The Performativity Critique

daniel jacob self
May 6, 2024
2 min read

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❣️ Are you a current client? First time here?

I'm self conscious

I want to take a moment to talk about what you're going to hear here.

This is a place where, through the medium of heightened, poetic prose music, and sometimes even dance, everything from the minutia of day to day neuroses — so often written off as petty or melodramatic — to the depths of isolation and despair — so often obfuscated, lest it show us to be weak or sick or incapable — can be given voice without judgment.

Many of us silence these parts of ourselves, but especially, ironically, those of us who facilitate healing for others.

All of the philosophies and practices I share in my writing and my facilitation are the fruits of my own lifelong healing journey. The wisdom that I've been gifted by mentors and family and friends. The community around me and the community within me. All the parts of me: the angry, the hurt, the joyful, the resilient, the despairing.

So much of what I'm able to offer to those I work with comes from some initial moment of pain or discomfort in me that has led me to seek out greater wholeness. Which I'm then able to share with you: my community and my clients.

So often we see the fruits of a healing journey, but don't get any insights into the labor: the twists and turns along the way.

We see the shiny outcomes, but not the pain that often motivated us to seek the healing out in the first place, or keeps us committed to the work of collective healing.

So Self Conscious is, in essence, the place where I honor my 'uglier' sides. The parts of me, that in my journey of learning to care for them, have proven that old Leonard Cohen quote so very true.

"Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in."

Self Conscious is also the place where I honor my inner angsty teen and, let's be real, my inner angsty adult! I hope it might speak to yours as well.

However, please know that the monologues in Self Conscious, while based on my own experiences, are works of artistic expression.

Some of them come from different parts of my life. Some of them were written when I was much younger or are about experiences when I was much younger. Some of them are amalgamations of different moments in time, sometimes told with different details for the sake of the heart of the artistic expression of each piece.

As Pablo Picasso once said,

"We all know that art is not truth. Art is a lie. That makes us realize the truth. At least the truth that is given to us to understand."

So my only request in breaking with the norms that would encourage me to keep this form of artistic expression very separate from the rest of my work in this world is this:

If you are someone I work with in a coaching, therapeutic, or facilitating capacity, please take a moment to discern for yourself if you would like to hear these more vulnerable parts of my journey.

For some, it can be radically humanizing and affirming to hear being able to see the humanity and vulnerability of someone who holds space for us and offers guidance. For some, it can feel off putting or distracting: taking away from our experience of having a place we're able to go that can be wholly and fully about our experience without the complexities that can come from the awareness of another person's struggles, feelings, differences, and similarities.

So I ask you to give yourself the gift of discerning for yourself.

What would be most in alignment with your own healing journey right now?

And to remember that what you do here will not necessarily be current time, literal truth, but artistic expression: drawn from experiences across my lifetime— some of it expanded or shifted for artistic purposes.

All that being said... if you decide, you'd like to listen. I hope you enjoy.

I encourage you to listen with the parts of yourself that perhaps have always felt too melodramatic, or too much, too sensitive, or all alone in parts of your pain.

I hope you can laugh with me at the neuroses and perhaps cry with me at the moments of hopelessness. Some perhaps relatable and some perhaps very different to your unique travels through this sometimes beautiful, sometimes painful journey of life.

If you do proceed, thank you for receiving these vulnerable parts of me.

If you decide not to proceed, thank you for honoring what feels right to you right now.

If you do proceed, I hope if nothing else, these pieces resonate with and help certain vulnerable parts of you feel they deserve expression. No matter how small or how large.

And as always, please join in by commenting below.

I'd love to hear what you connect to, what you feel moved by, and what comes up for you as you listen.

Because ultimately...

I don't know.

What do you think?

I'm self conscious

This is just a rehearsal. Not the real thing.

Which I'm very grateful for because. In the real thing, my body will look different.

My body will move differently.

I will be dressed very differently.

My underwear will not peak out.

My hair will be done.

My makeup will be done.

I will look very magical.

And other worldly.

The setting will be right.

Not pedestrian.

Not so average.

I will not look so average.

I will not be so average.

...In the real thing.

But luckily this is just a rehearsal.

In the real thing, my glasses won't fly off and I won't hit the fucking lamp when I get excited.

In the real thing, when I get excited, my face won't look weird.

I won't be quite so embarrassingly hairy in the real thing.

My belly will be flatter and my arms will be bigger.

My sense of rhythm will be sharper.

My dancing will be far more engrossing.

I won't lose steam.

I won't lose the thread.

I hope, when it's time for the real thing...

It will come across just how much I love to dance.

I hope that the real thing will somehow leave people feeling empowered to let themselves dance like their bodies were made to, in whatever way: big or small or bombastic or subtle.

To allow themselves to follow the threads of movement and the spark of the flow of the rhythm of whatever song helps them feel a little more alive today.

I hope I'll know when it's over... When it's the real thing.

Thank god this is just a rehearsal.