Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

selfy-stuff

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Since i’ve been crushing heavily on Erin McKeown’s music lately, i just thought i’d log a little link to a prominent website about her at Imperfectly (which, incidentally, used to host the best Ani DiFranco web site on the internet). Erin fascinates me, because listening to her albums i can hardly imagine that these songs just come to her … it’s seems much more than she deliberately chooses a way for a song to sound and them molds it into the exact shape that she wants. However, no matter how she does it the results are completely arresting on record, even more so live.

Erin just graduated from Brown University last week with a degree in EthnoMusicology (she had to fly in from a UK tour with Peter Mulvey for the ceremonies), and she is touring the American folk-festival circuit this summer. I consider this success… whether or not she ever meant to be a rock star or a folk hero doesn’t really matter; what matters is that she has adoring audiences in each city she heads into, and that she heads out of every one with new fans (myself included).

Her long journey to this point started (apparently) with being named a semi-finalist by the songwriters’ association of washington dc before ever getting to Brown, and with gigging and selling tapes around Brown’s campus. At some point those tapes found their way onto a cd called Monday Morning Cold, and from the attention she garnered from that she moved forward to create last year’s Distillation. Five years. The difference between being a high school senior and a college graduate, and Erin McKeown is living the life that i would choose for myself above all other lives. She went to the school i wanted to attend, she writes songs i envy and adore, and she tours with Peter Mulvey (he was her opening act here in Philly!), and she’s not even 25. And i’m left, as i always am, wondering how she got there.


Of course, we all know how she got there. She had a relentless vision and an amazing talent, and she didn’t keep it a secret. However, it’s hard being relentless or anything else about music while i’m working every day and trying to line up an internship for next year and fretting about classes and paying my bills. Of course, musicians come from much worse all the time, but in the void of major label interest (that is, i wouldn’t be vaguely interested) i am in awe of the Ani DiFrancos, the Peter Mulveys, and the Erin McKeowns because at some point they decided that music was what was for them and that they needed to devote all of their attention to it. I think i need to make that decision or let the matter drop; if only i spent as much time on my music as i do writing for this website.

And therein lies the conflict: as much as i need to better myself musically, the time i spend writing for and administering this site feels like a definite way to prepare my voice and my patience for the world of journalism. I feel like having a successful blog (still an aspiration of mine rather than a reality) is the equivalent of Erin McKeown’s summer folk festival tour. Even if i got to write cd reviews for a local paper with a circulation of 100,000 – how many people read past the cover story? How many people read past the albums they want to buy to the reviews they aren’t really interested in, just to hear new & different opinions? Having your own successful website means you are in touch with an audience much more focused than any group your circulated publication could ever reach. So… to give this up would be to emphasize music over my course of study, when really in my mind they are equals now.

Somewhere in there i think i came to a conclusion that i’ve been working on for the last four years; I can tell because my stomach just dropped out of the center of my body as if i’m being spun on a tilt-a-whirl. Or, perhaps it is just time for lunch. I suspect that i’ll get back to you on this one…

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I just recorded the worst trio ever. Ever. It started with me trying to cover Weezer, and then i sing a punk song, and then i try to be a credible folk singer for a song or two, and then i make “Lost” sound like it’s a bunch of cats fighting each other out in an alley. Yum. But, even better, i’m taking another stab at it in five minutes.


Speaking of stabbings, i managed to stab myself three separate times with that shiny new knife of mine. Three. So, yeah, it didn’t just look sharp because it was the only big knife in the aisle. Also, i made dinner for a whole room full of people and mine was the only dish that was completed gone at the end of the night. Mad props.

Wow, actually, inbetween all of the cats fighting i do some pretty neat stuff on “Lost.” Okay… try #2, here we come.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2001/06/3915058/

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Okay, here’s some quickies.

#6 is true. I haven’t shared a residence with more than one person at a time since i was 4. My parents separated when i was four, and since i’ve gotten to college i’ve only had one roommate at a time. This streak looks as though it will be broken next year, since we’re looking at 4-bedroom houses.

#8 is true. I have never eaten a cut of steak other than filet mignon when i was little, because my mom liked it. I’ve had all sorts of processed steak and beef products, but to this point i’ve never had a piece of a cut of steak (and i never liked filet mignon either).


#19 is true. In fifth grade i was the only student who decided to drop music class in favor of private (non-musical) study. After the aforementioned Christmas show, we were all given the option to quit music class to do work during that period; this was the music teacher’s way of telling us that we should definitely keep playing an instrument. Of course, i quit without a second thought, and since i had straight A’s anyway i usually just helped Ms. Mann grade tests while everyone else was in music class. Subsequently, i was forced to teach myself to read music from the from the choirgirl hotel book at the beginning of my Senior year.


However, #10 is false! This statement is an utter and total fabrication: for the duration of highschool i claimed i had my first and only kiss to that point playing spin the bottle in 7th grade to avoid further romantic scrutiny. I’ve never even watched anyone play spin the bottle, let alone participated, and i was pretty vocal about having never been kissed all throughout highschool (probably one of the reasons no one wanted to date me… since i was almost proud of not dating anyone up to that point). I made it a point not to talk about my romantic inexperience when i arrived at Drexel, and thus i had to tell my first kiss that she was my first kiss, at which point we kissed again. So… obviously i was only supposed to gab about my romantic inexperience when i stood to directly gain pity-kisses from it (which is not to say i wasn’t offered pity kisses in high school … i was offered them left and right. However, there’s a difference between a pity kiss and kissing someone for real and then having a pity kiss.)


That leaves the requisite 9 truths and a lie. Any guesses?

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2001/06/3900280/

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One time in first grade we were taking a spelling test, and the word to spell was “kick,” and a boy named Paul raised his hand and asked “Do you mean k-i-c-k?” Of course, everyone giggled and the teacher reprimanded him and the test (and life) went on, and to this day i’m not entirely sure if Paul did it to be a smartass, or if he honestly was thinking of some other kind of kick. I just rememeber being exasperated at not getting points for correctly spelling such an easy word.

But, was i really exasperated? More and more often i find myself looking back at childhood memories that are getting more hazy and more generalized and i’m wondering how much of what i remember is just a fabrication of what i think i felt. Could i have really felt “exasperated” as a first grader? Did i really just giggle like the rest of the class, but in my recollections i make myself out as more mature and collected than i really was at the time.

The subjectiveness of memory frightens me. I don’t mind so much that the colours of everything in my head are getting less and less vivid like a patch of wallpaper that sees too much sun, but the prospect that i’m slowly changing all of my memories to the best representation of how i got how i am rather than what actually made me just isn’t right. Is this why children never believe what their parents tell them?, because their parents have taken all their childhood experiences and twisted them into trite little packages to be doled out before bed? I used to be able to eat candy and sweets endlessly as a child without pause, but now i get a stomach-ache and feel unfocused. Am i doomed to spend the rest of my life making futile efforts to keep candy from the hands of children just because now it spoils my dinner? Or, is this just growing up, and i’m not quite ready yet?

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2001/06/3886860/

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Of all the beloved sites i’ve ever seen shut down, it’s always been the decision of the site administrator(s). Regular readers can leave and staff members can be bitchy and unhappy, but ultimately the admin makes the decision to pull the plug on the main page leaving everyone scrambling to talk to each other on the message boards before those too fade away or become completely irrelevant.

What is it about being the admin of a site that makes it so easy to shut everything down rather than just make a change? Is it that you’re tied to what the site was and not what it will be? Or, is it that you just get tired of making little fixes to what seems to you a large overall problem. Pulling the plug on a site, whether it be a treasured monument to e/n or the best Ani DiFranco site on the internet, seems like a hopelessly selfish choice. However, i suppose if you take on all the weight of maintaining a page yourself then you’re entitled to be selfish about it’s dissolution.

Bearing that in mind, is the solution to distribute both the joys of being a successful administrator as well as the sorrows? Does having a solid support staff make the difference between giving up on a page or just taking a much needed breather? Of course, having support staff presents nearly the same problem, as their collective vision sometimes strays from yours, leaving you either useless or annoyed. So, what’s the best formula for keeping a site going long enough that it becomes a mainstay in a community and not just a blip?

It seems to me that the easy answer is staying involved in the flow of your site, which is why so many solo blog-projects have become so consistent and venerable. It’s also why so many of them burn out and fail. If you don’t stay involved emotionally or scientifically or anything with your own writing, eventually what you’re creating means nothing and your page is just like the impression your head leaves on a pillow rather than a pillow with a real head on it. The same holds true for a group site … if you let yourself stray slowly from being an active poster to being a distanced administrator, your idea of fun is only based on reading the page as opposed to the real fun of writing it. This is not to say every administrator should be the center of attention – primadonna in their own specially constructed showcase. Instead, the point is that you have to occupy all of the positions at once: admin, staff, writer, and most importantly, fan.

Remind me about this post if i ever start bitching about any of this, if you would be so kind..

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2001/05/3829478/