on the love for performance

reflections on how to define performing creatively and in identity

Recently, I discovered and became obsessed with Lady Gaga’s iconic 2009 VMAs performance of “Paparazzi.” During the last chorus of the song, she belts out the lyrics in an unwavering voice while fake blood drips down her stomach and onto her white outfit. Halfway through singing, she smears the red across her face, all without missing a beat. 

Ever since I was young, I’ve been captivated by the idea of performance, partially because I’ve been doing it since a young age in both a literal and metaphorical sense. 

In my youth, I did ballet for over 6 years and have been playing piano since I was about 6 years old. For both of these activities, I often partook in end-of-the-year recitals, and although I enjoyed them, I was a very shy person, often mostly keeping to myself even though I loved the rush of being on stage and staring into the dark crowd. 

In my personal life, I constantly was putting on a performance as well. I was an obedient child and a good student (when I had the attention span to focus). My life felt like a constant performance where I had to put on a version of myself that people like best, to the point where I never really knew who I was from a young age since I had always been an amalgamation of others’ desires. (I discuss this in my last post in further detail!) 

Nowadays, I think less about my performance of self and more about my performance in terms of creativity and gender. I spent many years terrified of wearing jewelry, makeup, and dresses because I wanted to be perceived as more androgynous rather than feminine. But as I’ve become more secure in my gender identity and have surrounded myself with people who unequivocally support however I choose to present without equating it to my gender identity, I have begun to experiment with makeup and jewelry more. 

This has unsurprisingly helped me become more confident in my identity and myself as a person. Even though I frequently get misgendered during daily conversations, I still feel secure in my identity, knowing that all that matters is that I feel comfortable in my own skin and that my gender is not defined by how people interpret my performance. Performance inherently is for other people, but making performance for myself has immensely helped me find my self worth and appreciate who I am.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t days when it’s hard to feel this. Sometimes, in male-dominated spaces like my current workplace, I find myself turning into the shy shell of a person I was when I was younger. Performance becomes difficult in a space where people can’t even see you in the first place. 

Writing itself also feels like a performance. This substack has been a space where I’m constantly testing the boundaries of how I write and what I share. I don’t believe I’m naturally a very open person, so writing these pieces feels like a performing arts piece where I open up my insides to others for them to peer inside and marvel at the strange vulnerability that I’m exhibiting.

It’s a little bit like that scene in I Saw the TV Glow where Owen opens up his chest to see TV static. He looks at his glowing body in the mirror and finally confronts the fact that he’s seeing what’s inside him for the first time in his life. Everything that I write about my personal life, even if it’s about experiences that happened years ago, feels like I’m looking at something inside my body for the first time in my life. 

Maybe that’s why I love Lady Gaga’s bloody performance of “Paparazzi” so much. There’s something so visceral about the act of singing a song about performing for die-hard fans at an awards show while pretending to die for fame. Humans have always sacrificed so much for the sake of performance, and I’m more than guilty of being someone who greedily indulges in it. My obsession with concerts has literally led me across the states in search of an awe-inspiring performance. 

Concerts perfectly represent what the word means and really emphasize how performance itself has a life too. It’s a dynamic, ever-changing entity that controls us just as much as we work alongside it. It’s an imperfect, heart-racing state of being that lasts only as long as we remember it and as long as our bodies too. 

I’ve sung plenty of praises about the act of performance, but there are certainly darker undersides of what performance takes from people. I can often get lost in obsessing over performance and forget that I am a whole person outside of the act. Sometimes, performance can make us forget what’s important and blur the lines between authenticity and falsehood. It’s easy to get sick of performing, to want to get away from the spotlight and just be, exist as a concept that nobody can hold. (That, too, is a performance.)

This piece is a messy thread of thoughts popping up in my mind, one after another. The way one reader will interpret this is going to be drastically different from the way someone else will. And that itself is the beauty of performance, an undefined thing that doesn’t exist within certain boundaries.

Performance can be defined by both the performer and audience, by both the lyrics and the fake blood spilling onto thousand-dollar white boots. Beautiful, shocking, and horrific.

Ever since I was young, I’ve been obsessed with the idea of performance, and I’m still shaping the definition to suit my needs, unsure of whether it’s guiding me or if I’m frozen in place, staring at the television static in my open wound.