UVU Panel of Chris Purdie

For me, becoming a reflection of Chris Purdie involved a lot of surprise. Over the weeks of info and observations, I have thought about what I immediately connected to with Chris, our most obvious differences, etc., & it came out as intellectual ideas, like us having our conversion to the LDS church at the same age, our retrospective glances at lives we once pursued with vigor, & now remember with awe, & nostalgic "what ifs." But when sitting among a panel of other Chris Purdies so willing to speak, so prepared to expose him - as Chris Purdie, himself, requested - to a room tiered of tabled students & garish florescent lights, it became very clear to me what I cherish most about Chris Purdie. And it was nothing so concrete as a topic or event in time. 

With the dominant Chris Purdie on my left determined to be heard & understood, undaunted by his stories of testicular cancer & realities of offspring, & the reasonable, measured Chris Purdie down the table on my right, patiently explaining what the Chris Purdie experience may or may not be all about, I felt surrounded by a distinct sense of adulthood, an angular, crisp, unfaltering, sure, adult-sense of life & art, & it was then that I identified what was most Chris Purdie to me, & the less I felt it from the panel, the more overwhelmed I became by it, with a stronger need to represent it, to embody the side of Chris Purdie most incongruous to the whole Chris Purdie Project. 

Within the soft, black hoodie & stiff, gray work slacks, between the snug, knit cap & fleecy scarf, I started sliding. I slid down into a place brimming with childlike wonder & hesitation. To a sassy extrovert, it was like being six years-old again, where everything is impossibly new & magical, & the need to share it & be understood, so desperate, the sheer endeavor of communicating it was becoming painful. Taking in a breath, filling my response to another Chris Purdie, I would lean into the mic, & the fear of potentially being mistaken, or garbling my intentions, my visions, was like a hand over my mouth, covering all sound, & I would just hang, all over the mic, my silences heavy & awkward, mouth opened, body forward, thoughts racing, the desperation so pure & artless, I didn't even know how to cover them up. I could laugh, at the wry candidness of the other Chris Purdies, I could laugh, & it felt like bursts of relief, my mouth stretching back, elastic, so willing to endure the impulsive yanks of joy, but then back I slid into the conflict of needing to express, & the need almost paralyzing the expression.

When I finally did connect to a voice, my ideas came out in blurbs, sound bites that seemed only half-related to the current dialogue, but were so essential in my head, & the words landed on the audience like chunks of Styrofoam, "Herman's Heads!"  "Thirty-five, it's thirty-five!"  I could feel how uncomfortable my participation made the panel & the straining audience, & I thought "Yes! This is it! Be with me in this! This space, this glowing, unbearable space of hope & impending rejection! Don't move! Just sit here with me!" And it was in those humiliating moments that I felt we were most connected as a panel, as a room, as an experience, because we could not be sure any of the previous moments were a success in articulation or expression, or understanding, but in the gruesome silences that formed around my attempts to participate, was an undeniable sense of failure, & that was just straight-up uniting. 

The keen presence of both hope & the anxiety of potential failure, negotiating every moment, is what the Chris Purdie experience became for me at that panel discussion Thursday night.  And I thought of a comment Christopher Guest made about J.T. Walsh & his understated choices as a performer: "You have to have a lot of confidence to do nothing." And that night I realized it may not be about choosing to do nothing, choosing not to react, but a reaction so filled & complex with possibilities, that when it looks up, reaches out, it appears very simple & glassy, but is so alive & electric, can pulse across a room, and back again.   

Kat Mandeville