magazines and newspapers

Seventeen interview

Izzy: There’s this line I like. ‘You’re utterly, irrecoverably yourself.’ You have to face that a lot when you’re just starting out. It’s easy to fall into thinking that what people see when they look at you is what’s really there. It’s not really thinking you’re suddenly god’s gift to music or that you’re the most gorgeous thing since sliced bread, because I know myself pretty well, I think. But you’re suddenly something different. It’s more important if your jokes are funny, it’s less important if they’re not. We have a job, in the end, selling some kind of an illusion, whether we choose to or not. You find yourself sometimes buying into that soft focus glamor view. You’re suddenly not that dork in the sparkly shirt who sings to himself in the elevator.

You have to remind yourself that people don’t really know you. You could be an asshole and they’d have no idea, and frankly it wouldn’t really matter much, either. And on the other hand of that, even Mother Theresa doesn’t deserve nine fifteen year old girls fainting just because she took off her shirt. People aren’t there because of you so much as they are because of themselves, something they want or need or like. And you, you’re still who you are, a little different but still you. Irrecoverably. It’s a good word.

Q: Did you have anything to help you remember that?