Creativity Is A Striptease.

Performance, Perception, and the Self.

‘I’m watching you’ the ether seems to shout.

Naked—in front of the back window.

I don’t know who. I don’t know where. But the feeling is unmistakable. That unmentioned sixth sense singes its burn along the back of my neck. A red flush pinks my cheeks. In a strike, the shutters fall closed.

I exhale, fuck.

I never found out who it was that had seen me, truly—seen me. I laughed about it later. Even later still, I began to wonder if it was all in my head, did I dream this up?

I started to walk the streets with my collar turned up. I’d keep an eye on windows and glance at reflections to see if I was being followed. If anyone looked at me funny, I’d stare them down. Whoever looks away first, wins. Yes. Two can play this game.

Trying to combat paranoia is like using mixed martial arts to fight a fly. An insect doesn’t care about your proficiency in arm bars. The only true act of offence is indifference. I-don’t-care-if-you-see-me naked. But trying not to care doesn’t make it true. Life becomes a rendition, an adaptation, an expedition to uphold an image.

Let me ask you this—if you’re acting naked, are you truly naked?

Can true creative expression be free from performance?

To create without performance is a striptease devoid of sexual enticement. It completes the same function—layers are ditched, vulnerability revealed, yet it’s starkly unalike. True nakedness requires no performance, just a shedding of layers.

I can’t tell you how many times in my life I’ve acted as if someone was watching me. As if a twenty-four-hour film crew hides along the edges of my peripheral vision. As if someone was hearing me speak, watching me listen, smelling for fear, feeling for the cracks in my act.

I’m watching you—the world whispers, but when I ask what it’s looking for, it doesn’t show curiosity but demand, not wonder, but measurement, it seems to say, ‘perfection.’ By definition, inadequacy is the enemy.

As a kid, I remember thinking that my journal entries would one day be hung up and displayed in museum galleries. In ignorant delight, I’d write for future spectators and rob myself of honesty. Whilst my inflated sense of self stood in the way, I think that something deeper got me to withhold the truth. It was the desire for control, even in a state of vulnerability, which had me clutching at the meaning of the words I penned down. Despite how I felt, I could always gather up a few phrases to twist tragedies into stepping stones that’d become ‘future inspiration.’ This may sound like a positive quality, but it cheated me of the full experience of the tragedies I faced. I wrote the same way an actor cries on stage. I performed for spectators in the back row, but I knew that the man behind that character cried differently when he was alone. I just never met him.

I’m watching you—and I’m glad you are, now.

I even play into it somewhat, flaunting myself like the world’s greatest exhibit. When I’m alone in front of the mirror I forget who it is I’m displaying for. Truths whelm over me in a way that tells me that the true you is undefinable. Any word slides off the surface of my soul the way light can’t be contained in clothing. It’s too fast, too bright, too elusive to hold fast to fabric. When I step away from the mirror, I fall back into my act.

The show must go on, but for who?

It’s strangely natural, the human ability to perform. The way we learn by imitation, a kind of mirrored rehearsal, seems to be the human way to broaden our depth. Every quality imitated and integrated becomes like another garment wrapped around our naked selves.

There comes a time when we must undress. Where we must take off our garb, along with our expectations, illusions, and preconceived notions.

Take off your idols
Take off the runway,
Take off the false flag, take off perception
Take off the allure, take off the unsure
Take off decisions I lack
Take off the fake deep, take off the fake woke
Take off the I'm broke, I care
Take off the gossip, take off the new logic
That if I'm rich, I'm rare
Take off the Chanel, take off the Dolce
Take off the Birkin bag
Take all that designer bullshit off and what do you have?

— Kendrick Lamar, Rich Spirit

Individualism is not the sum of the ornaments we decorate ourselves with. The passions, beliefs, friends, trends, fashions, accessories—don’t even touch it.

True individualism lies inside of us. In our souls, in the fabric of the unexplainable.

To undress is to confront your reflection, to feel the heat of your skin without the protection of a garment. It’s frightening, like standing in the centre of a crowded room, alone and exposed, and conquering the discomforting feeling of the audience’s eyes pointed at the crux between your legs.

To learn to be an artist is to pillage the great works that have come before us. A piece of writing, a musical phrase, a movie scene, until by some powerful joy, we cast off all pretences of adoration, of performance, and we create a work of our own.

Creativity is a striptease, except that you are stripping for yourself. Once you realise that you are the object of attention and the witnessing audience simultaneously, you can gain the courage to let the world see you, all of you. Finality is an illusion. You can change the way a cloud does, always true in shape but fleeting in solidness, and perhaps, in your undoing, see that this you, this naked, powerful you, is the only version worth being.

—iL.

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