Regression

On the unexpected thrill of going backwards.

My adult life has been ruled by my deep fear of backsliding.

When I finally came into my skin in college I was terrified that I might one day slip and accidentally return to my insecure high school self—as if my newfound confidence was a magic spell that could disappear if I made the wrong move. This fear manifested into obsessive tendencies like refusing to step foot on my high school’s block, even donating clothes I used to wear. (Thank God for therapy).

Curiously, though, I’ve found myself practicing this extreme avoidance even for the most golden eras from my past. In my early twenties I had the most dreamy housing situation where I got to live with my dearest friends in a three-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn. Our home became a sort of Third Space, an open-door gathering spot where friends would just show up if they happened to be walking by. Our dinner parties—almost always captained by my culinarily gifted roommate Charlotte—set an impossible standard that I’ve compared every gathering to since.

Our life in that apartment was so fun, so vibrant, that I half-expected a wall might collapse at any moment to reveal a studio audience was watching us all along, tracking our triumphs and tribulations as young New Yorkers trying to Figure It All Out.

I’ve never been back to that apartment since we moved out nearly a decade ago. If I ever walk through that neighborhood I’ll make sure to take the long way so I can avoid passing by our old front door.

I can’t totally explain this—thank God therapy is ongoing—but if I had to take a stab, I’d say that I feel (or, more realistically, fear) that if I dwell too much on the past, good or bad, that I’ll become stuck and never grow forward.

But I’m not here to work out the why. That’s for a professional. I simply want to report to you the truth that I avoid emblems of my past at all costs.

In 2012 I joined a theater company called the New York Neo Futurists. At the time I felt creatively adrift, hungry to express myself, but completely unaware of how to take my first step. I was taking improv classes I could barely afford, spectacularly flopping at open mics, and filling notebooks with ideas that seemed doomed to never happen. The Neos appeared to me like a bell cutting through the din of my artistic confusion. Their ongoing late-night weekly show—in which they perform thirty short pieces in sixty minutes—was the weirdest, coolest, most engaging form of theater I’d ever seen.

The simplest way I can explain their style is this: they make performance art that’s experimental enough to feel fresh, but accessible enough to make sense to the drunk people who stumbled in from a nearby bar thinking they were seeing a sketch show. Some of their pieces have made me laugh til my stomach hurt, and others are so haunting I can’t get them out of my head. In the same evening you might see an explosive choreographed dance to a remix of the Mister Softee jingle right before another piece in which a performer calls up an ex to leave a heartbreaking voice message detailing how much they miss them. (Both of these examples are real and happen to come from the same company member: the great Ezra Reaves).

I was with the company for nearly four years and it was in those years that I finally felt like I became myself. So many of those strange, far-fetched ideas I was squirreling away in my notebooks finally found life on their stage. Through trial, error, and so (so!) much failure I got closer and closer to what I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it.

In 2015 I left the company to pursue other opportunities—opportunities that came from my video series Every Single Word, a YouTube project in which I edited down popular movies to only the words spoken by people of color. Which, it’s worth noting, I first created as a live piece for the Neo’s weekly show in 2014.

One thing led to another, and before I knew it, ten years had passed. That video series got me a job, my experience at that job inspired a podcast, the podcast became a book, and an unexpected, wonderful opportunity to write for television presented itself. (Reader please be advised: I just packed a decade into a sentence. You must know that there was an obscene amount of face plants, missteps, and soul-crushing disappointment along the way). It had been ten years away from the Neo Futurists.

I’m proud to report that my obsessive fear of going backwards never stopped me from dropping in once a year or so to catch one of their shows. Still, I was wary of re-joining them for all of the obsessive reasons I’ve detailed above. A backstep was the enemy of forward motion.

Or so I thought.

This August I found myself in a pretty low spot, creatively adrift and once again asking myself all the same questions I was wrestling with back in 2012. Who am I? What do I want to make? How can I make it?

I knew the answer. It was actually quite simple, but it would require me to push through an ancient fear.

Last night was my final performance of a three-week run in the company’s weekly show. I got to work with a whole new group of ensemble members, some of whom I’d never even met, all of whom had joined the company in the years since I’d left. Their energy and fresh ideas breathed new life into me. The show’s weekly deadlines allowed me to climb up into the attic of my brain and dust off ideas I’d written off as too weird, too impossible to produce. Some worked, others didn’t. Just like old times.

My joints ache. My sleep schedule is fucked. I am exhausted. I’m so glad I went backwards.

I’d like to think the path to self-actualization is a straight shot to a finish line but I wonder if it’s just an unwieldy, infinite squiggle that sometimes must loop around to familiar places which, if you’re lucky, will welcome you back with open arms.

Us in 2012

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