“Attention embarrasses me. I don’t like to be on display.” Barbara Stanwyck

That’s the irony of creative expression, isn’t it? Attention is vital, yet it’s a double-edged. Too much and it cuts into your psyche, too little and the artist withers into obscurity. No wonder people develop a public face and a private. And yet…no matter how hard we try…

This is a confession. All the dead queens and dionysian poets who haunt this place, the bugbears and hobbyhorses, the great actors and Master Bettys, all the ghostly performances, some good, some awful; heroines and heroes overthrowing tyranny with witty one-liners; young women bravely stepping out to claim liberty and equality in a new world wearing see-through dresses and pearls, while crowds cheer yet another emperor‘s new clothes (eye-witness accounts being no more or less true than fantasy); all the pleasure gardens and painted illusions, the aching arcs of beauty and the secrets kept between the lines, are for someone in particular, who can’t see or talk about them any more.

Pippa Rathborne, actor, blogger, narrator

You can listen to Pippa read “It’s in His Kiss” on SoundCloud. And while we’re musing about the glare of the spotlight, before there was an Internet or Social-Media, there still was intensive scrutiny. This is a fascinating glimpse into a private life…

…behind a very public face by Richard Brody of The New Yorker.