Performance Art

Charli xcx and internal voyeurs

Like everyone else, I discovered “party 4 u” by Charli xcx late last year—only a month or so before it was used on every edit on TikTok—and fell in love. Specifically with the part of the song that endlessly repeats “party on you” with that strange, melancholic synth (which starts at minute 2:49). The song is about a girl throwing a party in hope that her love will show up, something I’ve never done but can still relate to. Back when I had crushes, I went places just because I thought I might see them—the St. Patrick’s day celebration in the frat courtyard, the local mall, that one club meeting. I’ve experienced the anxiety-tinged rush moments before you might lock eyes with the boy that makes you blush.

People are now debating on what that “party on you” part of the song really feels like: making eye contact with someone you haven’t seen in years, the Uber home alone, the tension before a first kiss. That scene in Someone Great. Realizing that they will never again be the person you first met. I’m seeing compilations of people making eye contact with the ones that broke their hearts (Marianne and Connell in the grocery store, Daisy and Gatsby in the mansion, Harry and Sally at the New Year’s Eve party), compilations of disappointed women (Annie in Anora, Clementine in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Jo in Little Women). On TikTok, someone said it was like going to the bathroom at a party and realizing that you’re acting like a completely different person.

This year, I’ve been engaging with a lot of media about characters performing for an audience, though no one’s supposed to know that it’s all an act: Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins, where Haymitch pretends to be a rascal; The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett, with one sister pretending she’s white; The Traitors, where at least three people at any given moment are pretending to be faithfuls. One of the best portrayals of a woman in constant performance is Amy Dunne in Gone Girl—from the complex plot to frame her husband to the “cool girl” monologue, Amy shows that all her actions have been a meticulous performance, aimed to attract a man or destroy him.

These are obvious performances, ones we can see and point to as the reader/viewer. In real life, I rarely am able to catch a friend in a performance, likely because I’m always convinced by it. I’ve seen a friend playing up her ditziness when a boy’s around, another feigning a naïveté I don’t believe. But for the most part, I can’t tell when others are faking, yet I’m always thinking about my own acting.

I love to read, and I also love when people see me with a huge book and think I’m smart. Or catch me at the coffee shop diving into Joan Didion or Eve Babitz or Elena Ferrante, though I don’t need to be noticed with YA or Ali Hazelwood. I look back at my Instagram posts and try to see the pictures through the eyes of a stranger. When I pass storefronts, I analyze my posture.

In Foster Dade Explores the Cosmos by Nash Jenkins, the unnamed narrator went to the same school as the titular character, though the two never crossed paths. He chronicles Foster’s story through his diary entries, playlists, and some poetic license, occasionally inserting himself into the narrative, whether at interviews with Foster’s former classmates or to detail his own experience at the school. “If I am the central character in my own story, I am also its producer and audience, and sometimes one role trumps the other,” the narrator says. “In this case, I was honoring the script I’d written.”

I do sometimes perform in front of others, but maybe even more often, I do it alone. I think a contemporary take on it is that I’m romanticizing my life, imagining that there is an audience respecting my latte pour and seeing how fast I can type, but maybe it’s more so a fight against loneliness. Imagining a constant observer means someone is always with me. Or maybe, like the narrator says in Foster Dade Explores the Cosmos, I’m just my own audience.

Part of me is afraid that the roots of who I am are gone, that only the performance flowers in its place. Can I tell the difference between who I actually am and who I want others to think I am? This is most acute when reviewing my religious commitment to Max Sunday releases (Succession, The White Lotus): How much did I like it, and how much did I want others to know that I, too, participate in elevated pop culture?

This all reminds me of a quote that, surprisingly, was written by a man. In Ways of Seeing, John Berger says, “A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanies by her own image of herself. Whilst she is walking across a room or whilst she is weeping at the death of her father, she can scarcely avoid envisioning herself walking or weeping. From earliest childhood she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually.”

When I first read this quote, I was scared and relieved. Scared that I could be seen so wholly, relieved that it’s not just me. In his quote, Berger doesn’t blame me for the performance but blames society or our elders or whomever. It’s the result of conditioning, not my own self-obsession or insecurities. Is it something that goes away with age—I’m definitely thinking about myself less now than when I was in middle school—or something you deal with for forever.

I love all the theories about “party 4 u,” but the one in the bathroom realizing you’re not being your authentic self does not resonate. This song soundtracks something different in my eyes, something much more real. If I had to make a compilation of moments set to that part of “party 4 u,” this is what you’d see: me walking along Wilshire Blvd with my headphones failing to block out the honking, avoiding looking at each car as it passes by; Ubering alone to my friend’s apartment in Santa Monica, buttoning my sweater over whatever outfit I’m wearing to the bar; trudging through the sand, an ick that rivals chasing a ping pong ball. Some of the times I’m most aware of how I’m appearing yet unable to perform any other way.

The Weekly Browse

Reading so much for work I can’t even begin to name the titles. And also Bad Feminist by Roxanne Gay, whose collection of short stories Difficult Women is also amazing.

Listening to “Nothing Works” by Declan McKenna, “Love Me Anyway” by Chappel Roan, and “Don’t Delete The Kisses” by Wolf Alice.

Cuddling with the two most perfect creatures every shaped by God’s hands: my two English Sheepdogs Winnie and Oslo.