Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

self-aware

(to find love is to know love)

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My ability to be complimentary has been faltering, fading fast. After it, all that will be left is to analyze, to criticize, but not to enjoy.

Ask me about the last good record i bought. I’m not sure, but i can tell you about the last bad record i bought. The last five bad ones, actually.

This is just a small example. Actually, I am unconvinced that i will be able to like anything anymore in the very near future. As for my example, I’ve all but given up on buying records (one of the few true pleasures of my life; ask anyone) because all i seem to be able to do is dislike them. Going to a cappella concerts has become a sort of critical duty, as i am almost assured to whisper nasty things about them the entire time to whoever deigns to sit next to me. Riding elevators inevitably leads to a lengthy internal monologue about ugly hair styles, lamentable posture, and why some people even bother to get out of bed in the morning

My newfound inability to enjoy much of anything is infecting my free time. Why see a movie? Why eat at a new restaurant? So insidious is it that it has crept into my own art. Why record a song if it won’t be perfect? Why write at all if your words are not fully-realized and crystalline?

From there it is only a few steps to complete self-imposed isolation. Why talk to your friends if you have nothing nice to say? Why care what i’m wearing if i’ll be ugly anyway?

Have i spent all of my compliments already, along with my self-esteem? You’ve met me, so surely you’re familiar with both – at some point i’ve probably told you how wonderful, or fabulous, or beautiful you are, and you’ve surely witness me in some act of supreme confidence and hubris. Have i spent that all before my quarter-life crisis? Splurged, even, so that there is nothing left but scant ‘decents’ and ‘it was okays’?

After last month’s a cappella concert at Drexel i spent an hour or two mercilessly outlining the indelible failures that each group displayed during their performance. In the middle of this assured diatribe Maggie or Ed (i forget which; perhaps both) looked right at me (through the back of the seat or from the corner of his eye on the road, respectively) and said, “I enjoyed it because we saw a bunch of people doing what they love to do. It doesn’t matter how good they were.”

I spent some time thinking about that tonight. We saw a fun, decent mixed acappella group whose guest performer was a local singer-songwriter. Leah Kauffman. In the program she described her influences as “Laura Nyro, Fiona Apple, Joni Mitchell, and Elliott Smith.” I was first excited to hear her, and then almost immediately afterwards hostile and skeptical – how could she do anything but let me down.

She was pretty, shy but not slight, and told us she would start with a cover from Blue. Her “A Case of You” stuttered, as she plucked chords rather than strumming, and faltered slightly on that riff that traverses the length of the guitar neck. She allowed the song to taper off after the last chorus, muttering that she messed it up. After three more songs (two at the piano, and another on guitar) she slipped off stage, and the lights came up for intermission.

I am known for my ferocious reviews of singer-songwriters, but after the performance i could say nothing bad about Leah. She is 19, and she is not perfect, and she meant every word she sang to us.

She made me think of Maggie/Ed’s comment, and how i have lately lost that wonder in my life, and about something i used to say to explain why i liked singer-songwriters rather than big-voiced artists like Whitney or Mariah. “The art is in the imperfection.”

It is strangely-shaped in my mind as i mull it, unfamiliar in my mouth as i tongue its shape. If it wasn’t for Leah, i fear i might have never remembered it at all.

Leah told me that her website was broken, but took my email address she so could send me some songs.

I am glad still have the capacity to like something.

Never Gain Weight

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Do you ever feel as though you are consciously flinging your well-being aside for some sense of reckless self-gratification? That you’re doing something self-destructive, but you don’t care?

Maybe you’re charging something to your credit card that you can’t afford. Maybe you’re eating something you know you really shouldn’t have. Maybe you’re drinking more when you’re already pleasantly drunk.

I have those moments every so often, though on a much smaller scale then I used to. Sometimes as I catch myself doing them – handing over my credit card, or heading into a second row of cookies, I think. Why does it seem so inevitable? What makes this compulsory?

I’m not sure what they’d teach you in counseling for any of those problems but, for me, just asking that question can change my mind. Am I getting the junky donut because I feel like I need energy? Am I buying ten new CDs because they’ll make me happy? Am I strengthening my drink because I think I’ll have more fun if I’m more drunk?

Maybe the difference between someone with an occasional bad habit and someone with a problem is the ability to honestly answer that question, and to evaluate the result.

Some days I just really feel like eating a donut, though.

Yes Said

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I’ve been having a very inside day. I’ve been inside with my thoughts and for a while I went out walking with flip flops on, but i’m not sure that that was the best idea.

I’ve been reading about Tori. She sent us all this darling little Christmas email in our inboxes where she is obviously being prodded by her website people into saying her little script thing, but she’s obviously having a bit of fun with them at the same time. There’s this very excellent little Tori covers site i just found, but i can’t really see it right in Firefox. You should go download Firefox. But, anyhow, I’m – I’m living Tori’s life in this little two hour microcosm on YesSaid, i don’t think i’ve ever realized what a wonderful little site it is.

It’s just so amazing that you can be so much a public figure that someone is cannibalizing your yearbook, you know, and posting pictures online. That’s the internet. And, reading all these quotes from her, you see this wonderful little progression, from this girl playing piano bars to this astounding woman…

My dear roommate totally lost my train of thought. It’s off the tracks. We’ve sent in the sniffing dogs to go look for it. Sometimes i picture what i would be like if i lived alone; i don’t think it would be very entertaining. As much as i am, um, obviously obsessed with myself, my inspiration comes very much from outside myself. Even if that inspiration is, you know, thinking oh my god would you please shut up or what is that shitty music you keep listening to, go find some taste. Not that those are reactions i need to typically have to any of my roommates. I mean, they’ve all had decent CD collections.

I digress. ‘cuz, i remember where i was: What’s funny is that you can read Tori talking about the same thing so many times in so many different places. And, in a lot of cases, her quote is almost verbatim. But then, others, other stories come out a little different every time. I think i’ve heard maybe two or three distinct versions of the “Playboy Mommy” story, where she falls down the stairs and she thinks of the first line of the song. But, “Space Dog,” i feel like the few times she’s spoken about that she’s said it verbatim. Those same words. (it reminds me a lot of this page, actually)

“Space Dog” is very nearly my least favorite Tori song, though it has its moments, but i can definitely appreciate those emotions. She is… she is calling something in, you know? She has tuned in on something, and is reverberating. I try for that, but a lot of the time when i get there i don’t know where to go. It’s a very… getting there is very holistic experience. Just now i was almost there – you have to engage your attention very steadily, and you into this state – reading without realizing, and just lipping along to the words to the music and running my hand through my hair over and over, and i go into this sort of trance.

I, i get there and I know i’m there and that, you know, just about anything can come out of that. I’m thrumming, i am a pitchfork or something, just buzzing violently. I could just sing, or think of this perfect guitar lick, or write some perfect post.

And then Elise starts fussing around the house and making these little mouse noises and asking why the lights are on. She is, like, foraging in my thoughts, she is just chewing right through my creativity, there it goes, as if it’s some little bolt-hole she’s working on. But, at the same time, it belongs to her in a way, because if i lived alone i wouldn’t have anything to start from at all. Like, striking a pitchfork in the vacuum of space. Would it even vibrate? There would be no sound, so does it even matter if it was even vibrating?

And poof, i get this jumble, mess aborted trance. Some perfect moment interrupted, and all just spilling out at once.

Pop is Too Hard

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I am very carefully learning how to type the right way.

It involves a lot of auto-correct.

Apparently, those little nubs on the F and J keys are to let me know where my index fingers should be positioned at all times. They are “home keys.” And, get this, I should be using all five fingers on each hand to type, including my pinkies, because they all have a role.

Now, this concept at once annoys and intrigues me – the former because I already type more than 80 WPM without all this high-fallutin’ home key nonsense, the latter because I could obviously be typing faster if I would use more that four of my fingers at a time. My current method involves a sort of halfway touch-typing with my dexterous right hand while my left effectively hunts and pecks with a single finger. As a result, not only am I noticeably slower on left-hand-heavy words, but almost all of my mistakes are on the left.

Some concepts of proper typing, however, are eluding me. For example, am I to believe “pop” is really pinky-ring-pinky? Are those tiny, secondary fingers really expected to do all that heavy lifting so quickly? Pop, pop-culture, popular, populist, pop-up …

I suppose typing is just one more thing to add to the “Shoulda learned to do it right in the first place list,” along with guitar playing, singing, sit-ups, and tying a tie.

But, hey, I did just touch-type that whole paragraph with no errors and my eyes closed, so maybe I’m on to something. Or, at least I can do more daydreaming on the job.

Two & 1/2

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New Jersey, as much as I claim to detest it, always makes me think. I think in the mall, of the impact of prominent stores and brands on suburban buying patterns. I think on the roads, of the effect of weakly distributed mass transit on social networks in teens under the legal age to drive. I think at the concert, of the development of garage bands in a vacuum of live performances by national acts.

I think in New Jersey because there is not much else for me to do. I bring up their Governor repeatedly, hoping for some intriguing revelation, but I seem to know more about the story than anyone I talk to. Just wait, I said on Friday, until more news about Cipel breaks. He was imported from Isreal. You’ll see.

In the car driving down some street I still don’t recognize, even though I’ve been there with Elise dozens of times now, these thoughts are hurtling through my head. I palm my cell phone, nervously flicking the antenna up and down. Should I make a phone post? What if these thoughts escape, evaporate, never to be heard from again? I should call, call up and talk them out, but then we are at the bakery, getting out, and I am reveling in the .75$ muffins and how we can buy a heaping breakfast of pastries for four for less than $10.

I think in the parking lot, of cost of living and if it correlates at all to population density.

There was a point in time when all I did was sit at the computer, and back then every thought I had made it onto the page. I thought about q-tips. I thought about music. I thought about love. Eventually, I got out of the house more. Saw more. Did more. Wrote less. Looking back over those weeks and months, I feel disconnected from my life, so easy to chart from those earlier, more frequent entries. I chime in about class or work, but what was I feeling? What was I thinking?

Last night I think in the living room, of what I am doing with myself, and how I will remember it.

I’ll have to get back to you on that one.