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44th St

Trio Season 6 – Suite #3: A Confidence Game

March 9, 2008 by krisis

Trio: Season Six, Suite #3: A Confidence Game
Unengaged, Tangling, Wonder

A sample of what I had to say in this Trio…

Unengaged
It wasn’t the lack of confidence in doing that thing, but the lack of confidence that came in the wake of that – like, “Oh god, what have I gotten myself into?” … It’s also about [lack of] confidence in performing it: I wrote that melody almost just as an exercise in getting it up into falsetto over and over again. I didn’t ever think I was going to perform it that way. … If it’s your song, and you wrote it that way, then there must be a reason it’s in falsetto.

Tangling
It was the anchor of this set … Somebody moves out of your life for some period … and you think, “wow, we’re so connected.” And then they get back and you don’t feel that connection immediately. And you wonder – was that connection so tenuous that it dissipated with the distance? … People change over a period of time, and you have to take some time to retune that connection.

Wonder
I think anyone can identify with that walking down the street – or, in the case of this song, in a train station – and you see somebody, and in your mind you have a whole fantasy about them in a split second … and then they get on the train. Or, maybe that’s just me?


Trio – the original singer-songwriter web session – returns for its sixth season featuring my original music, recorded live and DIY in my bedroom. You can download this Trio, or listen to a previous Trio:

  • S6-#2: Transparency
  • S6-#1: Within
  • S5-#9: Perspectives
  • S5-#7: Current Influences
  • S5-#3: Hindsight

Filed Under: Engagement, Season 6 Tagged With: 44th St, laurel

Goddess on the Bench

November 10, 2006 by krisis

As you may have noticed, it’s impossible for me to talk about any aspect of my life without mentioning my brilliantly talented and completely hilarious best friend and occasional co-songwriter Gina. We met at age twelve and have known each for just over twelve years (half our lives!). Appropriately, here are twelve of my favorite memories of Gina.

(Since Gina might not remember them the same way I do (if at all!) her rebuttal will be forthcoming)

  1. In my new school in seventh grade I ate lunch with two other oversmart semi-outcast boys. Gina and her friends – all oversmart overtalented girls – sat at the table behind us. We met when the boys decided it would be funny to throw snack food (was it peanuts?) down the blouse of one of the girls. Soon thereafter our tables merged to spend lunch laughing and singing terrible pop music, at one point during which we were dubbed “Spockchild and the Lunchroom Cadets,” due to my bowl-cut and Vulcan-sized ears.
  2. Gina was already a stage veteran at the time of my first audition, and I was appropriately intimidated by the idea of performing a monologue in front of my peers and teachers. To this day I have a perfect mental snapshot of Gina walking up the stage-right stairs wearing her distinctive purple velvet shirt, her long hair flowing all around a perfectly serene face. I remember thinking, “this theatre thing can’t be so hard.”
  3. Gina has always been skeptical of people who pick up a guitar and want to be taught how to play, probably because no one follows through. Very early in my guitar playing she wrote the music to my lyrics “Falling Down,” and played it for me before a theatre rehearsal. Later that night I left a message on her answering machine of me slowly-but-surely picking out the same pattern on my guitar. Ever since she has taken my guitar playing a lot more seriously.
  4. Both living in the same residence hall at Drexel I became the unofficial male roommate of her entire floor due to my frequent visits, always with guitar in hand. One day that winter I played Gina my brand new “Under My Skin,” and she started playing along. When we were done she said, “I like that one; let’s play it again.”
  5. In line for Weezer at the TLA the summer after freshman year we ate our Chinese Food with makeshift spoons fashioned from fortune cookies because I forgot to get forks.
  6. Stopping by my cluttered first apartment to keep me awake during the 24-hour Blogathon I heard one of Gina’s original songs for the first time – “Real End“. Also, we played everyone’s favorite U2 song, and barked like dogs while covering “Fido, Your Leash Is Too Long.” After my long wakeful night, she showed up with the sun the next morning, bearing decaffeinated coffee and cookies.
  7. Stuck for Halloween costumes at the last minute, we had a twenty-minute shopping spree in K-Mart. Emerging with glitter and giant fairy wings, we hardly had costumes, but by raiding our vintage closets we emerged as the godparents of punk rock and disco, respectively. I kept yelling “Where’s James?!” and giggling.
  8. After experiencing a rough few months in the middle of college we declared a personal day, and spent it shopping in Chinatown and drinking bottled smoothies, laughing all the while about the little insecurities we left behind in high school and all of the larger ones looming in their place. We realized that day that we had never once been in a fight, and resolved never to have one.
  9. Gina’s mother, an amazing actor, operatic singer, and dancer, has always been slow to warm to Gina’s friends, and over the years I always had a difficult time discerning if she liked me at all. I took it as a great compliment when I was invited to cook and dine along with her family for Thanksgiving in 2003. Ever since then Gina’s mother has treated me like family.
  10. Through a series of coincidental events, Gina moved into my awesome upperclassmen apartment, where our bedrooms faced each other across a vast, stuffy, attic living room we dubbed “The Grotto.” We decorated it with hanging lights and lanterns so that it would glow 24/7, hanging our fairy wings outside our respective doors. The first time we went out drinking together after she moved in we wound up crawling up all that last flight of stairs together, one step at a time.
  11. I have always partied through the Fall Back time every October, except for one year, when Gina gave me a complex lesson in applications chemistry and I explained the finer points of copy protection. I don’t think we realized how long we had chatted until the next morning when we remembered to turn the clocks back.
  12. In my first show after college, Happy Birthday, Wanda June, each night we made our final exit together, both having suffered an emotional breakdown in the preceding scene. One night we had both worked ourselves up into sobbing messes during the scene, and in our in-character emotional rush to exit the room we literally threw ourselves out of the stage door and tumbled down the backstage stairs.

    We wound up at the foot of the stairs in a heap, our sobbing resolving to barely contained giggling while the final scene played out above our heads.

That’s me and Gina, to a tee.

Filed Under: college, high school, memories, NaBloPoMo Tagged With: 44th St, gina

January 23, 2003 by krisis

Watch as six pounds of Roma Plastilina clay (hopefully) becomes a 1/2″ scale set for Prometheus Bound, neatly bound up in the form of an irregular polyhedron.

before
during

after

Either that, or i’ll wind up doing a Gumby and Pokey skit in Production class tomorrow…

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2003/01/90221934/

Filed Under: college, theatre Tagged With: 44th St

February 21, 2002 by krisis

Some Things (or: Change Happens).

I have never ever ripped the knee of a pair of pants before last night, when during one of the kneel-skid-kneel routines in my dance audition i caught the worn khaki fabric of my pants on a seam of the stage. I didn’t notice until we got home and i went to poke at the huge purplish bruise on my knee only to find my finger poking clear through the leg of my pants.

Callbacks, for all you who so kindly inquired, went decently. I was convinced that we’d have to sing a bit more tonight, so i don’t think i had any dairy all day and am now making up for it with the most massive bowl of ice cream i’ve ever had. It’s obvious that i don’t have the voice or presence to play any of the cast roles, so i was basically just being used as filler in the scenes we read. Which, honestly, i don’t mind. I just want to sing. The Cast List will be up tomorrow at 1pm.

Lindsay says she can hear everything that goes on in my room, and i suppose she must be able to; i can hear everything that’s said in hers and, though i can’t usually hear her move, my floor is her ceiling. So, i’ve been trying to be very still, and not as stompy when i wake up in the morning.

I had breakfast again today. Somehow, my days have been better every time i’ve had breakfast in the last week, but if i were to be scientific about i think i’d find that the relationship between the two isn’t causal in nature. I really don’t try to dissect better, or happy, or any other good thing too much — lest it disintegrate and flow from my hands like grains of sand. It’s irony, really: you want to have something to hold on to, but have to keep your hands off. Proverbially, that is. Or not. Blah, time for bed.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2002/02/9951912/

Filed Under: elise, theatre, thoughts Tagged With: 44th St, lindsay

December 14, 2001 by krisis

I have become totally domesticated in my living with the gals. It’s not as though it bothers me, but i just feel like they’re intruding upon my messy bachelor years, or something. For example, yesterday i actually called home from work to see what they would prefer my nighttime culinary endeavor to be. So, not only did i premeditate my potential meal (based upon leftover supplies from the dinner i made on Tuesday!), but i decided that i needed to clear it with the roomies before i made the decision on my own. Sadly, I didn’t catch either of them, and seeing as i had the sneaking suspicion that one of them was highly alarmed by eggplant i refrained from shopping for the supplies i had in mind until i got a verbal “okay” from them. After a few hours of lounging on the couch when i should’ve really been doing the Business final i’m taking a break from now i was greeted by Erika, who came bearing groceries of her own! I started helping her with dinner until we realized that we were out of eggs, and so off i went (in my pajamas) to the grocery store — without a second thought.

It seems likes common courtesy or just being thoughtful roommates, but i really feel as though i’ve gone from being one of those cats that the neighbors leave food out on their porch for to being a house cat that occasionally struts around the lawn just to affirm his outdoorsyness. It’s not that it bothers me or anything, i just think it’s incredible what a difference a year makes; this time last year i was spending $60 a week on takeout food and eating a box or two of granola bars every weekend. Now i’m spending $60 a week on making dinner for the three of us, and eating leftovers all weekend.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2001/12/7924253/

Filed Under: college, identity Tagged With: 44th St, erika, lindsay, SGapt

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