Am I the only one experiencing a two-year identity crisis?
When you google “identity crisis art,” you see mostly pictures of fucked up heads. Heads without eyes, multiple heads, shapes for heads. All sorts of head stuff.
But that’s not what it’s felt like for me. My insides are shattered by a lack of live performance and people who dismiss my existence as trivial, but the cracks are in my body. My mind is intact but detached.
I saw my first live concert in years this week. Alabaster DePlume: saxophonist, songwriter, poet, activist. He took time between each song to speak to us, offering words of praise and encouragement that risked triteness. “I love you.” “You are all very special.” But he avoided toxic positivity by talking about life’s difficulties. When he said, “Thank you for living. It’s very tricky,” his recognition of the trickiness grounded his gratitude.
At one point, he talked about how he is trying to feel his feelings. How we think feelings are up in our heads, but they are so much in our bodies. And we avoid our feelings like we’re running from a ghost, but when we stop, the ghost moves through us. The feelings change.
I want to go back to performing live. Doing my new-old one-man show, Literally the Afterlife. Maybe hosting something regular. But with the appearance of Omicron Part Deux, I don’t know how to proceed. I’m sitting in the ruins of my identity as a comedian, a million projects on my mind, not knowing where to focus.
It was my body that performed, and for two years, my body has felt useless at best, if not an outright hindrance.
How do you let the ghost move through you when you feel like the ghost?
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THIS IS MY PODCAST, THIS IS YOUR AFTERLIFE
I’m just back from vacation in Cleveland, so no new episode of the podcast this week! Instead, enjoy this Twitter thread with links to a handful of favorites, and subscribe to dig deeper through the back catalog (and get next week’s episode right when it drops on Tuesday).
MOOD BOARD
This Twitter thread with the best American-healthcare-system jokes I’ve heard:
MAY I PLAY YOU A SOUND?
A buddy (Mark Logsdon, who I shouted out for the Le Guin recs last week) asked my top 3 rappers, in terms of the volume of jams I revisit. I struggled to complete the set in a way that satisfied me (I wish I listened to more De La Soul than Drake), but the #1 with a silver bullet is Future.
“March Madness” is the Future I come back to most. It’s made by the Donkey Kong Country-esque keyboard that floats through the background and Future’s hella-in-the-pocket vocals. The groove rides on the sounds of the syllables he utters. Which is a long way of saying I have no idea what this song is about, and I love it.
Bonus: Enjoy a charming little behind-the-making-of-the-beat video with the song’s producer, Tarentino.
Trickily,
DM