Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

self-critique

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

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If you were to ask me to talk about my biggest hobby, i would simply say, “Music.”

If you were to ask me to elaborate on my favorite elements of music, i would reply, “Hearing it. Making it.” Or, more explicitly, i enjoy being a fan of music and being a writer of music. One can involve being very critical of other people’s work, while the other requires an unending faith in my own.

Sometimes i have trouble reconciling the two. For example, in a book of my agonizingly chosen flying-to-Florida collection of music, the new Bright Eyes disc faces a burned cd of my recent trios. I have no qualms in admitting that i am skeptical about Conor Oberst’s new effort as Bright Eyes; i was skeptical before ever hearing a song by Conor and continue to feel that way now that i have bought a third album of his. He’s not so different from a previous version of me; a recent Rolling Stone article featured a picture of his slight vegan frame with a guitar almost dwarfing it, singing about heartbreak in a style whose lineage includes Brian Wilson and Bob Dylan.

I happen to really enjoy my new Trios;though the imperfections of my performances are more noticeable when crisply preserved in digital format, i delight in hearing the sound of my own voice captured in such a faithful fashion. I have worked hard for that voice… failing auditions, slaving at voice lessons, struggling through choir. Singing and singing until the sound of my own voice became transparent to me; hearing myself on a recording of “Tangling” or “Excuse” feels the same as performing the songs live. I cannot distinguish anything about my vocal performance other than whether i am hitting the notes i intended to. I cannot be critical of it

Conor is just about a year older than me, and i don’t think he is much of a singer. His bio calls his vocal stylings “quak[ing] with the tumultuous energy that only youth can produce.” Tumultuous energy sounds very much to me like unsteady notes and failing vibrato. There are parts of his album Fevers and Mirrors that i physically cannot consume — he screams, yowls, stretches his voice past the breaking point. I do it too, of course, all rock singers do at some point. But, to me it never sounds as rough… as pained. And, i am doing it for my website… him, for an international audience of consumers..

I ostensibly bought his new disc Lifted to review it, but i know that i am really casing up the competition. In the past i have wondered at the success of others who are only slightly older than me, and whose work i adore. Now, i am wondering about the success of someone who i could very plausibly be; who shares the exact years of pop culture inundation with me, if not some of the same influences. I happen to think that i sing better than him; i also think i write more accessible songs. But, i am in college, and he is on the road. I am on the dean’s list, and he is in Rolling Stone.

My two favorite hobbies will be staring each other in the face deep inside my bookbag as i walk through the metal detector this morning, bound for Fort Lauderdale. They will both air themselves, probably more than any other music i will have with me. And, when my family asks me what i did this year, all i will say is “i am on the dean’s list.”


Merry Christmas.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2002/12/90080825/

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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://www.crushingkrisis.com/2001/12/7703915/

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That’s (read the last post first, silly) the encapsulated story of my life… find out about something, fall in love with it, remove it from any sort of social context, and then watch it wither and die on its lonesome. That’s how all of my crushes work too… find someone i adore, remove them from their life to insert them into mine via the insides of my head, and then watch the actuality of us wither and die because i’ve separated it out from the social soil it was once rooted in.

I never had sleep overs. I never had to share my toys or play with a second person. I never permanently traded or anted up anything to anyone in my entire life. I never learned that the whole point of having a life of my own was to share it with anyone else, and so in highschool i marched home every day to dutifully ignore my homework and read my email while other people hung out and messed around and dated and did drugs for the first time; i was my own intensive after-school program. Eventually the internet grew into its own social structure so much that i was discarding friends who i couldn’t keep up with via IM and starting to have online-only acquaintances who i looked forward to talking to. And, eventually, this happened.

I can’t really decide which is the magic card: this page, or this life. On one hand, i pour my heart and soul and free time for no kind of compensation into something that not more than a couple of hundred people see on any given day. On the other hand, i have this wonderful spark of existence that i am mostly busy keeping to myself… emotions and voice and song that i’m bored with from all the times i’ve sat through them, but that amaze other people.

Either way, i figure i am still living the life of an only child… i create my own personal fantasy where the sharing is always one-sided and shun any interruptions of it. In that respect, this page mirrors my life. The things i say are the toys that i have earmarked so carefully to be touched by other children in the sandbox while i keep Jinx and my Nightmare card secreted deep in the pockets of my memory. I am spoilt and selfish, but i do not learn. You’d think i’d know better by now than to be selfish, and i might have figured out that i like going to parties better than i like sitting and staring at the blank white box of blogger, but i apparently haven’t caught on that i have to be a real person-shaped-person here if i expect to be treated as such by an audience…. blah. sleep needs to happen now. i’ll continue this tomorrow… ! in fact…:

to be continued…

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2001/11/6906529/