Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

self-aware

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my hair : my website’s layout :: my handwriting : my singing

That was the final post of my first day of blogging. Over three years ago i said that i would elaborate on it, but in the absence of any elaboration the post became a kind of private in-joke, a punchline with no setup.

Honestly, i forgot what i had meant to say. For three years the post has stared at me expectantly from the top of that first archive page, as if to say, “Haven’t you figured out yet?” Today i finally did.

This morning i watched a co-worker addressing an envelope, and i caught myself thinking his handwriting was unbearably sloppy. Not because it was illegible, or irregular, but because he did not use any straight lines. The side of his N bowed inwards; the cross of his J was like a wry grin.

In that moment i was reminded of the post, and i suddenly understood — both the post and how i can spend four hours of recording the vocals of just one song, never quite satisfied. It’s not that anything about his writing and my singing is incomprehensible, or incorrect. No. It’s the unintentional lack of precision. I dislike my singing because i scoop vowels and slur consonants without consciously meaning to — i just sing the way that i would speak. It’s not wrong, but it’s not on purpose either. It’s exactly the reason i cringed at my coworker’s version of “NJ” on the envelope – he didn’t have any straighter lines to offer it.

I used to covet good handwriting — perfect, font-like handwriting. I strove for perfection, writing my letters correctly, perfectly vertical, perfectly rounded. After a few years the perfection came with relative ease, so i allowed myself to slowly slip away from it. I began creating my own font, stylizing my fs and as, not because i was sloppy, or lazy, but because i was personalizing. Making it my own. Whereas, i cannot yet force my voice to be perfectly rounded or piercingly straight, so i cannot afford to blur its edges.

From there, it’s easy to complete the analogy that has been plaguing me for so long. My hair is something i used to be so apathetic to that i just let it grow, hanging down my neck in a nondescript tail or surrounding my face in a bushy halo. I was specifically against styling it an any way — it seemed to be besides the point. However, in college i started paying more attention. Now, though i tend to wait a few weeks too long to get a new haircut, i always look in the mirror before i walk out the door. My page’s layout is the perfectly analogous to this — it’s something i used to treat as transparent, but that i now detail carefully, if not often. It has a function: it is part of my appearance — the impression that i give off.

In short, at the time i hadn’t yet exercised control over my hair and my handwriting, and had just got the inkling that i would have the same issues with my layout and my voice. And, three years later, i feel as though i have mastered the former and am just now beginning to consciously control the latter.

Wow, i just freed up a few brain circuits that have been locked up for the majority of my collegiate career. I ought to do a crossword.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/09/106259765349467294/

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On Monday Aim invited me to join her at a Radiohead concert. The concept of it nearly rolled my eyes back into my head; an arena of young urban hipsters as or more obsessed with their band as I am with Tori Amos, all with overt political or stylistic agendas, all of whom would undoubtably frown at me for having bought the new Michelle Branch album.

It sounded like a challenge, not to mention a good time.

Poured into my tightest blue jeans and snuggest brown t-shirt, as we walked to our seats i scanned the crowd of trendy young men and realized that i have resorted to co-opting a slightly queer style of dress and carriage because it just works for me … i am small-framed and relatively slim and no longer trying desperately to attract strange women wherever i go. If pressed i could not explain it; it’s just my need to feel wanted, i suppose. I’m not sure what stops me from showing up in cargo pants and a stained flannel shirt. Maybe it’s that i spent the 90’s wearing that, or maybe it’s that i like to approximate an accurate interior self-image so that i feel as though i actually stand out in a crowd as me.

Ultimately, all eyes were on the stage and none on my inanely logoed tee or my inordinately tight ass-hugging pants. I have rarely seen such a polite audience held in rapt attention at such a huge rock show. I am not good with Radiohead’s titles – ever since hearing Kid A their albums pass by me like symphonies – but some songs still stuck out just by virtue of how they were achieved. A hypnotic electronic piano version of “Like Spinning Plates,” a spastic and brittle “Idioteque,” chiming xylophone and the faint singing of the lawn section on “No Surprises,” and “Everything In It’s Right Place” prefaced as “this is a song about the good old days.”

As it echoed back at me from Thom, and then the effects pedals on the stage, i just thought … Yes.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/08/106140294589227633/

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There are eight elevators in our elevator bay, each dutifully shuttling us corporate lemmings up and down between floors twenty-three and forty-four all the day long. I learned quickly to orient myself to their ding as they reach my floor, one for up and two for down. Four months of this, and it was only this morning that i realized that the dings are out of tune to each other; some ever so slightly but some a sour quarter step. I stood for a minute, humming one ding while waiting for the next, only to be greeted by two simultaneous elevators arriving to prove my point.

Afterwards, i found myself in the empty elevator wondering, Does anyone else realize that they’re out of tune? Is there someone we could call to have that fixed? Could they tune them to a chromatic chord? Is there someone out there whose knows all about this thing, this tiny detail that i have suddenly become so transfixed by as an escape from my dreary morning?

It’s either this, or sniffing markers.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/07/105819465762646589/

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Every time I attempt to sketch some odd facet of my corporate life for you I find an equally strange element of it inside myself. Today I sat down to regale you with a story of in-building encounters with the socially inept, but as I described each character in punishingly amusing detail, I began to make myself queasy. Who am I to observe perceived shortcomings of innocent co-working bystanders only to reveal them to the internet at large when the whim overtakes me, rendering real people into surreally abnormal characters like Neckless and Clenching Lady? Would I be able to award myself with a new moniker as easily? I wonder.

I am not the most socially healthy person on the planet. My compulsion to wash my hands after I touch anything to be found in public borders on obsession. My fear that I will not reach the doors of the bus before it closes up again to carry me far far away from my intended stop is overwhelming. But, foremost among all of these, are my elevator issues.

It’s not the claustrophobia so much, though sometimes I find myself in the back row of a sixteen-person deep load gasping for breath behind a blissfully unaware suit yapping about first quarter losses or decreasing corporate spending. That comes with the territory. No, instead it is the conversations — the simple, witless conversations of nicety that are grudgingly targeted at any rider who looks even vaguely familiar.

I live in abject terror of those conversations. Weather. Sports. Television. As one creeps up on me I feel as though all of my internal organs are slowly sliding into the crevices behind my knees, leaving only a the hollow thump of my heart, captive to its highway of veins and arteries, to hold court in the preternatural vacuum of my chest. Rain. The Phillies. Survivor. Each topic can leave me in a dead sweat, especially when initiated on a relatively early floor.

I don’t know what it is, really. The utter casualness, I guess, that people attempt to tune in to the channel to which they are homogenized on. With glee, they discover similarities that they share with tens of millions of other Americans. It is the conversational form of Walmart, and I am not sure if I am more horrified by how alien the topics generally seem to me or by the few with which I have intimate familiarity.

I occasionally attempt to play along. Last week someone asked me what I had in my discman, and I replied: “The Yeah Yeah Yeahs. They’re sort of a post-post-post-punk (so much so that they’re actually punk again) three piece lead by a woman who strikes me as a messy reincarnation of the, yes, entirely still alive Chrissie Hynde, which is not to say that the sound like the Pretenders at all, because they don’t, but sometimes you just get a vibe, huh?”

My rambling monologue took us from 22 down to 4, at which point the questioner returned a glassy stare. I smiled back. We rode down the last three floors in silence.

Funny how i am terrified of overwhelming homogeneity and they are petrified by anything heterogeneous. In a way I guess they are more afraid of me than I am of them, but it doesn’t make the ride any easier.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/05/200312092/

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Victory! Sweet, sweet, blueberry victory!

In other news: last night i played guitar for what has become a routine four hours, breaking only for the penultimate episode of Buffy and white pizza courtesy of Ross’s new credit card. This morning the skin on my fingers is rind-like and impervious to pain.

You could say that i’ve become a little obsessed with my practice regimen, ostensibly because i’m playing at a backyard festival this weekend and have vowed in public earshot to blow away all of the other performers. Really, though, it’s because i don’t know if i actually can. The recently revealed running order of the event finds me sandwiched between a duo of golden-throated music majors and a terrific a cappella group that i arrange for, with the entire day both book-ended and dotted by talented multi-instrumentalists and Philly pub performers. And in the middle is little old me.

At this late stage drilling finger exercises until i feel as though i’m going to vomit if i have to stretch my pinky to the seventh fret again probably isn’t going to do me much good, which is why i typically leave that until just before bed. The regimen begins as soon as i have stripped out of my corporate skin of shirt and tie, sometimes finding me strumming the opening chords of “Tangling” in an undershirt and low rise briefs. The run through the current iteration of my set quickly (and seemingly inevitably) descends into seething about my inability to pick complex patterns or endless fiddling with my amp tone, and rarely features more than a single complete song. Alternately, i could probably just look in a mirror and scream “you are worthless” for thirty minutes to achieve a similar effect on moral.

After this inevitably crushing warm-up routine, i turn to my Bible, The Complete Beatles Scores. What better comfort could there be to my inability to play my own misbegotten songs than to learn how to play some of the best songs ever written? Last night was a medley of Let It Be‘s A-Side, none of which i can carry all on my own. Still, the practice is useful because i am trying to match a specifically scored and recorded sound rather than some elusive cipher of a rhythm that only plays inside of my head.

After a solid run at the Beatles (always including thirty minutes on the riffing of “Dig A Pony” and at least two renditions of “Blackbird“) I am ready to perform my own set, minus the sniffling and whining. Or, rather, the sniffling and whining is restrained only to lyrical appearances. This set is typically much more affirming, though as a rule “Apart” sounds like utter shit. “Under My Skin” is placed strategically dead in the middle to remind myself that, yes, i can actually (write / play / sing) with some modicum of professionalism on a consistent basis. This is necessary, as my shot at “Seams” typically breaks down shortly after the key change.

I end with “Little Love,” because for a month i had intended to start with it and so bootstrapped it up past all of the intermediate levels of (total shit / shit / lyrical Alzheimer’s / inability to cross bridge / endless descent into ad-lib and riffing / constant Simon-Cowell-ing of vocal performance) to the point where i spent an entire hour last week walking around Center City with a guitar strapped on over my shirt and tie playing it and being asked my name and if i could be heard at any local bars or pubs. It isn’t “Under My Skin,” but it allows me to ignore (or, at least atone for) the two dozen false starts of “Apart” from earlier in the evening. It allows me to believe for a second that the forty or so friends that will be enduring me for a precious half hour on Saturday will perhaps clap out of something other than obligation.

Only after that do i brutally work my pinky fingers until my stomach knots with each effort. And then, sometimes, i go to bed.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/05/200290435/