A Quote by Perfume Genius
It used to be enough for me to get on stage and sing. I kind of crave the performance part now. I write knowing it's going to happen, which I didn't do before.
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When I was a kid, and God was talking to me about music, I was like, 'Okay, I'll sing mainstream music,' because I was afraid to sing Christian music to alienate my friends. Honestly, it was going on 'Idol,' having that kind of exposure, that I realized there's something different about me. I just crave God being a part of every moment.
When the Spirit illuminates the heart, then a part of the man sees which never saw before; a part of him knows which never knew before, and that with a kind of knowing which the most acute thinker cannot imitate.
My mum and dad used to make me stand up at dinner parties and sing to their friends. I had this conservatory in my house - three steps went to up to kind of a raised part of our kitchen. I used it as the stage. Every night after school I used to download backing tracks of songs I loved and perform to myself. My mum was trying to cook and I was pretending I was at the O2 arena.
Everything's serendipitous and there's no way of knowing who's going to get sick or who's going to get hit by a bus or who's going to fall in love and who's going to get pregnant. All the things that happen, it's up for grabs so it's kind of an exercise in surrender in a way.
We all get to choose where we set up the stage of our lives - before the Crowds, the Court, the Congregation, the Critics (inner or otherwise)-- or the Cross of Christ. All except One will assess your performance. Only One will accept you before your performance ... Only in Jesus is there 100% acceptance before even 1% performance.
I think I don't sing as hard as I used to sing. I used to kind of hit the accelerator a lot back in my youth, but now it's just being able to control it, and not work it so hard and use more of an emotional or sub textual kind of approach to singing.
My books happen. They tend to blast in from nowhere, seize me by the throat, and howl 'Write me! Write me now!' But they rarely stand still long enough for me to see what and who they are, before they hurtle away again. And so I spend a lot of time running after them, like a thrown rider after an escaped horse, saying 'Wait for me! Wait for me!' and waving my notebook in the air.
Do you know what it took for Balanchine to put me, a black man, on stage with a white woman? This was 1957, before civil rights. He showed me how to take her [holding her delicately by the wrist]. He said, ‘put your hand on top.’ The skin colors were part of the choreography. He saw what was going to happen in the world and put it on stage.
Whenever I'm waiting behind the stage, it's kind of like my normal Jackie mode is me talking a lot, playing around, but superstar Jackie mode is me concentrating on making sure that this performance was going to be a great performance.
Till 'Mulk' and 'Article 15,' I used to deny that there is a change. Now I feel there is certainly a change, what kind of change, I don't know. Now I get attracted to different things - story or a performance. Earlier I used to get attracted to grand visuals, size of the film and how big the starcast was. Now I am not attracted to these things.
Veggies and fruit are known to harbor bacteria, and so your body naturally wants to avoid them. I used to beat myself up about trying to get enough fresh food and protein like I did before getting pregnant. But then I resigned myself to the fact that my body is going to crave what it needs.
In real life we don't know what's going to happen next. So how can you be that way on a stage? Being alive to the possibility of not knowing exactly how everything is going to happen next - if you can find places to have that happen onstage, it can resonate with an experience of living.
I can certainly be surprised by turns a story takes, but usually not once I'm actually in the writing/drawing stage. In the plotting stage, anything can happen. That's why I try to finish that part before I start writing. I may be exaggerating here - I'm sure there are times when I think of something part-way through that changes the story, but the ultimate outcome doesn't change. Or not yet. It could always happen.
I always used to sing in the house and I went to school at Hywel Dda Primary School in Ely. I think they had a puppet-type show there and word got around I could sing. I sang at that puppet performance and used to sing in school. From there, it was in my blood. I didn't want to do anything else but sing.
I used to get the girl; now I get the part. In 'The Quiet American' you may have noticed I got the part and the girl. It's a milestone for me, because it's the last time I'm going to get the girl.
I've worked with actors before where I was like, this is not working, and then I've seen their work on the screen and I've been like, Wow, that was a really great performance. Because there are a lot of elements with film. It's not like stage. It's not a kind of performance art anymore; it's a highly tuned kind of collaboration - a symphony.
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