I felt like, for so many years - and I still even feel it - as a girl, you can't really expect to go on stage and dress like a boy and jump around and scream with the audience and mosh and stuff, and every time that happens, I feel really proud.
My standup is years and years of me working things out on the road. I'm really proud of it! A lot of it is about, well... I don't know why I feel this way, but I feel like every special or show I do is some variation on how I feel like I'm not a girl, not yet a woman.
When you really do feel like an alien, and you really do feel like a space creature, and you really do feel you want to experiment and dress up and be different every day, to find what looks best but never stick to one thing... Just the fact that that was offered to those kids during that time is pretty remarkable.
I feel like with everything you do, everything you make, everything you experience, y'know, even the dumb stuff that you don't even really pay much attention to, like the mundane stuff that happens to you every day, it shapes the person who you are.
I don't think I'm prepared for life in the spotlight. I don't even think I'm really prepared now, but I still don't really feel like I'm in the spotlight a lot. I'm not a household name. I'm not followed around by paparazzi. I still have a very normal life. I'd love as many people to know and like my music as possible, but there's something quite lovely about being able to still go and watch your boys play football.
It's like you're wearing a really amazing dress and high heels and you've just gone to the hair salon and gotten a facial and you feel fabulous, and then someone says, You look really awful. You're thinking, Was I completely delusional? That's what having Lyme disease feels like. It was very lonely and for many years I just didn't talk about the way I felt because I assumed if there's nothing wrong on paper, maybe this is just the way a human is supposed to feel, and I'm just complaining about it.
If I feel really authentically in my body, then everything seems to click. But, sometimes I can only get into that, if the atmosphere is already conducive to that with the sound and all that stuff. There are moments where, as a performer, you're on stage and you feel like you're exactly where you're meant to be in the universe. It's a rare and beautiful thing when it happens.
It seems like every time I start to feel good, something really awful happens. It's like... it's really terrible.
I feel like every five to seven years I really need to put myself in this position of discomfort and exploration, just to survive. Otherwise I feel like I'm falling asleep, like I'll go crazy if I don't do it.
I can get into my own head [and] not have to really envision that girl. I am that girl and I know what I want something to feel like and move like. It's really inspiring, of course, to see so many girls wearing the line and I love their take on it, it almost feels like this religion or something at this point. It's really exciting.
I still get stage fright every time. I also feel very, very sleepy about a minute before we go on. Like I feel like I'm going to fall asleep. I can't explain it. It's sort of like, "Where's the energy going to come from to play this show?" Then all of a sudden you step up and there it is, it's like it's waiting for you.
The actual process of travel I really like, because that time on planes and in airports makes me feel like I'm moving around like a ghost. There's a certain aspect of justifiable downtime. I really feel like being online is so pervasive now.
Every time I go to work, I feel like it's the first time; I feel terrified and excited and exhilarated and like a deer in the headlights. I think: how do I do this? And then it just happens. Like riding a bike, you know?
I feel like I'm a boy, but I don't feel like I should've been born with different parts of my body or anything like that. I feel like it's just all in how I dress and how I talk and how I look and feel, and that makes me happy.
Something happens when you feel that energy and excitement from the audience. And you do, I don't know, four pirouettes. You jump higher than you ever have. And it's just this really magical thing that happens in those moments.
It took me a long time to realise that I was a girl as a teenager. At that point I never really believed it. I looked like a boy for a long time. Now, finally, I feel like a woman.
I absolutely do prefer a dominant guy. I play a very dominant role in my life, in every other aspect of it. And I like to feel like a lady still, at some point. I feel like that's the time when a guy really gets to be a man, and I get to be a woman. And if I'm being a man in the bedroom too, there's nothing really in it for me.