about an hour ago. Elise went to bed but i wasn’t tired, and i eventually became engrossed in a very comprehensive X-Men FAQ. All throughout the FAQs explanation of dangling plot threads and character origins, i kept thinking Well, that was dumb; they could have accomplished it much easier this way. And, suddenly, there was a click.

Narrating. It’s as dumb and simple as that, and i have too many examples to even invoke here, including my seven-year-old propensity for authoring short stories on a manual typewriter, my oft-revised but never finished teenaged superhero novel, my late-blooming song-writing bent, and my college devotion of blogging. Narrating is what i’ve always wanted to do, but been too afraid to say. From an age as early as eight i secretly wanted to be a novelist, but knew i would be shot down if i ever mentioned such an artistic endeavor in the presence of my family. Ever since i started writing my own songs i’ve wanted to make my habit a professional one, but have lacked the time and the talent to do so.

I don’t have the plots to be a novelist, or the guts to be a singer-songwriter, but i still have my words. I’ve always said i want to appear in Rolling Stone once before i die, and not having accomplished it by the age of twenty-two doesn’t mean i have to submit to a lifetime of trolling my way into the letters column. For each of the endless times that i’m going to be asked what i want to do between now and June, i want to have the nerve to say “write,” and the backup of those three-thousand-words a day. I suppose we’ll just have to see where that takes me.

Shit, was that a resolution?

https://crushingkrisis.com/2004/01/107303685544558759/

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Aim refused to get drunk before our interminable night class on Monday, so instead we stuffed ourselves silly with bubble tea and made a list of think I could do in June.

1. Graduate; get a job in Philly. Pros include staying in the same physical area with the same social network, which incurs lower cost and promotes mental stability. Cons include feeling as though i’m starring in my own personal version of The Truman Show or, alternately, reminding myself how pathetic my life is on a weekly basis. (Note: Cons do not apply if employed by the University of Pennsylvania or Philadelphia Magazine)

2)Graduate; get a job away from Philly. Includes the major benefit of living independently somewhere other than here. Detractions include lack of startup capital, moving all of my stuff, having to buy a car, and the fact that I don’t think my dozen closest friends are going to set-up a schedule where at least one of them is crashing on my couch at all times. At least, not without some prompting.

3)Graduate; attend grad school. Combines academic challenge with possible relocation. My already-existing student loans and the fact that the letters G, R, & E often induce a panic attack are definite detractions, as is the fact that i’d rather gnaw my arm off than go to class lately. (Note: Detraction #2 is waved if I pull a Martha).

4)Graduate; go abroad to do something worthwhile. Pros include buying a backpack guitar and getting a new passport photo. Oh, and changing the rest of thr world a little bit while potentially padding my resume. Cons include putting the rest of my life on hold for a year, airfare, immunizations, the fact that I barely speak anything other than English, and paying hiked-up import prices for new records.

5)Graduate; become a Rock Star. I know that almost everyone wants to be famous but, lets face it, most people have no particular reason to get famous no matter how much they want to be. I used to be most people; in high school i had a recurring fantasy invoked while singing in the shower. It involved me singing in the shower (wait for it…) only to be interrupted by an astute questions posed by my interviewer from Rolling Stone, who i had permitted to join me in the bathroom to facilitate his interview but promptly forgotten once faced with my audience/shower-fixtures. I could conceivably make this a reality. Pros to this include the fact that there’s really no reason for me not to be famous – i’ve got decent songs, a decent voice, and am decently cute (which is more than i can say of any new band i’ve heard/seen within the last month). Cons include that since becoming a rock star is not a definable career choice, and i can’t obtain job security or a future through attempting it, i have relegated it to a back burner for over half a decade so that it’s never really close to reality. Also, it’s a lot of hard work, and schlepping around with my guitar, and believing in myself.

This is what i do while i’m supposed to be blogging, if there is such a time of day. Feel free to share your opinions, additional pros and cons, or alternate options.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/11/106866494839649888/

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I see those forward-leaning boys and think of high school, of tiny boys with overfull backpacks trying desperately to counter the weight. The boys i pass here at Drexel are the same as those younger ones; though they may have left their bags behind, they have not left behind that forward slouch — now leaning into the wind of their academic challenges as if it is still tangibly forcing them backwards.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/10/106736351940989900/

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Elliott Smith dead, of apparent suicide, at age thirty four. First read at Alison’s, then at Pitchfork, with additional information gleaned from a recent Under the Radar article, Sweet Adeline, Rolling Stone, and the AP obit.

I don’t remember buying XO, or why i bought XO, or the first time i listened to XO, all of which is highly out of character for me. I was oblivious, i’m sure, to the fact that Elliott had been nominated for an Academy Award. All i knew of him, i think, is that Anastasia liked him. The music that went with the name was instantly familiar, drawn straight from a McCartney-like obsession with simplicitly. It made me want to play guitar and sing, sing higher than i could sing, sing fragile and delicate and about to break just like Elliott.

Elliott Smith was one of the first men that i listened to whose music i could simultaneously covet and aspire to. I only ever bought one other album of his, because i couldn’t imagine a more simple, more perfect record than XO. It was a record that did not have a skippable song; a record my mother stole from my apartment; a record whose songs represented a kaleidoscopic promise of genius, and of more to come. And now it will live eternally as the penultimate record Smith’s life, followed by Figure 8 but never by the promised From A Basement On The Hill.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/10/106688062111213516/