Hi Billy
Met you in Portsmouth UK last year...I was the only one in a KH T with my request written in gold letters.
Kristin hasn't got a competitive edge - that's the point. If things had turned out differently, she'd be just as happy singing in a field whilst picking cotton. I understand why you asked the question though.
That leaves us with the notion, 'if it isn't a competitive edge - then what the hell is it?'
Some years ago it was called 'soul' but in some ways that is not particularly helpful, especially if, like me, you don't go with religious stuff. And of course that adjective then be a noun to describe the genre that is 'soul music'. No satisfaction there then. I suppose being a scientist, and I know Krissie would appreciate this, we need to go to the 'core' of what produced the music to be able to define it.
In Rat Girl Krissie tends toward the idea that rather than her finding the music, the music in fact found her. Now again, there is difficulty with this, unless of course you're in with the psychic crowd who would call this some kind of electro magnetic impulse wave form that K was able to tune in to. I'm afraid I don't hold with that either. My own view is that it is auto psychic cognition: K went through a period in her life when music was so important to her, that her mind not only communicated to in language, but also in color and music. This kind of thing is not uncommon in people who go through the experience of tunnelling and flying that is BAD (bipolar affective disorder).
So, K is putting to music her deepest and most intense feelings and experiences in the same way a poet would. Furthermore, just to complicate matters, K is also a poet. In fact, rather unusually, Krissies lyrics are either better or the same, but never worse than her music. In conclusion therefore, Kristin's music touches certain listeners in a similar way to those who follow classical (for want of a better word) music in that it also affects people in a deep and intense way; for example the way a Mahler adagio might. But it doesn't end there, because the lyrics are so deeply entwined in the music...absolutely inseparable. If there is any hint of dispute about this, try listening to 'surf cowboy' with other words - it just doesn't work. So the poetry (because that's what it is) works on a different but similar plane. Anyone who appreciates Kristin's music therefore gets a.....
DOUBLE WHAMMY....
Like a 3 dimensional piece of music; an intense new vocabulary of art or poetry that thrills your toenails. Whichever it is, if I believed in genius - that is what I would call it, but I don't. But whatever it is, it has nothing to do with competition, value or trade bananas, but everything to do with integrity of personal communication that is kind of primeval. It is raw, unadulterated beauty!
I apologise for the length of this reply. But be honest Billy...Its a pretty loaded question!