On Audience and Truth-Telling

The truth is I have a terrible time accepting myself; it’s always been this way if memory serves.

It’s much more glamorous to act as if I knew all along I would create these personas and you, whoever you are, are just now catching up. But again, if I challenge myself to write truthfully and with integrity, then this means writing what I’m terrified to say. And what I’m terrified to say is that I’m writing and making music under these different names, because I’m generating ideas faster than I can claim them without being embarassed. The road to being unbothered isn’t nearly as charming as sitcoms let on.

I would love to tell you that after all this time, I’m comfortable with the presence of an audience and that it has no effect whatsoever on my point of view. But that just isn’t true.

I don’t know when I’ll have another show. All I know is I’ve been writing for what feels like forever and the people at this college were kind and visionary enough to notice and invite me to ask these questions I have with students in a classroom. Questions like how the presence of an audience informs the truth of a performance. Here, we’ll generate and cultivate a collective genius, I hope, while I work to develop and refine this same spirit in my own stories, connections and imaginings. The class is called Performance as Radicalism in Practice, where we explore performance as both a medium and a framework for social design.

…I had to trust that I could not only make happy moments for other people but that, in fact, I could afford my own happiness, own pleasure, own joy in the process, and that in fact, no joy would be derived from my work ever again without the latter…[in retrospect to the last interview I gave in 2017].