My sister looks like me if I weren't good at anything. She got a new identity card but she misplaced the card, now her identity isn't wrapped in plastic, but is nonetheless cushioned by the fearful memory of a disbelieving mother. Somehow I thought she'd never challenge my spot on top of this mountain, and in a way I liked it better when I couldn't relate to anyone. One day, I told her how to use toothpaste and my mom looked like a train had run over her; in a moment she knew she'd never known what she was doing.

And these things make me think I'm something special because they happen often, but when you say "it's just your imagination," that's the worst thing you could say to an artist, and also the most flattering.

I have no peers, only people who look like me but don't act the same way, and the ones I could consider are either fictional or I'm in love with them, and sometimes the two converge. When you're the child of left and right, you live your life between two worlds, but as they say, you can't be friends with everyone, and what they mean is: everyone can be your friend, but you can't be everyone's friend.

I'm too high for the world below, too low for the world above, so I stand in the space between an idea and its execution. When people get to my age they either let go of the dream, or simply don't believe, but I'm still here, and it's still in me, and I don't know if my ambition is naiveté or premonition. Sometimes I think I'm a great author reincarnated in a time when I'm not great, but if the consensus comes from people who don't even know my name, will I ever be great?

This isn't art, it's artifice.