How do you maintain a separation between yourself and the creative work?
I used to think this separation was essential. In some ways I still do, which is why I still release my albums under a pseudonym. This distinction allows me to put “Torres” to bed after a show or in a non-work setting. That personality works well for the stage but can be obnoxious when encountered in a non-performative space.
Having said this, the barricade between myself and the art, Mackenzie and Torres, is an imagined one and I don’t feel self-conscious anymore about letting the selves merge in my day-to-day. I guess this convergence could be characterized as method acting.
The world I conjure when I’m writing and recording an album is the same world I then take on tour. I step inside of it and inhabit in for two or three years at a time. It becomes me and I end up surrendering to it a lot more than I thought I would when I was just starting out. Mostly this merging of personas manifests in the color schemes I choose for my clothes and the types of foods I get obsessed with for months on end; everything happens in cycles. I spent a lot of this year letting go of the idea of a “true” self. It occurred to me that I am many selves and each of them is just as me as the next.
