I feel like quarantine has been getting to me in some kind of way, because I couldn’t help but feel like ALL of June’s interviews were touching on themes of closeness, human contact, intimacy, and embodying art in our community interactions. Projection much?

In any case, it’s been a month of lovely episodes, and I’m excited to share a few of my sum-up thoughts with you.

June 2020 Featured:

My interview with Tiff was such a breath of fresh air after two months of online interviews. I was so moved as I listened to her talk about her experiences creating art on the actual bodies of other humans (if you missed it above, she’s a tattooist). I feel like creativity is already such a deeply emotional and intimate sort of endeavor, I can hardly imagine what it’s like to create art ON BODIES, inches away from another whole, unique person, on a daily basis.

Like I said, maybe it’s quarantine just putting an extra sensitive lens on this for me, but I so loved hearing Tiff describe her work—her daily task is to truly and deeply behold another person, trying to really perceive their identity, thinking about how others will behold this person, setting a goal to create art that (1) feel authentic to Tiff (2) will resonate with the identity of the tattooed person (3) will speak accurately to anyone who sees the tattoos after the fact. What wholly important work. I just can barely hold onto the magnitude of this idea.

After talking with Tiff, I was on a bit of an “intimacy in art” high, and made sure to bring this up with EJ during our interview the following week.

First of all, EJ is just such a beautiful soul. He makes a habit of giving so much of himself in his writing and performing. I admire it so much! And of course this kind of vulnerability and graciousness in creation is going to reach people. So, I wasn’t at all surprised to hear EJ describe experiences with fans coming up to him after shows to share what his music has meant to their marriages, their identities, their mental and emotional health.

And it occurred to me that this, also, is such an incredible form of intimacy in art. EJ’s music plays RIGHT inside people’s ears. The speakers make near direct contact with the skin and bones of listeners. They listen in their bedrooms, they listen while they’re hiking, they listen in their most vulnerable moments.

Molly blew my mind yet again when she described drag as “literally building another person on top of yourself.”

Anyone who’s listened to “Masks” knows I’m already down with the idea of using costuming to reveal parts of your identity that aren’t readily seen by others. It can be a powerful way to take ownership over the self you feel, versus the self that is imposed on you via cultural context, assumptions, etc.

But the way that Molly phrased her experience got me thinking in a new direction. I hope I’m not getting this wrong, but it strikes me that this concept of “building another person on top of yourself” is such a gorgeous intersection of authenticity and empathy. It’s simultaneously exploring your whole self—bringing certain parts of your own identity to the physical surface—but it’s ALSO stepping into someone who is maybe entirely different from yourself in specific ways. Like, Molly is much more extroverted than Tyler. Molly does things that Tyler wouldn’t do. She isn’t just a filter of a part of Tyler, she’s someone else entirely. And of course, acting has some similarities, but I think it’s especially profound that drag happens not only on stage, but right inside our shared, public spaces. Molly is sometimes on stage, but she’s often just having drinks with her friends. It’s an active reminder that in some ways, all of the people all around us are layered, are not only (if really at all) their surface presentations. It’s art, fully embodied. Fully integrated into life.

As a painter, Bradford doesn’t have the same kind of regular interaction that performers (and tattoo artists) would, but he exercises empathy in his creativity, nonetheless. When I asked Bradford about his relationship with the audience, and whether he cares about their reaction to his work, he responded so enthusiastically. Like it would be absurd not to care about the effect our work has on its viewers. Brad described his paintings almost like a segue to intimacy between artist and audience. The artist pours a certain emotional energy into his work with the hope that the viewer will feel that same emotional energy on the other side. It’s a beautiful expression of empathy, if empathy a bit delayed. To reduce one’s own experience of an emotion down to the essentials, such that it can be recognized by any number of others. I love the idea that we, as strangers, can meet and connect via a piece of art, and our shared experience with that art. It’s kind of the whole point, isn’t it?

Finally, Brandan and I talked about the transcendent experience of disappearing fully into a character. It’s hard to imagine having a more intimate connection with art and creativity, than allowing it to fully inhabit your own body, such that you temporarily cease completely to exist as a separate individual.

We also talked about the related experience of disappearing into group-created art. For example, contributing your own voice to a choir—never hearing your individual sound at all, but being fully wrapped up in one unified sound of tens or hundreds of voices together.

I’m sure there are so many more ways that art facilitates intimacy and connection. I’ve loved sitting with these ideas in the past few weeks, and I hope you’ll spend some time with them, too. I would LOVE to hear your own experiences or thoughts about how art embodies itself in our human moments.

Thanks for listening and reading and thinking artful thoughts with me!

Love,

Emily