A Quote by Miles Heizer
Growing up, I felt like I couldn't talk about certain things until I had the outlets to do so. Once you're able to be honest and say things as they are, it removes this crazy stigma and fear around it.
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Well, I don't want to talk too much about my children, but a friend of one of my children, something really terrible happened to her. I just felt like I had to speak about growing up again, because I felt that there's no way I can talk about difficulties of life. I had to talk about possibilities.
Growing up in the '70s and '80s, science fiction and especially fantasy had such a stigma attached to them. I felt so punished and exiled for being devoted to these things.
I always say I never felt 'latched' to a gender. I just kind of always felt like myself, and I never felt like I had to do certain things or be a certain way to fit into a certain mold.
The truth is that I'm an idiot. I am. I don't do things by the rules sometimes. I say things that I probably shouldn't say. I push buttons. I deserve to be made fun of. And I feel like, as soon as you can make fun of something, it instantly removes the fear.
I grew up in the north woods of Canada. You had to know certain things about survival. Wilderness survival courses weren't very formalized when I was growing up, but I was taught certain things about what to do if I got lost in the woods.
With comedy, I try to steer toward, you know, talking about people that do crazy things, messed-up things. That's what I like to talk about.
For policemen to be honest about the fact that they may be fearful when they come into a certain situation, not understanding what's going to happen. The only way things will change and things will get better is if people are able to be honest without feeling like they're going to be offended, or they're going to offend someone else.
I've heard other gay people say when they were growing up they felt 'foreign.' Growing up, I was able to label these feelings as: 'I'm a Protestant.' It wasn't until I left, I thought: 'Oh, those weren't Protestant feelings.'
I've actually found - especially doing my cabaret show - I'm connecting with people in a way I haven't connected with them. I've found that when you're open and honest, people respond to that, whatever you're being open and honest about. You could then, when you lay that as the groundwork, say, "Here I am. This is what I think. I come in peace." Then you're able to push out, to be able to talk about more things. And that's been a really heartening thing about my life, actually.
I've made a career out of being able to talk about difficult things, and that comes from growing up in an environment where nothing was embarrassing.
It's incredible when women tell me that they've read things that I've said or have been inspired by things that I've done. To hear them say that because of something I did, they felt more positive about themselves and or had more of a voice to stand up for things that were right. It's been empowering for me to be able to help other women feel that way about themselves.
I chose the name "Padded Room," because, when I'm in the booth, it would be the padded room. When I'm in the booth, I can say a lot of things and speak about a lot of things that normally I wouldn't be able to speak about to a friend or to family or to a crowd. A lot of times, the things that I say, if you had to categorize it, they would probably call me nuts or crazy. So, you add that aspect of "The Padded Room," which would be almost like an insane asylum.
Growing up in Texas, I was already dealing with the fact that I didn't even know I was Asian until a certain age. I just was informed about it in a somewhat negative way by my peers. And that immediately put me into that mindset where I felt very othered. My safety always felt like it wasn't something that I could consider a given.
I saw the discrimination that was happening towards Middle Easterners, Muslims and other brown people who had nothing to do with 9/11. It suddenly felt like a duty of mine to talk about some of the crazy things that were going on and make fun of how stupid it was.
There was things just like not being able to date or - I'm talking like 15, 16 - like just certain things that my friends started to do. Like, they started to get phone calls from girls or like, you know, go and hang out 10, 11 at night, kind of going to the movies. There were just certain things that - it's not that I couldn't do all of those things. It's just that every choice was really deliberate and conscious and thought out and sort of balanced against the religion in a way where I felt - I wasn't necessarily trying to convert at 12 like [my mother] was.
If you're able to grow up in Nigeria and go through certain things, you're able to tackle anything around the world because you're able to live wherever, if you can survive in a city like Lagos or Warri or Niger Delta, as far as I'm concerned.
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