thecrushingdays - Tumblr blog

[thecrushingdays]

What started as an EP of songs recorded while stranded stateside in 2019 steadily evolved into something bigger and more personal. That EP, tentatively titled “Endless Bummer” (thank god that didn’t stick!) played with songs about distance, disconnection and reconnection.

That project eventually became Ghosts of the Great Divide which, from start to finish, was conceived over the span of two years. In some ways, it bridges a time in my life when I wasn’t quite ready to let go of the past. In others, it pushes forward to this new life in present day London. 

The result is something more sonically and thematically cohesive than I ever imagined it could be. I’m thrilled to finally share this record with all of you.

This record is dedicated to @dlmmacdonald for which none of this would have been possible without her love, patience and support.

And to my old pal Ryan Jolly, who inspired me to go big and take this farther than I ever imagined it could go. And to all the friends and contributors who made the campaign such a massive success. 

Thank you to @noatunestudios for providing the space and the gear for indie musicians to aspire and create, to @jake.reynolds.music for his ears and insights in taking these songs over the finish line, and @spncrrbns for working with me to achieve the vision for the album’s stunning artwork.

And a special thank you goes out to @rudewhennude and @williamjackmusic for their beautiful contributions on this record. 

Ghosts of the Great Divide is available now via @Bandcamp on Cassette, CD, and Digital Download.

All songs written and performed by @thecrushingdays

Joan Chew played Bass on Eighteen Wheels

& Your Best Dude 

William Jack played Cello on Passing Ships 

Mixed by @thecrushingdays

Mastered by @jake.reynolds.music

Artwork and layouts Spencer Robens Designs

Recorded at @noatunestudios in London, UK. 

© & ℗ 2021, The Crushing Days. All rights reserved.

[thecrushingdays]

“American Beauty’s greatest accomplishment might be that it takes the midlife crisis mold, perfects it, and then breaks it, all before the turn of the century.”

[thecrushingdays]

"This weekend, as fans of Holly, Valens and Richardson stand at the foot of the sculpture that resembles Holly’s black horn-rimmed glasses, they’ll undoubtedly retrace the narrative of the story that began 60 years ago."

[thecrushingdays]

It’s only been a few weeks since we saw each other last, but it seems like ages. Time seems to draw an expanding ravine between us, one where we’re both perched on opposite cliffs. As the days pass, I see you slowly slipping away, your long black hair twisting in the wind. I try to will the ravine closed with my mind, and after a moment it seems to work, the gentle valley erupting with the cracking branches and breaking soil. But it’s only temporary as the time and geographical realities dig a deeper valley between us. I long to hold you close to me. Until that day comes, the sound of splitting soil and trees is all I know. With all my love….

HWM ~ 1939

[thecrushingdays]

"...and you leave little pieces of your heart wherever you go and with whoever you play with. You can't get them back - it's for that moment in your life. The songs, the smells, the snuggles, the shells, the sea, they all end up reminding you of those little pieces of your heart you left behind, trailing after you, not quite willing to disappear completely. The memories can haunt you, or bring you peace. Can you have one without the other? Without sadness, how can you know joy? I mean, truly know joy?

SMH

[thecrushingdays]

#8

23 Emotions people feel, but can’t explain

Sonder: The realization that each passerby has a life as vivid and complex as your own.

Opia: The ambiguous intensity of Looking someone in the eye, which can feel simultaneously invasive and vulnerable.

Monachopsis: The subtle but persistent feeling of being out of place.

Énouement: The bittersweetness of having arrived in the future, seeing how things turn out, but not being able to tell your past self.

Vellichor: The strange wistfulness of used bookshops.

Rubatosis: The unsettling awareness of your own heartbeat.

Kenopsia: The eerie, forlorn atmosphere of a place that is usually bustling with people but is now abandoned and quiet.

Mauerbauertraurigkeit: The inexplicable urge to push people away, even close friends who you really like.

Jouska: A hypothetical conversation that you compulsively play out in your head.

Chrysalism: The amniotic tranquility of being indoors during a thunderstorm.

Vemödalen: The frustration of photographic something amazing when thousands of identical photos already exist.

Anecdoche: A conversation in which everyone is talking, but nobody is listening

Ellipsism: A sadness that you’ll never be able to know how history will turn out.

Kuebiko: A state of exhaustion inspired by acts of senseless violence.

Lachesism: The desire to be struck by disaster – to survive a plane crash, or to lose everything in a fire.

Exulansis: The tendency to give up trying to talk about an experience because people are unable to relate to it.

Adronitis: Frustration with how long it takes to get to know someone.

Rückkehrunruhe: The feeling of returning home after an immersive trip only to find it fading rapidly from your awareness.

Nodus Tollens: The realization that the plot of your life doesn’t make sense to you anymore.

Onism: The frustration of being stuck in just one body, that inhabits only one place at a time.

Liberosis: The desire to care less about things.

Altschmerz: Weariness with the same old issues that you’ve always had – the same boring flaws and anxieties that you’ve been gnawing on for years.

Occhiolism: The awareness of the smallness of your perspective.

[thecrushingdays]

-nayyirah waheed (from 'Salt')

[thecrushingdays]

splitting skin and sewing

[thecrushingdays]

“We said good-by again and again and still could not bring ourselves to cast off the lines and start the engines. It would be good to live in a perpetual state of leave-taking, never to go nor to stay, but to remain suspended in that golden moment of love and longing; to be missed without being gone; to be loved without satiety. How beautiful one is and how desirable; for in a few moments one will have ceased to exist.

- John Steinbeck, The Log From the Sea of Cortez

[thecrushingdays]

“In total love, where touch, communication, lust, and spirit-intercourse are absolute—where we become so close not even a hair can pass between us—there woman is sister, daughter, lover, mother, whore, and friend, separately at some times, and totally, simultaneously at others. Man is her counterpart in each. Relationships and people atrophy when all these elements are not present between them. They thrive, mature, and flower only when they are.

I do not think finally that anyone can achieve his birthright—can be totally alive and beautifully whole without this relationship.” My Mother Taught Me - Tor Kung (Jack Gilbert)

[thecrushingdays]

Composed for and performed at Jeff and Nikki’s wedding

[thecrushingdays]

We are solitary. We can delude ourselves about this and act as if it were not true. That is all. But how much better it is to recognize that we are alone; yes, even to begin from this realization. It will, of course, make us dizzy; for all points that our eyes used to rest on are taken away from us, there is no longer anything near us, and everything far away is infinitely far. A man taken out of his room and, almost without preparation or transition, placed on the heights of a great mountain range, would feel something like that: an unequalled insecurity, an abandonment to the nameless, would almost annihilate him. He would feel he was falling or think he was being catapulted out into space or exploded into a thousand pieces: what a colossal lie his brain would have to invent in order to catch up with and explain the situation of his senses. That is how all distances, all measures, change for the person who becomes solitary; many of these changes occur suddenly and then, as with the man on the mountaintop, unusual fantasies and strange feelings arise, which seem to grow out beyond all that is bearable. But it is necessary for us to experience that too. We must accept our reality as vastly as we possibly can; everything, even the unprecedented, must be possible within it. This is in the end the only kind of courage that is required of us: the courage to face the strangest, most unusual, most inexplicable experiences that can meet us.

Rainer Maria Rilke - 1904

[thecrushingdays]

ON SEEING THE 100% PERFECT GIRL ONE BEAUTIFUL APRIL MORNING

by Haruki Murakami

One beautiful April morning, on a narrow side street in Tokyo’s fashionable Harujuku neighborhood, I walked past the 100% perfect girl. Tell you the truth, she’s not that good-looking. She doesn’t stand out in any way. Her clothes are nothing special. The back of her hair is still bent out of shape from sleep. She isn’t young, either - must be near thirty, not even close to a “girl,” properly speaking. But still, I know from fifty yards away: She’s the 100% perfect girl for me. The moment I see her, there’s a rumbling in my chest, and my mouth is as dry as a desert. Maybe you have your own particular favorite type of girl - one with slim ankles, say, or big eyes, or graceful fingers, or you’re drawn for no good reason to girls who take their time with every meal. I have my own preferences, of course. Sometimes in a restaurant I’ll catch myself staring at the girl at the next table to mine because I like the shape of her nose. But no one can insist that his 100% perfect girl correspond to some preconceived type. Much as I like noses, I can’t recall the shape of hers - or even if she had one. All I can remember for sure is that she was no great beauty. It’s weird. “Yesterday on the street I passed the 100% girl,” I tell someone. “Yeah?” he says. “Good-looking?” “Not really.” “Your favorite type, then?” “I don’t know. I can’t seem to remember anything about her - the shape of her eyes or the size of her breasts.” “Strange.” “Yeah. Strange.” “So anyhow,” he says, already bored, “what did you do? Talk to her? Follow her?” “Nah. Just passed her on the street.” She’s walking east to west, and I west to east. It’s a really nice April morning. Wish I could talk to her. Half an hour would be plenty: just ask her about herself, tell her about myself, and - what I’d really like to do - explain to her the complexities of fate that have led to our passing each other on a side street in Harajuku on a beautiful April morning in 1981. This was something sure to be crammed full of warm secrets, like an antique clock build when peace filled the world. After talking, we’d have lunch somewhere, maybe see a Woody Allen movie, stop by a hotel bar for cocktails. With any kind of luck, we might end up in bed. Potentiality knocks on the door of my heart. Now the distance between us has narrowed to fifteen yards. How can I approach her? What should I say? “Good morning, miss. Do you think you could spare half an hour for a little conversation?” Ridiculous. I’d sound like an insurance salesman. “Pardon me, but would you happen to know if there is an all-night cleaners in the neighborhood?” No, this is just as ridiculous. I’m not carrying any laundry, for one thing. Who’s going to buy a line like that? Maybe the simple truth would do. “Good morning. You are the 100% perfect girl for me.” No, she wouldn’t believe it. Or even if she did, she might not want to talk to me. Sorry, she could say, I might be the 100% perfect girl for you, but you’re not the 100% boy for me. It could happen. And if I found myself in that situation, I’d probably go to pieces. I’d never recover from the shock. I’m thirty-two, and that’s what growing older is all about. We pass in front of a flower shop. A small, warm air mass touches my skin. The asphalt is damp, and I catch the scent of roses. I can’t bring myself to speak to her. She wears a white sweater, and in her right hand she holds a crisp white envelope lacking only a stamp. So: She’s written somebody a letter, maybe spent the whole night writing, to judge from the sleepy look in her eyes. The envelope could contain every secret she’s ever had. I take a few more strides and turn: She’s lost in the crowd. Now, of course, I know exactly what I should have said to her. It would have been a long speech, though, far too long for me to have delivered it properly. The ideas I come up with are never very practical. Oh, well. It would have started “Once upon a time” and ended “A sad story, don’t you think?” Once upon a time, there lived a boy and a girl. The boy was eighteen and the girl sixteen. He was not unusually handsome, and she was not especially beautiful. They were just an ordinary lonely boy and an ordinary lonely girl, like all the others. But they believed with their whole hearts that somewhere in the world there lived the 100% perfect boy and the 100% perfect girl for them. Yes, they believed in a miracle. And that miracle actually happened. One day the two came upon each other on the corner of a street. “This is amazing,” he said. “I’ve been looking for you all my life. You may not believe this, but you’re the 100% perfect girl for me.” “And you,” she said to him, “are the 100% perfect boy for me, exactly as I’d pictured you in every detail. It’s like a dream.” They sat on a park bench, held hands, and told each other their stories hour after hour. They were not lonely anymore. They had found and been found by their 100% perfect other. What a wonderful thing it is to find and be found by your 100% perfect other. It’s a miracle, a cosmic miracle. As they sat and talked, however, a tiny, tiny sliver of doubt took root in their hearts: Was it really all right for one’s dreams to come true so easily? And so, when there came a momentary lull in their conversation, the boy said to the girl, “Let’s test ourselves - just once. If we really are each other’s 100% perfect lovers, then sometime, somewhere, we will meet again without fail. And when that happens, and we know that we are the 100% perfect ones, we’ll marry then and there. What do you think?” “Yes,” she said, “that is exactly what we should do.” And so they parted, she to the east, and he to the west. The test they had agreed upon, however, was utterly unnecessary. They should never have undertaken it, because they really and truly were each other’s 100% perfect lovers, and it was a miracle that they had ever met. But it was impossible for them to know this, young as they were. The cold, indifferent waves of fate proceeded to toss them unmercifully. One winter, both the boy and the girl came down with the season’s terrible inluenza, and after drifting for weeks between life and death they lost all memory of their earlier years. When they awoke, their heads were as empty as the young D. H. Lawrence’s piggy bank. They were two bright, determined young people, however, and through their unremitting efforts they were able to acquire once again the knowledge and feeling that qualified them to return as full-fledged members of society. Heaven be praised, they became truly upstanding citizens who knew how to transfer from one subway line to another, who were fully capable of sending a special-delivery letter at the post office. Indeed, they even experienced love again, sometimes as much as 75% or even 85% love. Time passed with shocking swiftness, and soon the boy was thirty-two, the girl thirty. One beautiful April morning, in search of a cup of coffee to start the day, the boy was walking from west to east, while the girl, intending to send a special-delivery letter, was walking from east to west, but along the same narrow street in the Harajuku neighborhood of Tokyo. They passed each other in the very center of the street. The faintest gleam of their lost memories glimmered for the briefest moment in their hearts. Each felt a rumbling in their chest. And they knew: She is the 100% perfect girl for me. He is the 100% perfect boy for me. But the glow of their memories was far too weak, and their thoughts no longer had the clarity of fouteen years earlier. Without a word, they passed each other, disappearing into the crowd. Forever. A sad story, don’t you think? Yes, that’s it, that is what I should have said to her.

[thecrushingdays]

we must bring our own light to the darkness. nobody is going to do it for us. as the young boys ski down the slopes as the fry cook gets his last paycheck as dog chases dog as the chessmaster loses more than the game we must bring our own light to the darkness. nobody is going to do it for us, as the lonely telephone anybody anywhere as the great beast trembles in nightmare as the final season leaps into focus nobody is going to do it for us.

Charles Bukowski

[thecrushingdays]

A new blog on laughter