Just a reminder:
You PROMISED you would show up tomorrow
So REALLY looking FORWARD to being with you
Much love in this DESOLATE and often TERRIFYING world
PERRY x
Dear Perry,
Thank you for inviting me to your show—and for the reminders. I appreciate that you don’t let people forget a promise. I get the impression you’re good like that.
You asked me to review opening night. Which is a bold thing to ask a stranger. But you’re a bold guy, Perry. While most of us are terrified, you’re out there in your gumboots and stained sweatpants, unafraid to break a sweat. Not just glistening—drenched. Red in the face, hair matted. That’s commitment. You don’t see a lot of that these days.
I don’t quite know how to describe it. I just know I want to understand you, Perry. You say so little, yet somehow, so much. Every “wow” and “oh my god” has me wondering: is Perry performing, or is Perry the performance?
Your jokes lead us by the imagination. You make the audience catch invisible fruit, hold the leash of your invisible dog. You’ve turned lip-smacking into a percussive lullaby. You set us up to expect one thing, then subvert it—vanishing fruit and the collapsing illusion—all pure imagination.
But I’m never quite sure what’s real. When your dear invisible dog, Ballsack, dies, I feel your agony. You ugly-cry with the same abandon I did in a McDonald’s drive-through when I found out my cat had been run over. Spit and all. It’s too raw not to be true.
There’s wisdom in your comedy, Perry. During that choreographed dance to the door-slamming compilation and the interlude with Darude’s ‘Sandstorm’, I saw your thespian roots. Napoleon Dynamite meets Mr. Bean, maybe? I’m not sure—I’m not erudite enough to say.
Yet, wisdom in a man with his pants hiked to his navel and dripping in perspiration feels . . . incongruous. But maybe I’m trying to make sense of the nonsense for my own comfort. To impose order where there should be chaos.
Maybe Perry isn’t a person at all, but an experience. Many facets wrapped in one windbreaker. You’re there to be witnessed, not explained.
In this desolate and often terrifying world, Godspeed, Perry.
Hannah x
