The Maine Attraction

Duane Park, The Bowery

I just miss hearing the audience live reaction. You know, the gasps, the laughter, the whistles, the “Yeah baby!” you know, and the applause. I miss those moments. I miss being backstage with performers that make me want to be a better performer and standing behind the curtain or peeping around the corner and having VIP access in a way, you know, standing behind a curtain or watching an aerialist above your head is the most amazing experience.

It's like being in a snow globe. What I've been finding is that whenever I've been asked to do numbers that are for the BIPOC shows that they're coming more from a place of tapping into my ancestral spirituality and healing connectivity. Coming from an element of healing rather than coming from an element of protest. I'm thankful to the people that have been on the front line protesting in that way, because I haven't been able to because my wife has asthma.

So I had to keep her very safe. So at the beginning, the numbers that I would present for online shows were political to a certain extent. But now I feel like there's an aspect of me that's coming from a more healing element and whether that be healing through movement, a mood and a feeling, it's bringing back a little bit of humor because I do think it's important when times are so intense to laugh at some of it, you know, because it can really weigh on your shoulders if you if you can't laugh at it.

They're not like in a manic kind of laughter way, but just like a ‘Well dang…’, you know? Like, ‘oh, well, let’s go…let's find an outlet to all of the trauma’. I think that right now I'm feeling that I need to just do some self-care in that way. I'm not done being political. To be honest, a lot of the artists during the Civil rights movement to present day have been on the front line of the movement. So I don't feel like I'm doing anything different than what I know I should be doing.

Nina Simone said that if your art doesn't reflect what's going on in your time then you are not doing your job as an artist. I think that when I was younger, I would rely on my ‘funny’. Then I realized that knowing that my parents grew up during segregation and had to drink from black-only fountains and saw their friends get hosed and, you know, chased and bitten by dogs.

Luckily, that didn't happen to them, but knowing that that was the way that they…that was their reality. And marching from Selma to Montgomery with Dr. King, I was like, I can't…not with my lineage. I can't just be the funny girl. I have to show up for my ancestry and I have to show up for I have to show up for our generation.