Sep 15, 2015

I may have done myself a disservice yesterday in quickly dismissing my interest in diverse points of view; as with many things that make artists who they are, this is a complex question.

When I was young, I had few friends. I was the weird kid in school whom even the other weird kids didn’t want to have anything to do with. I can clearly remember sitting on the stoop to the door in the back of my junior high school during recess, reading a book while the other students were playing on the field (or standing around exchanging gossip). Even when I did start making friends, I always had the feeling that they really didn’t care about me, didn’t understand who I was (a point of view born of bitter experience); I still felt as though I didn’t belong, a feeling that hampers my relationships to this day.

In short, despite being a straight white male, surely the most privileged group in modern western society, I have always felt like an outsider. It is, perhaps, this feeling of not belonging that attracts me to characters usually considered “other” as my main characters.

How does somebody become so alienated from who he is? In my case, I believe it was a combination of nature (my genetic inheritance) and nurture (the family life of my youth). I will explore these issues over the next couple of days.