Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Personal

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Sometimes my life is a town with a population of just one. It’s like living in Bumblefuck. It’s a hard thing, being the only voice and face i can hear and see for miles on end is my own. There’s only so much you can be in love with yourself; after that it gets a little lonely.

On Thursday it occurred to me for just a moment that maybe it was the loneliness that was getting to me more than anything else — that last week’s forced quarantine from anyone i cared about had left me feeling empty and alone. That my happiness is just a reflection of how happy i make other people. So, for the last three days i have given myself up to the people i love, without my typical hemming and hawing about the where and why of the situation. Thursday i sat and talked about things i never usually say. Friday i spent the entire night with someone who i value so much that i sometimes forget to even see them. Last night i sat on the floor at our brother-apartment down the street and ate dinner with over a dozen of my closest friends, and for once it felt like we were all there together and not just like we were scattered around talking like any usual party. It wasn’t a party; i know because i wasn’t miserable in the least.

My question is, how long can not being miserable in the least last? Does this mean i have to surround myself with other people all the time so that i don’t have the chance to think about myself at all? I’ve seen what happens… i eventually lose track of myself inside all of the pleasantries, and i wind up locking myself in my room with my guitar for an entire weekend to sort out my feelings. But, i don’t want to do that… i don’t want to be miserable or too inundated with happiness or feeling the need to be alone or any of it. I want to feel Balanced, and to do whatever i want to do regardless of any emotional indications of desperation or otherwise at the given time.


It remains to be seen if i can manage it.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/12/7776784/

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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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The sneaky sun was just spying over my shoulder, trying to catch a glimpse of what i was furtively typing down tucked behind my absent boss’s desk. Nothing special, i assure it, and clack away.


Last night was a peculiar sort of emptiness that i have every so often, and even though i feel that same vacancy inside of my life today i do not feel that same desperation. That’s what makes my misery so very complete — the desperation of knowing that nothing matters at all and that i can’t seem to change any of it.

I’m sorry if i offended anyone yesterday by saying that no one’s concerns about me mattered … i’m not trying to belittle your emotions, i’m just pointing out that not even concerned loved ones were really making a dent in the place where i was. Or, where i am. But, things about today are subtly different … suddenly, those hard fought papers and tests began to mean something to me again, because one of my teachers went beyond just assigning me a grade and a number. I suppose that’s the difference between something mattering or not … whether or not i have any context to go along with it.

The sun set back behind some clouds, so i can get back to work. That sneaky thing… brightening my day from just over my shoulder.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/12/7673950/

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My life has circled me back around to September. Back to my pre-Boston daily drudgery of depression. Really, what was the hospital other than an anti-Boston?: a place i have known as a part of my daily map for years, a place where my mother holds sway over everything i encountered, a place where i was left utterly disconnected from all that i am used to, and a place where i was utterly alone. Just as i was finally beginning to feel purpose and motivation, now i’m just as suddenly stuck. I feel like i don’t know anyone, or maybe that no one knows me. Or, maybe that no one knows it. One by one everything is ceasing to matter to me: theatre, class, friends, guitar. They are the slivers that slip through, and i can’t infer anything with what i’m left with. Not anything at all.

At twenty i should have a motivation, or a love, or a desire. Right now all i want is to have that sleepy black back from Friday, like an eclipse on anything else that might catch my attention. I am twenty, and i know how to get A’s; that’s all anyone ever bothered to teach me. In fact, i don’t even know how to care about them. I studied endlessly for today’s two final quizzes and felt absolutely nothing when i passed them each without much hesitation. I got my paper back with a B+ and it felt like a failure, but it wasn’t because of the B+.

Two decades and i don’t think one damn thing matters to me. My songs echo hollowly inside my head just like me voice did in the theatre tonight; i can’t seem to pick up my guitar.

I am going to sleep; tomorrow there are more motions to go through.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/12/7656291/

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I have been hearing the Beatles my entire life — first on the record player as a baby, and then on long trips to the shore on our cruddy Past Masters tape, and then on shiny new see-through cassettes of Abbey Road and The White Album. There are constants in my life; everyone has constants. Even the most unstable and unable people i know have things they can always turn to, or that they will always turn to.

The parking lot at Kiddie City Toy Store, and Ringo sings “Octopus’ Garden.” I am playing “Name That Beatle.” We are crossing the Walt Whitman Bridge to New Jersey and Paul and Mom and I are wailing “Oh Darling” so hard that our voice is cracking around the edges as one. We are zooming down the Atlantic City Expressway and Lennon croons out from carefully nested speakers “I’m So Tired” as i lazily stick my feet out of the window.

“I’m so tired.”

The wind dug between all of my toes as i laughed and sank my head back into the seat. The drive to WildWood was always longer on the way there than coming back. I was always so busy trying to decide if it was John and Lennon singing that half the time i missed George. George: the quiet one. My mom loves Paul with all of her teenaged heart, but on the way home she would confess to me conspiratorially that she’s always had a soft spot for Mr. Harrison. “The ugly one?,” i would ask? “With those cheekbones?” “Does he play the second guitar?”

My mother denies the existence of Middle Beatles and will glare at you icily if you mention Let It Be, so she first was eyes at George Harrison with his bowl cut and then sliding around in the midsts of his delicate guitars as his songs grew more and more central to the end records. My entire life it has been just the two of us, and just the three of them: Paul, George, and Ringo — because we didn’t have poor dead John around anymore.

At fifteen i got my guitar, and it never occurred to me to play anything by the Fab Four. The Beatles were more than the sum of their parts, and to this day i still can’t quite distill any of their songs to a single guitar and voice. But, my guitar was a door to things i had never heard before. Paul’s deft bass lines. Lennon’s funky solos. Ringo’s amazing drumming on the back half of Abbey Road. George’s stunningly simple “Something,” and Clapton adding to the throb of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” I listened to the Beatles for my entire life as a phenomenon … as if they would walk into a room and music would just happen. It wasn’t until i got to college that it occurred to me that they all brought their own distinct musical merits to the table, and that you could pick them out one by one if you listened closely. A McCartney song, but a Harrison Riff. A Lennon vocal with that twelve-string chiming in the background.

I never owned a Beatles record of my own before yesterday other than the sad red #1 that exists as a placeholder for albums i’ll eventually have to own as an adult, and for two albums i know as well as “Lucky Star” or “Still Rock and Roll to Me.” I know them: the songs, the lyrics. I never knew the music before, though. Yesterday i locked myself in an empty house, in an empty room, and i turned my headphones as high as they would go. And listened.

At twenty I heard the Beatles for the first time.

At twenty i have suddenly found myself with only two of them left. I will always remember sitting on Michella’s couch in July and seeing TWA 800 emblazoned across the screen of Good Morning America, and i will always remember sitting in admissions desperately trying to load up CNN’s website this September. And, i will always remember myself curled into a ball on that rubbery hospital bed, trailing IV tubes and sniffling back tears because i didn’t want anyone to think i was crying about me.

I wasn’t.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/12/7656082/