Before the performance starts, have the performer playing “John” say this: John, Bob, and Mike walk into a bar. However, the bar is John’s brain, and Bob and Mike are some of the voices in his head. Herb is a surprise character that will help us later. The audience is welcome to play any true crime podcast of their choosing while this act happens to help simulate intrusive thoughts coming in.
Personal Notes:
This movement plays a lot on stereotypes in film writing, B movie-acting, and especially what the internet deems as “American culture.” It entirely plays up the satire and dryness of certain things, including meeting at a dive bar (family guy reference), dry humor, dad jokes, sarcasm, typical 4 character group dynamics found in many popular shows, amongst other things. All of this “dry” humor got layered on top of the noisy backing track, which consists of pieces I wrote and me recording the inside of a Starbucks for 4 and a half minutes (very American), to really make the piece a pain to listen to for most. Also, I totally did not use ChatGPT to help me come up with the really bad jokes.
This piece is part of a larger work titled "i see, hear, taste, smell and feel everything and i cant stop it" by Jaeyoung Lee. It contains 5 movements, representing hallucinations in each of the 5 senses respectively. The amount of ‘elements’ in each section will be based off of the 54321 coping mechanism taught in therapy, which is used as a grounding technique. Grounding techniques help a person reorient and stay in the present. It is especially good for helping with incoming panic and anxiety attacks. This technique asks for you to identify 5 things you can see, 4 things you can feel, 3 things you can hear, 2 things you can smell, and 1 thing you can taste. Thus, the movement for sight has 5 elements in the title, touch has 4, etc.
Unofficial name- white man schizophrenia