Folks ask me why I wear a flimsy white dress, white face paint, and messy lipstick when I perform. They ask me this often enough that I think about it regularly.

When I leave my house to do a performance at a show, at an open mic, or on the street, I’ll be wearing my normal clothes. Unassuming pants. A solid, muted t-shirt. Neutral and nondescript. These are the clothes I wear when I am Ben. And when I am Ben, which is most of the time, I do things a certain way. I know that Ben speaks like this, he thinks like this, feels like this, walks and eats like this. Shits like this. Laughs like this. Sometimes constipates his anger like this. He has painful memories and joyful memories. He has particular beliefs about himself, others, and the imagined future.

Underneath my pants and shirt, like Superman's costume hiding within the shell of Clark Kent's business suit and precocious demeanor, there is a frilly, limp tutu and some aging tighty-whitey underwear that probably should have been replaced a few months ago. A German friend once saw the underwear drying on my laundry rack and told me that there is a German phrase for such underwear. I don’t remember the term, but roughly translated it means underwear that exterminates sexual desire. The anti-aphrodisiac.

Anyhow, Ben is a role that has been constructed over the course of thirty years. He gives me an identity and helps me find a place in the world. Having an identity is useful, even necessary. How would you get a bank account or a job if you didn’t have an identity? How would you have friends or lovers?

Identities help us to live, but they can also box us in if they become too rigid. If they don’t yield to change and growth, they will cause us pain and cut us off from the broad scope of what life has to offer.

Having an identity necessarily limits our experience. This limitation has its advantages and disadvantages.

The identity we assume tells us, We are like this and we are not like that. We can do these things but we don’t do those things. We like these people, but not those people. Life is like this and it is most definitely not like that.

For me, the ideal is to have an identity that is fluid and flexible, one that will be a carrier of whatever qualities are chosen in a given moment, rather than holding onto one set of traits exclusively and pushing away anything that challenges my identity.

When I am wearing a silly dress and sloppy makeup, I feel so ridiculous that I automatically take myself less seriously. It helps me to temporarily detach from the identity I assume in daily life and distance myself from the limitations of thought, feeling, and behavior that come with that identity. It doesn’t exactly help me to be someone else. It helps me to access qualities of myself that don’t always get full expression in my day-to-day life. I think we all have inner aspects that swim and swirl within us that don’t get to be fully expressed, because if we let them hang all out with no holds barred, we would all seem absurd.

Because we all have absurdity within us.

If we don’t find an outlet for that dammed-up dimension of our being, it will well up. It will fester. It will start pounding on the doors of our hearts and minds. We’ll either have to deal with it or distract ourselves from it. Enter drugs, booze, TV, excessive eating, endless web-surfing, or whatever else serves to divert our attention from the unresolved facets of our inner worlds. If the psychological constipation goes on long enough, it’ll wreak havoc. Nervous breakdown. Midlife crisis. Volcanic outbursts of anger. Torrential downpours of depression. Pervasively disruptive anxiety. That which is inside will eventually come out, one way or another.

Wearing the dress and makeup helps me to access that inner world and channel it into outward expression.

What happens when that happens?

Almost every time, it feels uncomfortable. Mentally, emotionally, and viscerally unnerving. Before a performance, my breathing will get all funked up. My stomach will knot up. Anxiety will swarm my thoughts. Why did I come here? What the hell am I doing? This is going to go terribly. This is the identity’s resistance. The identity--you could also call it the ego--realizes that it is going to be challenged, so it puts up a fight. It makes me feel nervous and tells me to run, go home, don’t go out, don’t be silly. I am realizing this right now, as I write these words.

Sometimes I listen to that voice. I throw in the towel and stay home. I wouldn’t say that’s wrong or bad. But it doesn't leave me feeling well.

What happens when I don’t listen to the identity’s resistance? What happens when I say fuck it, let go of my inhibitions, and do the thing anyway?

It feels great. Freeing. Not all of the time, but most of the time. Increasingly often the more I do it.

Even if a performance doesn’t connect with the audiences as I would like it to--there have been many performances that tanked--it still feels liberating to temporarily release my self-imposed limitations and allow myself to be myself, however I want to be in that moment. The resultant state of being resembles that of a child who is playing freely, before they have absorbed and been possessed by the conditioning they’re given by parents and society.

Before the child is conditioned to behave in accordance with the expectations of others, they are free to be themselves. Because of that, they can more easily play with life. The more we play with life, the more engaged we will be with it, as opposed to being disengaged, apathetic, resentful, or disheartened.

When we are playing with life, we stop fighting life. We stop fighting ourselves. When we are playful, we automatically accept the present circumstances as they are and do what we can to interact with them positively, creatively, and constructively. Consequently, we enter a state in which we enjoy and appreciate ourselves, life, and those around us. We can operate from a standpoint that supports and uplifts life.

That’s why I wear the tutu.

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