I AM SO CRINGE (and other lessons in trying to be trying to be Normal Human Woman™️.)
because our art is so cringe
I have something very embarrassing to say. The thought alone is embarrassing but I don’t think you’re supposed to so much as whisper the thought out loud. It’s cringey and vulnerable. To say it implies you might actually try the vulnerable thing one day. I have told exactly two people of this but now I feel some need (compulsion?) to tell a couple hundred people.
I wanna try stand up comedy.
Now there are approximately 495882 reasons why I shouldn’t, simply can’t. The horror show of insanely vulnerable. IMO solo performance is so freaky deaky vulnerable. And then to get up on a stage with the intention of making a crowd of people feel a particular emotion. Insane behaviour. Totally cringe. The kind of second hand embarrassment that makes me get all hot and then want to vomit into my hands. Unfortunately for me I am insane and do most things I say I will do. My boyfriend calls me a doer. You might call it impulsive, double fire sign, obnoxious. Etc.
Being an artist is inherently embarrassing. Insanely cringe. There isn’t a facet of art that isn’t wildly vulnerable. Making art is embarrassing, siloing yourself away into a room waffling over perfect tempo and colour choices. Pulling your art from the sacred space of home and studio and into the world to share feels like asking your neighbour to have a gander at the bare butt of your soul. Flipping through the archive of our work is embarrassing. If I so much as glimpse anything made more than 6 months ago I feel the red hot rush of unease “you put this on the internet” my stomach rumble at me.
This dispatch really isn’t about my compulsion to try weird new scary things on a regular basis but a dispatch on my lifetime of being the most embarrassing person in any room I find myself in. I am incredible at saying the most perfectly wrong thing at any given time, I rattle on about politics far too long at the dinner table. I close my eyes when I speak and incessantly about the life and times of Virginia Wolf longer than you will be able to pretend to care about. And I won’t understand that you when you start scrolling instagram when I speak it is because you are bored. My limbs are constantly floating away from me, I have tripped over my feet in cafe’s more times than I can count (or honestly want tell you). My arms are a constellation of bruises so much that I was regularly asked down to the school office and questioned about my “home life”. I never seem to get my wardrobe right. I drape myself in overly formal button down for a friend hang night in or end up wearing a mini dress at a funeral.
People needle and poke, “hoe are you so confident”. As if to say that a woman okay wearing a mini dress as a funeral is wanting to wear a mini dress at a funeral. Being Autistic gets mistaken for confidence.
I am not wanting, trying or longing to be terribly embarrassing all the time. I wish I understood what to wear at any given social gathering, or the right thing to say. I wish small talk felt easier for me instead of my penchant for telling anyone that asks how I am really feeling. I have had a lifetime of falling in front of the entire class.
Because of autistics intensified fight or flight responses these “in front of the whole class moments” get interpreted into Big T trauma in our bodies. Making autistic people more at risk of developing PTSD compared to the general population. ✨fun✨
I have no other choice but to be embarrassing. Destined. Written in my DNA. Manufactured. Or wherever they make odd girls like me. Learning the rules hurts just as bad, worse. And to be honest I am weirder and more bizarre to be around when I am attempting the feat of trying to be Normal Human Woman™️.
I am embarrassing.
Art asks us to be embarrassing. To share our bare butt of our soul on a stage and feign confidence long enough until we start to believe it. To be our most raw gooey, soft embarrassed selves. A(Mr) crab molting.
But we don’t get good at being scared. The fear doesn’t go away. Confidence is born in the being to tired to be embarrassed any longer. We get good at being scared. We become experts at stumbling through the the agility course of being absolutely fucking terrified.
After a life time of being completely embarrassing. The only thing truly soul crushingly cringy embarrassing to me would be to make it to my death bed. Stare up at whatever florescent lights I am baking under surrounded by whatever cords and cables are needed to keep me torturing myself for not making the art I wanted to in the world. To find myself having not made the art I dreamed of crafting and exploring and traversing through. To let the bare butt nakedness of it all win and regret not just trying.
I am very embarrassing. But there is so much freedom in being embarrassing. I wish to always be embarrassing. I wish to never quite get it right. I wish to always miss the mark. I wish to grow and look back at old work and feel so cringe that is exists on the internet. I wish I continue to try. I wish to fuck up and make mistakes and try again. Isn’t that the beauty of art? Trying? That’s all embarrassment is, really.
So, I wanna try stand up comedy.
Big love + many blessing on being terrifyingly, relentlessly, fiercly, everlastingly YOU ✨
Phoebe ✌️
P.S My 1:1 books are open again 💕 I’m here to be a mirror. I’m here to cheerlead. I’m here to run the experiments along side you and find the direction you want to go in. I’m here to celebrate the magic, bravery and knowledge you already have. 🪞☁️🪩 1:1 Creative Coaching + Strategy to uncover your cringe🌷
*typos are left to reflect the fury passion and 3D humaness of being a passionate freak in the world – and you know not a robot *beep boop* I am just a human girlie living on earth with a mortal brain 🤸♀️(and also like, don’t be an ableist freak🥰)
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Thanks for reading the Creators Dispatch. A weekly essay about the creative journey! Here I write about being an artist, human, angry woman on the internet and living in the dumpster fire of a world that says not to make your art. If what I say here inspires you (or pisses you off 🥰) share my work with the group chat, or your best friends neighbour. Word of mouth is the most special and radical way of sharing 👼
You were born to do standup, in Phoebe-style, of course! You can try your material on me anytime my love xx
Oh my GOSH I feel this post so deeply. In the last week I finally said out loud “I am writing an album” and AHH it is so embarrassing! Voicing my secret dream out loud? The horror!! But also I must do it!! I must make the thing I know I need to make!! Here’s to being cringe, I hope your stand up comedy adventure brings you so much creative joy ❤️