Losing It
On the Acconci mentality, birthdays, overwhelm, and other abstractions
In the middle of a book tour (after relearning how mysteriously exhausting and energizing it is) I texted a friend of mine who performs for a living to ask how she could possibly do anything like this for months at a time.
Her response—
Coincidentally my birthday is also this weekend, but the most ideal way I’ve ever spent it is by attending other people’s parties, incognito. It happened a few years ago— I went to a toddler’s birthday during the day and another friend’s birthday dinner that night. It was, in every way, perfect— a celebratory feeling without the burden of being the focal point.
My ideal book event, as it turns out, is similar. For the launch of Biography of X (at the new-ish bookstore P&T Knitwear last month) I asked three performers to pretend to be a novelist answering questions at her book launch.
I sat in the audience, delighted. The original idea was that I wouldn’t appear at all, that these…