Inspired by Interview Magazine, a Q&A with myself on returning to familiar places, flirting with high fashion, and embracing the overwhelming wonder that is awe.
KD: Sorry to bother you, but I’d like to get to know you.
KD: Bother away.
KD: Where are you right now?
KD: Sitting at the kitchen table in the house I grew up in. New Jersey.
KD: Okay, Jersey girl. Do you feel a sense of nostalgia being home?
KD: Not particularly. NJ is a pretty intense place, energy-wise. Every time I return it jangles my nerves a bit. The older I get, the more sensitive I am to sound and everything is very loud here.
KD: [laughs]
KD: Ironically, I do have fond memories of being loud though – running around barefoot outside in the summer, biking around the neighborhood with friends, shooting hoops or playing baseball. I talked a lot of trash, took up a lot of space, laughed in people’s faces.
KD: How very New Jersey of you.
KD: Exactly, and now I understand how abrasive that can be.
KD: Sounds like you were just a wild child having fun.
KD: I was, and now my idea of fun includes a lot of solitude. Hiking and traveling solo brings me great joy.
KD: You recently reconnected with friends in the Dominican Republic and Washington, DC though, right? What was it like to spend time with people who knew you from a different time?
KD: It was incredibly healing. We all have histories, and on a grand scale, they are simply tiny moments we share for a short while. But I was surprised at the depth of connection that remains even when we all move on separately and away. There is still something that magically holds us.
KD: Yeah, it’s almost like that space still exists, that it will always exist if you decide to show up.
KD: Even cooler – we can carry those timelines forward as the new and improved people we’ve become.
KD: Who would you say you’ve become?
KD: [laughs] More compassionate.
KD: That’s it?
KD: I’ve become a person who is just as passionate about the people in my life as the creative work I do. I think I’ve always been desperate for both, but you know, being vulnerable with people is a lot more difficult than being vulnerable for your work, which is intimacy at a distance.
KD: Ah, so the proximity of being seen?
KD: I suppose that’s a good way to put it.
KD: In that spirit of expression, I hear you have a new obsession with high fashion, watching the recent Louis Vitton and Gucci fashion shows and seeing Tom Ford’s Battle of Versailles exhibit at The Met in New York.
KD: I do! I’ve been extremely interested this year in the ways we express emotion beside using our words. Music, photography, and now fashion – all art that emotes silently, and for someone who process emotions with language, I’ve been attracted to what has never been second-nature for me: the unspoken.
KD: That’s so cool.
KD: It’s a vibe, as they say.
KD: Right, the ability to express emotion without the need to explain it.
KD: I have deep admiration for people who are emotionally secure enough to do that. Artists may be sensitive, but they’re also incredibly safe within themselves, a freedom almost, that allows them to take creative risks.
KD: What’s the last creative risk you’ve taken?
KD: Taking a mirror selfie in the upstairs hallway of my parent’s house. I was rocking a black blazer over a red, white, and black patterned romper. It was very beach business-esq.
KD: [laughs] Why was that risky?
KD: It felt really silly. Like, here I was taking fashion photos of myself in a hotel in DC two weeks ago and now I’m a full-grown adult doing the same thing in my childhood home.
KD: Seems like the new you was very out of place.
KD: Maybe that’s it. Or a weird time warp of doing a very teenage thing, now, when you would never catch me doing such a thing when I was an actual teenager.
KD: Well, it sounds like creative risks for you these days are risks in self-expression. Would you say that’s accurate?
KD: Yes. It goes back to the proximity of intimacy, and allowing more of myself to be seen more easily by more people.
KD: Ok, one more question before we wrap this up: what’s next for you?
KD: I don’t live too far into the future anymore. It’s more like what’s now?
KD: So what’s happening now for you?
KD: A lot of pleasant surprises that have brought me tremendous joy and gratitude.
KD: Like what?
KD: I’ll spare you the details, but I will say —
KD: Hey, I thought you were working on being more seen and accessible?
KD: [laughs] Working on it.
KD: C’mon!
KD: Creative risks are also creative choices.
KD: Fair enough.
KD: I will say that the universe is the ultimate party planner. I believe that it wants us to have fun in this life, and sometimes we just have to surrender to what it delivers. Because when it does, it floods you with awe and wonder. It truly is beyond your imagination, and then all of a sudden, it’s real.
KD: And everyone is in on it!
KD: Yeah, there are definitely people who conspire with the world to make it happen.
KD: And yet, it’s impossible to know how it happened.
KD: Impossible to know. And there is so much beauty in not knowing sometimes.
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