Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

singing

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Art and beauty are so subjective that i’m sometimes frightened by them. A song that almost wound up going unplayed has become everyone’s new favourite. Last night someone told me they thought i was sexy. Some people read my page, and some don’t.

My audition was terrible… i couldn’t understand where the piano-arrangement fit in with my vocal notes, and i just kept shooting the pianist a befuddled look while my voice teacher sat in the back row and scribbled furiously on her legal pad. Corrections, for our next lesson. Rounder ‘O’ vowels, “remember” should be “ri-mem-bur,” breath before the phrases, don’t move my arms around so much. I don’t remember singing it at all, but i know what i did wrong. In fact, i thought that my audition was pretty terrible — panicked glances to the accompanist are rarely the mark of a chorus-member in the making.

At the end the voice inside my head said “Fuck it, Peter. Show them you can sing.” I shut my ears tight against the pianist and looked straight ahead. “Can lead to joy. And hope. And love… yes. Love.” C, D, Eb, E. Flawless. I just grinned as the piano roll to the end of the song began. The cheering was wonderful; i walked off as calmly as i could and proceeded to totally collapse in my chair hugging Elise and whispering “i did it, i hit it, i did it.”

No one mentioned my high notes, but everyone claims my song was wonderful. I didn’t think so, and i keep saying “But, what about the end?”

Tonight i’ll be at callbacks. Someone thought it was okay.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2002/02/9929872/

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Every day is a day that your whole life has been leading towards; each step is the step that all of your life has been preparing you to take. Until the next one.

Two years ago i auditioned for Hair. I had so far only had a bit part in a main stage show, and i had never sang on stage before. But, i had the most hair of any of the boys who were auditioning. This, i was sure, was my shoe-in.

Our director asked who would sing first, and a hush fell over the room packed with aspiring tribe-members — no one wanted to set the bar. So, i did… with assurances that i could get up and try it again later. It was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life: my arms went numb, i forget my lyrics, and i couldn’t understand the piano arrangement. I barely remember the act of singing so much as i remember the lights blinding me as i wandered off the side of the stage, knowing that my second try would not make much of a difference.

When i didn’t get a callback, i was not entirely surprised.


Everything between then and now has been my stumbling rehearsal for tonight’s audition for Fiddler on the Roof. Every failed audition, and every successful one. Every note i’ve hit and every note i’ve missed. Every smile, every tear, everything. Yes, it’s about whether or not i can hit my E, as i am acutely aware. But, it’s also about who i was when i took the stage 730-odd days ago and who i can be tonight.

It’s not about hitting your stride in the moment, every moment, living for each. It is about sustaining through them all, stringing them together like a legato string of pearls.

Not coincidentally, that’s what my voice teacher keeps telling my about hitting the high notes in my audition piece. Maybe after i get it right in my singing i can manage to apply it to life.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2002/02/9888146/

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I absolutely cannot sing the harmony to “Closer to Fine.” Like, really, i’m honestly trying, but no amounts of lyrics, replays, and really cute girls, i have encouraging me to sing it correctly. So, mostly i’m just sitting here and pouting about not being able to sing it or hit the E in my song. Or, really, sing anything. Not even Billy Joel that i’ve been listening to since i was two. Two.

Distracted much? Me? Never…

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2002/02/9773642/

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I wear my headphones for the entire walk from here to the theatre, and from there back to the apartment. This week i’ve been singing the whole way there: Pinkerton, Garbage, Return of Saturn, Jagged Little Pill. I investigate each record in thirty minute intervals, picking apart the melodies in high-definition sound and finding their places in my own range. Rivers comes out strained in chest voice, i solidly match Shirley’s alto, Gwen brings me up to falsetto or down to my lower register, and Alanis tends to hover over my break point. I cannot keep my voice inside my chest.

I never really try to imagine myself from outside. I suppose it’s a problem i have … why there is such a disparity between my interior image and what i actually allow people to see and hear. Today walking home at midnight belting out “you’ve already won me over, in spite of me” i finally stopped for just a second to think about the picture. The image. My whole frame dwarfed by my round black earphones, shrinking me even farther away from my twenty earned years, swinging my arms and stretching my baritone voice, planting one foot in front of the other. I draw stares from plain pedestrians and pretentious Penn kids alike.

I hardly ever picture what i look and sound like, even when i’m doing the most outrageous of things. Last night i caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror in the middle of “Like a Virgin” or “Material Girl,” and – suddenly – my voice matched up with that writhing image of me as if audio had just been synced up to a projected movie. I had to stop singing for a moment so as not to cry. The boy i was looking at wasn’t at all the one i felt i was being at the time.

I really don’t mean to be any of this at all.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2002/02/9569992/

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Weird spectral gray overlapping spring-like warmth wrapped in wind that delivers howl upon howl. Isn’t it supposed to be warm, she kept asking as i slung my scarf over one shoulder (as if we were owed another down payment on spring, you know?). It was supposed to be something else, of that i’m pretty sure. Strange five second downpour erupting so fast as to catch my back with its stray drippy claw as i slid into the main building. Later i found it clawing at my roof as i was lying curled in my bed under the eave, just listening and playing Dorothy. “Somewhere,” you know? But, there weren’t any blue skies to be found at the time, and just the normal amounts of technicolor outside when i slid out to check. The gray had given away to purple night, and accompanying it was just wind … bitter wind delving in-between my fingers and down to my toes.


I can wait like this, i thought.


I stood out on the front porch and sang at the top of my lungs — first songs i love, and then songs i wrote, and then just riffing backwards over myself in a human loop of feedback. I wrapped my voice around me as if it would keep me warmer than my slowly disintegrating mod-squad jacket, letting each quaver wrap me tightly in another sonic layer of warmth. People on the block were playing an open/close of musical doors so that someone was on another porch at any given time, but no one seemed to hear me.


You’ve got a very nice voice, a man said as he walked by wrapped tightly against the wind. My surprised thank you took flight on the breeze like a single snowflake, unique and forgettable.

Hands back to pockets, keys to unlock door: maybe i would rather wait inside.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2002/02/9296247/