Pepe Says Hi (Patreon)

Oh, hey, I never actually wrote anything about my drag debut!
The short version is: I fucking loved it.
My first act was...fine. My look came together pretty well, but not quite as well as I'd hoped and the costume was so tight I could barely move.



That combined with first time jitters (or, you know, terror) made for just an ok performance. Or possibly a bad one. I'm not sure.
But I fucking love the song I was performing to and Maggie said it was the most scorpio act she'd ever seen. So it couldn't have been all bad.




My second act, featured in the above video, was fucking great though. Drag is pretty much all costumes and stage presence so having a costume I was happy with and could move in made a huge difference. And the song itself really captured everything I needed this act to be. 

You may have noticed something I've been working on is taming my perfectionism and letting my art be more fun. Trying drag was always meant to be a part of that. Drag has way less logistics to worry about. You only need one costume. You don't have to worry about taking it off. Your look and makeup has to be over the top, but it doesn't have to be precise. More than anything, there is no pressure to be pretty or sexy, which is *very* freeing.




The reason that a lot of artists I admire recommend learning new skills is to retain the joy of being an amature and giving yourself permission to be bad at something.
I pretty much never give myself permission to be bad at anything, which has done me no favors. BUT pretending to be Courtney Love *is* permission to be bad. In fact, it is required. It's kind of why I started liking her music in the first place.

Whatever way you feel about her music, it's just sort of a technical fact that she's not good at singing. She consistently misses notes, and they're *her notes* that she wrote for herself to sing. And I'm not talking about live versions, I mean studio versions. The result of, I assume, many takes. She's just sort of empirically bad but that doesn't stop her from making music. I would argue that it doesn't stop her from making good music, which is a pretty impressive feat. (And one which men are given WAY more chances to attempt.)

When her song Malibu was on the radio a lot, I really liked singing along to it and trying to be exactly as bad as she was. It started as a joke, but it ended up being really fun. So fun that I bought the album and that's how I started liking her music. None of that was in my mind when I chose to perform to the song, but that spirit permeated the process. After years of killing myself to make costumes that were perfect, costumes that looked expensive and came apart in creative ways, I was giddy to make a costume by safety pinning together things from my closet. The rest of the costume was made from a plastic tablecloth, the scraps of an old t-shirt, and random shiny things that I hoarded like a trash goblin. I'm pretty sure I paid fifty cents for my wig, about a decade ago. You can't really tell from the photos, but the finishing touches on my makeup were hello kitty and star stickers.

It was FUN. And then I got to go onstage and just roll around in that punk-rock-not-pretty-ness. It was also a great way to just focus on the performance, my stage presence, and my connection with the audience. I think that made for a really great performance.

I don't know if it's an avenue that's going to lead to IMPORTANT ART but I think it's something I should pursue further.