off-topics

Daily Demo: Crashing

November 2, 2009 by krisis

Song #77: Crashing (live demo) [“Save As” to download from that link]
Last recorded for Blogathon 2002.

10 years ago this weekend I went to my first college party, still very much a purposefully-naive, dewy-eyed teen.

I came home having had my first vodka cranberry and my first inklings of adult romance, drifting to sleep wrapped in the blissful denouement of each.

The following Monday morning was a decidedly dreary day, and I found myself locked out my dorm room in my pajamas. Instead of heading to French 103 I sat down in our common room – five stories from the ground with a two-story windowed wall staring out into Center City Philadelphia.

I pulled out a pad and wrote “Crashing.”

Later that day, having been let back into my room, I recorded its first rough demo and transferred the lyrics to the first page of the crisp new book I bought for my collegiate songs. Up until then I wasn’t sure how I would know it was time to start using it, but I suddenly did.

“Crashing” made frequent appearances at parties and late night hangouts throughout my Freshmen year, resulting in the first complements on my voice I had ever heard. They came as a great shock to me, as they still do. Later that autumn I recorded it for my first full length demo, Other Plans – shakily, in the middle of the night, trying not to wake up my mother in the process.

As a dreary fall turned to winter I moved on to add other songs to my slim gray book – many of which I still play to this day. Yet, it was “Crashing” I would play between classes as I sat at the dinged, old upright piano in the theatre green room. I would hypnotize myself with the rolling two chord verse, learning how to play piano in increments (and maybe a little bit about what the song really meant, as well).

It took the entire intervening decade to learn how to play piano well enough to demo it that way, and it seems apropos that it wound up recorded just as shakily and late as its original demos were, respectively.

Our Battlestar Galactica Halloween as Baltar & Head Six

November 1, 2009 by krisis

Last night E and I dressed up as Head Six and Dr. Gaius Baltar, respectively, from the cult Sci-Fi hit Battlestar Galactica.

E is not in Six’s standard spaghetti-strap dress, but Six can be spotted in this style at least once in the series.

Also, note the spot-on bracelet and ring, which E made herself.

My costume was much more subtle, as I was effectively E’s accessory for the night. I simply grew some scruff and slicked back my hair. For fun, I carried two corner-cut Vice-Presidential memos (as we were ostensibly circa seasons one and two – post appointment to VP, but pre swearing-in as president).

One memo was the results of tests with the Cylon Detector. The other was a draft of Gaius’s inaugural speech, complete with parenthetical asides to Head Six (presumably floating over his shoulder in devilish fashion as he wrote it). Writing in the Dr. Baltar voice was very fun.

Out of two parties four people knew who we were. The best comment we received was by far:

I’m not sure who you are, but you both look really sexy. You should introduce yourself as, “Hi, I’m sexy.”

Oh, and SyFy – né Sci-Fi – the purveyors of the show we paid homage to, thought we were “Awesome!”

‘Nuff said.

And you are…?

November 1, 2009 by krisis

There is a chance you are arriving here for the first time, launched from Twitter or NaBloPoMo.

If that’s the case, hi. I have an extensive series of bios linked off in that other direction. Oh, and for my first NaBloPoMo I spent the entire month re-telling my personal origin story, so be sure to read that too.

That said, I know we are all couch potatoes on the great lazyweb, so you aren’t likely to hustle around clicking those things. As such, allow me to summarize the current state of me:

I live in Philadelphia and am relatively newly wed to my partner of nearly eight years.

We both work in marketing – me in communications development, she in design. We are also both musicians – she the lead singer of Filmstar, me as a solo singer-songwriter as well as and a member of Arcati Crisis.

We’re also relatively voracious consumers of music, especially within Philadelphia, which boasts an astounding and thoroughly-talented local scene.

In addition to my major three loves (wife, comm, music), it turns out I’m also pretty passionate about non-profit development. I probably wouldn’t have told you that before this year, because it is the first time it has been so patently obvious. I helped to throw a music festival and a 24-hour streaming benefit concert, both of which raised funds for respective non-profits, and both of which nearly intellectually slayed me in the process.

Inclusive of prior iterations of the festival and my wedding I spent every free moment planning an event from March of 2007 to this past month.

Right now I’m trying to be pretty passionate about me. It’s hard – for someone who spends a lot of time working in the public eye and promoting others I have an awfully hard time shining the spotlight on myself. It something I have to improve on to avoid doing a disservice to my songs.

Oh, hey, and to my blog, which has run the longest out of any native Philly weblog – I’m currently blogging into my tenth year of inane, self-centered rambling.

We’ll see how that goes.

WWMD?

September 29, 2009 by krisis

When I’m being overly fussy about anything musical, I have a special mantra I use to get focused. It goes like this:

What would Madonna do?

That’s “WWMD?” for short.

Madonna, 1982, from the 9/09 issue of Italian Vanity Fair. Last night I was not feeling musical. I was tired. My right arm felt flabby, and wasn’t keeping up with the quick, hard strikes on “Regenerate.” My breath-support was wobbly, and not getting me through “Shake It Off.”

I had promised to stop by an open mic, but I wasn’t feeling it.

WWMD?

In 1982, when Mad was still being labeled a one-hit wonder, she told Dick Clark, “I wanna rule the world.”

It was a lofty, laughable goal for a potential one-hit wonder to have in 1982, but she’s come as close to achieving it as any entertaining non-dictator could ever come. Her rule-the-world mission drove her every decision for over a quarter of a century. If you start counting from when she started playing in New York bands, she’s been driven as long as I’ve been alive.

Of course, Madonna is also known as a control freak and a perfectionist – but that didn’t stop her from breaking into clubs as an imperfect singer in the early 80s.

If she stayed home she couldn’t rule the world.

I take that as a lesson – not only from Madonna, but from all of my favorite paradigm-changing artists. From David Bowie to Ani DiFranco to Lady Gaga, what they have in common isn’t their talent and training. Their commonality is wanting it bad. Tenacity.

That’s a clarity of vision I lack. If voice, arm, and body are all tired, I want to pack it in. My songs don’t sound focused. Why play, I ponder, if I’m not at my best?

WMMD? I know what Madonna would do. What about Gaga, or Ani, or my glam idol himself?

David Bowie struck out as a pop star, actually became a one-hit wonder twice – on a novelty single, and again on “Space Oddity” (another novelty single, you could argue). He released two largely-unheard discs before he unearthed Ziggy from his collection of personalities.

WWDBD? He wrote one of his finest discs, Hunky Dory, and when its popular reception was soft he went directly back into the studio to record The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars, one of my three favorite albums of all time.

So on those nights where I feel tired, or tuneless, or lazy, what should I do if I truly care about music as much as I claim I do?

WWMD? WWDBD?

Go out and play.

Why I #blamedrewscancer, pt. 4

September 8, 2009 by krisis

(This is the last part of my story. You should read Parts 1, 2, and 3.)

It is a Saturday afternoon, and I am staring out into pure blue, 14,000 feet above the ground, through the open hatch in the side of our tiny plane.

On the ground my partner ran through it with me. Twice. Duckwalk to door. Head leaned back on shouder. One two three go. Or is it one two go-on-three? Tip back and forward, arch your body. Arms out. Keep your mouth closed if you feel like you can’t breathe.

Fly.

Staring out the open side of the plane, his instructions dissolve. Did it matter how I arched my back? Niceties, to placate a nervous jumper.

No matter what, we would fall – flying downward, into the embrace of gravity.

“One.”

“Two.”

…

Here is #blamedrewscancer, as it’s root: we are talking about cancer.

Yes, it is inane. Yes, it is about Drew – for now. The point is, Drew gave us that – he gave us his struggle to make as silly or as serious as we need it to be.

Drew doesn’t really care if we say his name or what we blame. He just cares that we are talking about cancer. He wants to harness that conversation to raise awareness, hope, and donations. He wants to bring cancer into our daily dialog so we can work together to erase it rather than willfully ignore it until it touches our lives.

His plan is working. People are talking to Drew about his chemo treatments. I am talking to my friends about my grandmother. My co-workers are talking to each other about someone we lost, and how we can honor the fight that she won.

Blaming Drew’s cancer is inspiring us to live stronger, to be frank and hopeful about fighting cancer, and to show the love and support we may be feeling but afraid to say.

Inspiring us to win our battles.

Inspiring us to leap out of planes.

I have dreamt for years that I can fly, so much that I halfway believe it. It’s not an occasional foray – I can fly in every one. The rush of air past my ears and my body, weightless and free. The feeling is familiar, tucked safely under my skin.

I’ve tried to capture it outside of my dreams on playground swings and amusement park rides. I’ve looked down from trade centers, massive arches, and wrought-iron towers. I’ve ridden on airplanes and have been towed behind a boat, limbs caught up in the wind.

The closest I’ve ever come was riding my bike. It was October 12, 1998, and I was three blocks north of here in Jefferson Square park. Biking home from Anastasia’s house, I sped up until the pedals offered no more resistance. Closed my eyes and held out my arms. It only lasted for a second, but that was my first waking flight – a feeling I already knew intimately.

On my list of five things to do before I die, “fly” was first. Fly for more than those fleeting seconds of eleven years ago. Fly like my dreams.

When Drew and Chris asked if I wanted to skydive with the team, it seemed insane. I met these people online. On Twitter. Was I really going to live my dream with a bunch of strangers from the internet?

It was not insane. It was kismet. It was Drew’s whole point. Live Strong. You want to fly? What’s stopping you? Jump out of a damned plane. You want to be a singer? Don’t make an excuse. Use your voice with confidence.

You want to beat cancer? Blame it and battle it and beat the hell out of it every day with all of the power and positive energy you can muster from yourself and from everyone you’ve ever met until you defeat it.

You have cancer, but cancer does not have you.

…

“Three.”

We lean back and pitch forward, falling from plane. I arch. For a second it feels like nothing – the velocity of our bodies moving at the speed of the plane and the pull of gravity countermanding each other

Then, acceleration. Real flight, but towards the ground instead of up, up, and away like Superman or Neo.

In my mind I shrug off the man strapped to my back and the photographer waving in my face – unconsciously throwing him rock signs as he gestures towards his camera.

It is what I know beneath my skin, and more. There is no plane above or ground below. There is the rush of air past my ears and my body, weightless and free. There is limitless blue in every direction – I can’t see the ground. Gravity is for the weak-willed and falling is flying, hurtling, easy like love.

Wind blasts my limbs, buffeting my torso like a cascade of water. I feel strangely supported by the air, as if I could stand delicately on it, like snow.

That lasts for about a minute, or for the eternity of every dream I’ve ever had, depending on how I measure.

A whisper in my ear isn’t the wind, it’s my partner, long-since forgotten. I cross my arms, clenching my harness in my fists, and he pulls the cord. The parachute rides up above us, catching the wind. The harness bucks hard, and gravity is countermanded again. My stomach suspends itself.

This is a different kind of flying. Floating, perfectly controlled. Now I see the ground, and it is minuscule below us. Philadelphia rises in the distance, and i feel like we could just tip forward and head that way.

I break the silence.

“I should tell you something.”

“Hmm?”

We are having a conversation, circa 7,000 feet.

“I dream that I can fly. Not just some of the time. Like, every dream. It’s just something I can do.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. And it’s just like this.”

We hang in the restored silence, falling slowly. As the ground becomes nearer I scream my trademark soprano wail and listen as it fades away with nothing to reflect against.

Eventually there is a field and a landing strip, and we have a shadow, and it grows larger and larger until our bodies meet it, wrapped once again in gravity’s close embrace and a puddle of mud.

Tonight at midnight Drew’s Blame-a-Thon begins – the reason I wound up sitting across the table from him at an Applebee’s two months ago.

In two months I have seen people and businesses do amazing things to encourage Drew and to support LiveStrong, all culminating in tomorrow’s event.

It’s about awareness and fundraising, but to me it feels halfway like faith-healing. Like, maybe if we all focus we can blame the cancer away.

Probably not. Not in one day, at least. But blaming cancer can change lives. It’s a chance to reassign the pain and bullshit in your life to something that really deserves it so you can stop making excuses and just live strong.

Blame cancer and change your life. Blame cancer and change someone else’s.

I blame Drew’s cancer for any second that I’m not living my ideal life as a stronger, faster, fiercer me.

And I am thankful for every moment that I am.