Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Year 06

Please Look Away (Don’t Look Away)

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It’s strange to have taken my birthday back from Hallmark and my family and friends and the rest of the world. No calls, no cards – honestly, just the way i like it. Even without receiving a single gift I got a lot of things that i wanted for my birthday, and some things that i didn’t but got anyway.

In New York i rubbed shoulders with Ani Difranco, almost knocked into Janet Weiss of Sleater-Kinney, made eye contact with Rufus Wainwright, and split a drink list with Rabi, among other wonderful things. For me the day started at five-fifteen waiting for a late taxi that almost made me late for my train, which was moot anyhow, as my connecting train (and all of NJ transit) was down for the morning. I had to score an unlikely Greyhound ticket to make it into the city in time (just barely) for my first event. As a result, I missed ten or fifteen minutes of Malcolm Gladwell’s wonderful speech, partially about the difference between talented mimicry and dilligent practice, and for the rest of the day i quite punctually absorbed lots of information from people whose diligent practice has resulted in moments of cinematic and musical perfecion. It might not have been on my birthday, but i can’t think of a much better birthday to have.

Yesterday i drank way too many little solo cups of beer, wine, beer again, and some more wine with better than 50% of my friends at Sippin’ By The River. It was fun at points, but ended with six hazy, tortuous hours i only recollect in the vaguest sense of the word. The last thing i remember very clearly is talking about Garbage with Erika’s sister, but afterwards i have had confirmed involved me making out with someone who i really never intended to make out with and almost drowning in my shower because i couldn’t figure out how to turn off the water. Elise further confirmed that i did invite about a dozen people to our house for martini’s and The Simpsons, even though we neither have ingredients for martinis or reception for the Simpsons. It was a wonderful example of excess which, having lived through it, will probably make for an interesting story to tell in years to come.

The merry part of making your birthday a nearly week-long event is that there is no pressure to make a single 24-hours perfect. A day of low-key shopping is finely balanced against a madcap NYC adventure, and a lazy afternoon with your girlfriend is almost a contradiction in comparison to a wild day of alchoholic sampling, but they were all my birthday, a birthday that was finally mine and no one else’s, and quite possibly my favorite one yet.

Nothing Left to Win; Nothing Else to Lose

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(There is a high probability that you are reading this post because you searched for the lyrics in its title. They slightly misquoted from the song “With or Without You” by U2, released in 1987 on their album The Joshua Tree. (The actual lyric is “nothing left to lose”).

Purchasing that album, which also includes “Where the Streets Have No Name” and “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” was one of the major reasons i wrote this post.

I’d love it if you would stick around to check out my writing and my original music. I’ve embedded an MP3 of the original “With or Without You” elsewhere on this site – you might bump into it if you do enough browsing. You can read the full lyrics here.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled post.)

There are some songs I’ve only ever heard on the radio. Those magical hits, disembodied from albums, never seemed meant to be played at my command. I might not hear one for years, but one day be bestowed with it in a restaurant, or in someone else’s car. All a matter of chance.

These songs are different for everyone. Certainly some are more universal than others. They are each quicksilver, resolving in your aural canal as quickly as they will trickle away. You may not even remember them from one listen to the next, maybe not even if you see their names.

When people come to my house sometimes the marvel at how many of these songs – otherwise lost to them – exist in my record collection. Can they listen to this one, or borrow that one? It’s a wonderful role of fantasy fulfillment, being able to render the songs more real for my friends by offering them in the context of albums, cases, and liner notes.

I can’t possibly own each possible slippery tune, mine or anyone else’s. Not without buying all of the “Best of DooWop” and “The Big Eighties” collections there are to be had. Yet, sometimes you are in Tower Records, and there is an inexplicable $7.99 sale, and your fingers are dancing across the tops of plastic cases, and suddenly you see it – one song easily worth a penny under eight dollars just so you can capture it, like lightning in a jar.

Will you listen to it once a day? Will it hold up? Or, will you content in knowing that the next time you catch a snippet of it you can return to your home and release those notes into the air to light up the room, if just for three brief minutes?