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What's in a childhood? No, really, I want to think about this. What does a childhood look like? Y'know, the one that your friend's friend who always seemed really cool but never gave you the time of day had. Or instead, the one your teacher talked about when they were trying to understand why you were so fucked up and they weren't?

I think I speak on behalf of many folks both in this class and at Lawrence when I say that childhood was an idea I clung to, not a thing I had. My experience as a child is likely far different from yours, but I'm sure there were points in your elementary years where you too were jealous that your friends didn't need to worry about what was happening after school. 

My early years come with two complications: I was an operatic child prodigy, and I was queer. Now, one of these was much more present to me than the other. While I believe that, when thinking practically, the present one jumps off the page, I find more joy in leaving it ambiguous. You get to decide what I'm talking about here. 

This situation I found myself in back then led to a lot of challenges connecting with my peers on any personal level. Boys were too scared of me because I was weird, and girls were scared of me because I was stepping on their terf (pun intended).  

Many of the people I considered myself to be friends with in those early years were not actually school or choir folks I spent time with, but instead my parents' and grandparents' friends who I typically connected with easier.  I remember vividly how awful one vacation we went on was because I forgot my anti-depressants, only to realize my mom's best friend was on them too. He graciously shared his medicine with me for the rest of the trip.

I've spent a lot of time discussing my childhood here, and its not because I think my childhood was particularly interesting. I'm also not trying to prime you to feel bad for me, as none of this is really bad, it just sounds bad on paper. As McLuhan notes, "Today's child is growing up absurd, because he lives in two worlds, and neither of them inclines him to grow up." I think my story evolves on his point, or rather reframes it. Instead of not being inclined to "grow up," I think many of our stories are the other way around. 

Instead, many of us never got to live. 

This observation is fundamental to my process as an artist. I find great joy and liberty playing between the lines of what is elementary and what is mature. I play with forms, sounds, images, and materials to pull on our shared nostalgia; nostalgia not for what was, but for what could have been. These small little ideas that we've all since pushed down because they were too painful to be jealous of anymore, or too unrealistic to even picture. I'm excited to explore this style in a digital and media-focused context.