S1 E03

Morgan Bassichis:
The Labor of the Face

Performer Morgan Bassichis talks about the drama of sealing an envelope and the pleasure of leaving parties early.

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Morgan Bassichis is a comedic performer whose recent shows include Nibbling the Hand That Feeds Me in the 2019 Whitney Biennial, Klezmer for Beginners at Abrons Arts Center (2019), Damned If You Duet at the Kitchen (2018), and More Protest Songs! at Danspace Project (2018). Morgan has presented work at the New Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, Hirshhorn Museum, MoMA PS1, the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art. They have contributed writing to Artforum, Radical History Review, Captive Genders, and the 2019 edition of The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions (1977).

NEIL GOLDBERG: What’s the salutation you want? You’re probably very flexible about salutation.

MORGAN BASSICHIS: Oh, yeah. I’m like, well, actually, that’s not true. I definitely, if people just say, “Morgan comma”, it scares me. I’ll spend the next couple of hours and I’ll be like, “Everything’s falling apart,” and it’s like, “No, I just got an email that just said Morgan, kind of. That’s it. That’s all that’s happening.” You get emails when you’re a teenager that, “Morgan, come to the principal’s office?”

NEIL: Hello. I’m Neil Goldberg and this is my new podcast, SHE’S A TALKER. On today’s episode I’ll be talking to brilliant comedic performer Morgan Bassichis, but first I want to tell you a little bit about the podcast itself. I’m a visual artist, but for the last million or so years I’ve been writing passing thoughts down on index cards. I’ve got thousands of them. I originally wrote the cards just for me or maybe to use in future art projects, but now I’m using them as prompts for conversations with some of my favorite artists, writers, performers, and beyond. I’ll usually start each episode with some recent cards, but since this episode is going to air the day after Halloween, I thought I would break out a couple of cards related to Halloween.

NEIL: The first one is, the pleasure of Halloween for me as a young gay boy was getting a peek inside neighbors’ homes to see how they decorated. I was super not into Halloween as a kid. There was something about whatever got unleashed when people wore costumes. I felt it was really important personally to stay leashed, probably connected to my gayness. But I did love when you would ring a neighbor’s bell, and they’d opened the door, and it’d be like, “Oh, okay. They’re doing that with the wallpaper.”

NEIL: My other Halloween-related card is, I wasn’t prepared for the responsibility of trick-or-treaters asking me how much candy they could take. We live in a big apartment building. You can sign up downstairs for whether you want the kids in the building to knock on your door to trick-or-treat. We go for it, if for no other reason than we have this black cat, and we kind of feel a responsibility to be Halloween citizens. What I wasn’t prepared for on the first year that we did this was how many kids would ask me, “How much candy can I take?” I found that to be an overwhelming level of quasi-parental responsibility.

NEIL: Originally, I tried to throw it back on the parents, but also I didn’t want to presume that the people with them were their parents. I think the first time I said something like, “Well, why don’t you ask them?” No one wants to hear their parents referred to as them. But anyhow, I finally just landed on, “You can take two.” There was this category of kid who I think might be my favorite, who when I would say, “You can take two,” they would say, “How about three?” They would sort of negotiate. I respected that.

NEIL: Moving on, I’m so excited to have as my guest, Morgan Bassichis. Morgan is a truly one-of-a-kind performer across a number of disciplines. They do standup comedy. They’re an accomplished musician with a truly gorgeous voice. Also, Morgan’s work often shows up in visual art settings. They were one of the artists featured in this year’s Whitney Biennial. I should say at the top, in case it’s not obvious, Morgan and I are both Jewish and gay. This episode touches on some issues of internalized antisemitism and homophobia.

NEIL: I spoke to Morgan this June, right around Gay Pride in a recording studio at the New School near Union Square in New York City. Here goes. Morgan, you’re in an elevator and someone asks what you do. What do you say?

MORGAN: I know. I’m the worst at it. I just make this really absurd gesture of holding a microphone to my face. I go, “It’s just this. That’s all I do.” Then, often I go, “You got the idea. You don’t have to come.” People will say, “Oh, I want to come.” Then you say, “Oh, it’s on June 14th.” They go, “I’m out of town.”

NEIL: Right, I know. It’s almost a set-up.

MORGAN: I’m out of town.

NEIL: Yeah, exactly. You’re like, “Okay, well, right.”

MORGAN: Yeah, I’m not pleading, I mean, I am. Now it’s evident that I’m pleading with you, but I go, you got the idea. If I’m trying to really be explicit, I’ll say it’s comedy and music. “Sounds interesting. What kind of comedy and music?” I know, I’m like a Jewy that I know. I’m always like, “It’s kind of Jewy.”

NEIL: Yeah. Are you Jewish yourself? We’re in a city. I’m playing, I’m role playing.

MORGAN: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

NEIL: That’s good, because we are in this elevator together.

MORGAN: Yes.

NEIL: It reminds me of, do you remember the guy from 60 Minutes? What’s his name? The guy, like a professional crank at the end of 60 Minutes?

MORGAN: Andy something.

NEIL: Andy. Andy Rooney.

MORGAN: Right.

NEIL: He famously said about gay people, “They’re fine, but I don’t want to be in an elevator with them.” He’s totally right. I mean, god, I remember I was in an elevator with some queen friend of mine. The doors opened just as we were saying something about like, “I think the word the lube.” It was something like that. We were like, “I guess that’s what happens when gay people are in elevators.”

NEIL: Okay. Another question, what do your grandparents, or did your grandparents say you did? How would they describe what you do to friends?

MORGAN: Right. Well, my adoptive grandmother, Lil, a couple of years ago when I had this performance at PS1, I was very excited about it. She didn’t know what PS1 is. I said, well, “MoMA, MoMA. It’s owned by MoMA.” “Oh, you’re performing at MoMA.” She said, “How many times?” I was like, “Oh, just once.” She said, “Well, will they have you back?” It’s like, “I don’t think so. That’s it.” I think she was a little baffled by that. I think they didn’t quite understand, maybe they thought it was a play. I think they thought I would miss doing plays, an actor. They thought I was kind of being an actor or something.

NEIL: Okay. Another question. What do you find yourself thinking about today?

MORGAN: The real thing I’m thinking about today is how to get as much protein as possible. How to not prioritize every possible thing I could worry about or do, instead, eat protein, which actually is very tied to self-parenting. It’s tied to presence and mindfulness. It’s really about being where you are instead of where you think you should be or being somewhere else. It’s really like, “Oh, I need to actually get protein in my body right now instead of running out the door, because I think that’s what my boyfriend needs for me to run out the door right now.”

MORGAN: It’s like, “No, make some ground beef and put some cumin in there, and make some bone broth.” If I’m to be honest, there was another door I could have walked through with that question, which was, which it could be, which is authentic, which also about memory, and history, and nostalgia, and these kinds of things. But if I’m to tell you the truth of it, it is protein.

NEIL: What are your preferred proteins? I heard-

MORGAN: I love… Okay, first of all, that was such a healing encounter because I love the idea of people asking, instead of preferred pronouns, preferred proteins would make me feel so much better in a go-around. I’m always like, “I don’t know.” But then proteins I could, I could really go in for that conversation. It depends on what time. I’m really trying to do meat in the morning. I’m going to have a talk show called Meat in the Morning.

NEIL: Right. Cheers.

MORGAN: Meat in the Morning with Morgan.

NEIL: What about your preferred proteins?

MORGAN: Well, I have spent my whole life kind of as an aspirational vegetarian daily, aspirational bottom, aspirational vegetarian. Both things I totally linked. Yeah, absolutely linked. Oh my god. Okay. The guilt-free protein that I’m most into these days is edamame. I love hummus. I love hummus, but it’s got a lot of fat in it. It really does.

NEIL: Hummus?

MORGAN: Yeah. Not even a comment on it. I’m just let it point land. Just like giving it the space that it deserves.

NEIL: Okay. On that note, Morgan, let’s go to the cards. Our first card is, I’ve never felt like I left a party too early, even ones I’ve loved. That’s sort of how I feel about my own mortality, although I realize that may change.

MORGAN: I mean, I just want to say I agree. I love to leave, love nothing more. Yeah. Period. But then I often am the last one there, Jewish goodbye. I’m often like-

NEIL: Yeah.

MORGAN: I love to say I’m going to go watch television. I love a very clear. “I’m going to go watch television,” because I find it’s like, I apologize all the time, except for leaving. I apologize when I’m late, “I’m sorry I’m late.” I’m sorry I didn’t bring anything. I’m sorry it’s not good enough, the dish I made, but I do like to have a kind of dignified, “I’m going home to watch television.”

NEIL: That is so beautiful.

MORGAN: Thank you.

NEIL: What’s your sign again?

MORGAN: Virgo.

NEIL: Virgo. Okay. I’m sorry. When’s your birthday again?

MORGAN: The 15th. You’re the eighth or seventh?

NEIL: On the first. Okay.

MORGAN: I feel like we should apologize to planet Earth for us, but also-

NEIL: No.

MORGAN: … we’re very helpful. We’re very helpful.

NEIL: Yeah. We’re helpful, but it comes with a price. What is the price? I agree, but I want on your thing on the price?

MORGAN: I mean, for the people in my life, it’s like they have to constantly reassure me that everything’s not falling apart.

NEIL: That is so true. Right. I’ve never named it as that though, like the price. It is frequent reassurance.

MORGAN: Oh my god, yeah. They should be accredited in the past, retroactively accredited as crisis counselors. You know what I mean? Support or something.

NEIL: Right.

MORGAN: Sometimes I will tell my boyfriend, “Here’s the words I’m looking for. You can choose not to use them, but I’m going to be very explicit about the words that will reach me, because we’re different beings. We’re different creatures, so different words mean different things. You don’t have to use them, but here’s what it is.”

NEIL: Can you think of an instance where you mentioned to him, “This is what I’d like to hear”? How do you put it?

MORGAN: This is what words will reach me. I mean that all goes back to the reassurance thing. I have said that it really helps me after shows, because I’m in such an altered state afterwards, if you will just tell me explicitly and directly what you saw. In that first embrace when I get off stage, if you will just whisper something into my ear. I want to feel that he knows what a big risk or something. So often, it’ll be like that will be the word, that I just took a big risk or something, that kind of thing. He feels, but if I didn’t say the words, if I didn’t make it legible and transparent, we can’t read other’s minds-

NEIL: You want him to take-

MORGAN: … just want his best effort right now.

NEIL: You want him to acknowledge the risk you took.

MORGAN: Right. Sometimes we will get into accessing. You can also access a younger voice. You know what I mean? You can say like, “It was scary, and I had to wear a nice outfit. Did you see that? Did you see that? I was scared. A lot of people, maybe nobody said anything nice.” That kind of thing.

NEIL: Next card. In honor of Pride, I think we should write certain diagnoses back into the DSM-5.

MORGAN: I 100% agree. This is something I have been… Yes, I totally agree. I do have thoughts about what do we reinscribe or how do we reinscribe.

NEIL: Right. Oh, I am with this in principle.

MORGAN: I know. Then you start to walk it out. I was just hearing about some of the anti-psychiatry activists, some of these radical anti-psychiatry people who were against the move to de-pathologize homosexuality, and take it out of the DSM, and who were all about claiming that the terms of insanity and claiming the terms of crazy. What’s the question? In honor of Pride, oh, should we bring certain diagnoses back into the DSM-5. Are we on 5 already?

NEIL: Yes, we are.

MORGAN: When I was…it was 4.

NEIL: Things change.

MORGAN: Yeah. What should we bring back? What should we bring back, or maybe something new, toxic masculinity, I guess. Toxic masculinity is a total… Yeah, it’s a tough thing, right?

NEIL: Yeah. But I’m also thinking in terms of-

MORGAN: Putting gay people back in it?

NEIL: I think so.

MORGAN: I like to tune into my own internalized homophobia and antisemitism, not to correct it, but just to sit with it, possibly to correct it. Do you ever kind of engage with certain gay people and think their narcissism is somehow connected to their homosexuality? This is going to be very popular.

NEIL: I love this line of thinking that you’re walking in. Yeah, I just want to support you to keep walking in it, just as an ally to you. Right. Do you feel me or no?

MORGAN: There’s something in there. I mean, there’s also something about trauma. I mean, sometimes I think about the kind of… One survival strategy of dealing with trauma is a kind of self-involvement. I mean, it really is this kind of inability to escape ourselves. I think that there is certainly in some of the ways in which antisemitism is weaponized and used in these very strange ways to like refute, it’s guarding its own kind of boundaries, like this and this whole thing with concentration camps. We can share conservation camps. It’s not actually not just about us. Yeah. This inability to share. Period.

NEIL: I think you got there.

MORGAN: Yeah. I think we got there.

NEIL: Okay, next card. Morgan, what’s so wrong with being against nature? The classic critique of homosexuality is that it’s against nature. I know I can feel like, “Great, what’s so great about nature?”

MORGAN: What’s so wrong with being against nature? I mean, for me, I question the whole terms of that definition of nature. I’m in this process of reading the Bible with a friend.

NEIL: Exotic.

MORGAN: Right. Neither of us has read it. It’s very strange. I’m so in these narratives about nature, and good, and evil. I know it’s sounds so naive to say, but how intensely patriarchal, just absurd they are, these like narratives about what is the natural order of things. When I think of the debased, depraved culture of which we are ashamed members, I just love it. I love it. I just think, “I’m so proud.” I actually am proud of the depravity. You know what I mean? Actually, that will be the one thing I am proud of is their utter proximity to garbage. You know what I mean? Just how disgusting we are. I love, if there’s a bathroom or a basement, you know where to find us. What could be more natural than that? It’s just nature’s gross. We’re gross. Don’t be in an elevator with us. I just think it’s lovely. What’s wrong with being against nature? If that’s what is against nature, fuck nature. I think it’s a misrecognition of what nature is.

NEIL: Morgan, next card. When audiences start clapping along at a musical performance, but then uncomfortably have to decide when to let the clapping go.

MORGAN: Oh my god, it’s terrible. I just saw a play a couple of days ago, A Strange Loop. Did you see it?

NEIL: Seeing it tonight.

MORGAN: Seeing it tonight? How lucky are you?

NEIL: I know. We just lucked into the tickets.

MORGAN: I felt that there was a moment of clapping, and then the clapping goes away. I was just very aware of that exact moment. I just think that’s like a small death. There’s like a small, and it’s not graceful. It’s not beautiful. It’s not pretty.

NEIL: Like death, there’s this uncomfortable element of volition in it, in that at a certain-

MORGAN: I think choose. Right?

NEIL: Yeah, exactly.

MORGAN: Right. There’s a whole social dynamic to clapping in an audience that is, I think, it’s under-theorized except for you. I think the end of it is a kind of art that’s comparable with death.

NEIL: Well, the theory is now complete. Next card, Morgan. The way people in America, specifically I think, after a tragedy, talk about their community, how, “We all help each other,” as if that’s something exceptional, which speaks actually to how they’re not there for each other.

MORGAN: Right. That’s actually one of the only things that keeps me hopeful. I mean, I think you’re saying… I’m going to say the flip of what you’re saying, which is that, or I’m going to… I’m not sure who’s flipping who here, but think about what is grounded hope versus kind of ungrounded optimism. Things get better, progress. It’s like you’re just not true. You know what I mean? There’s like so says or fantasy, but where do we look to for grounded hope? I do think sometimes seeing how people deal with disaster together, there’s like Rebecca Solnit and this whole thing about Hope in the Dark. It’s an indictment on how we are with one another all the time.

MORGAN: It’s also this acknowledging of what happens in conditions of disaster, which are for many people all the time, not just acute, and how that window closes so quickly, too. I mean, it’s like this affinity that happens in moments in our precariousness, and then we go back to our self-reliance and art to art. What conclusion do you draw about that?

NEIL: It’s a paradox or something, because I do take grounded hope from the way people organically, or so it seems, come together in such moments, but I hate that they have to call it out. A flood happens in Iowa, and there’s such a self-congratulation around the fact that we came together rather than, of course you come together. I think New York keeps you. New York city keeps you in a low-grade state of disaster or that brings you together. But also, in New York people don’t talk about, even after 9/11, I never heard someone saying like, “Well, we New Yorkers, we stick together.”

MORGAN: Right. I mean, there is a sense of somehow looking out for one another, and some kind of in some kind of constituent fabric-y kind of way.

NEIL: I love it. Okay. Next card. Morgan, before using the word, labor, think about whether work will do. I think people of your generation-

MORGAN: We love to say labor?

NEIL: Yeah.

MORGAN: It’s because it’s more grand somehow, or it’s an extra syllable, has that extra. Yeah.

NEIL: Lay.

MORGAN: Right. It’s connected to birth.

NEIL: Yeah, and-

MORGAN: Factories?

NEIL: Yeah. Yeah.

MORGAN: Work factories. Emotional work. It takes a lot of emotional work. Emotional labor. Work feels like it puts the onus on me. Labor puts the onus on you. I’m doing work. I’m doing labor. Somehow it situates in an economy between the two of us.

NEIL: Labor does.

MORGAN: Labor, right.

NEIL: That is very true.

MORGAN: …work, it seems independent from you. I’m doing labor is like, “You’re the boss and not paying me.” You know what I mean? I’m an adjunct-

NEIL: It’s so true.

MORGAN: … kind of gig economy, but this is labor. Whereas if as I’m doing work, that can be I’m doing homework. Yeah. It just implicates both of us somehow in a web. Well, I do have to say, my favorite joke from the past year that I have developed is the labor of having a face, which I am very, very appreciative of, the divine source of all of our ideas for that. I do feel proud. If anything, I’m proud of that. I like my shows to have a moment where I turn the lights off to relieve me of having to do the labor of having a face. It’s the labor. I have to face that. Especially, the audience has to do labor for me by showing me they’re engaged. I mean, it’s like this, they have to feed this insatiable animal. Just like, “Show me you care about this. Show me you’re registering the levity and the gravity. Tell me. I didn’t feel it. Give it to me.” You turn the lights off and nobody has to do that.

NEIL: Oh, that’s so wonderful. I love that.

MORGAN: It really is. It’s like a vacation from the labor of the face.

NEIL: The labor of the face.

MORGAN: Yeah. I just often find it relaxing, sometimes, if I’m sitting next to people instead of looking at you directly. You know what I mean? It’s just, let’s just, we can just take a break.

NEIL: Oh, yeah. That is great. Sitting next to each other.

MORGAN: Sitting next to each other. That therapy trick of when you don’t angle your chair, your chairs would never be angled directly towards one another, because it’s just too confronting. It’s just too confronting.

NEIL: Indeed, the whole thing of just lying down.

MORGAN: Right. I’m really anti-Skype.

NEIL: Yeah. Oh, Skype as a form of communication?

MORGAN: In general.

NEIL: Oh my god. No. I’m so with you.

MORGAN: Because you’re looking at your own, I’m looking at my own face.

NEIL: Cheers. Yeah, the worst. But also it’s so hyper-distilled. It’s like, talk about the labor of the face, it’s concentrated. It’s compressed. It’s like when you hold your finger over the spigot of a hose or something. It’s like this face inside this frame. But I don’t like the phone at this point either. I like texting. I mean, what’s…

MORGAN: I like postcards.

NEIL: Yeah. Postcards are nice.

MORGAN: I just can’t do a whole envelope. The whole, yeah, it’s much too much, but I love a postcard.

NEIL: Yeah. If someone important in your life dies, and you break into an envelope. I will engage an envelope for a major life.

MORGAN: It’s a heavy lift of labor.

NEIL: Exactly. A lot of emotional-

MORGAN: Licking.

NEIL: Absolutely. That kind of the melodrama of sealing an envelope. Are you fucking kidding me? How does anyone do it?

MORGAN: Sealing something that will be opened, like it’s almost so dramatic.

NEIL: It’s like I’m embarrassed by the drama. Yeah. Postcards are good. You don’t have to be… Okay, you reach a certain age where the postcard truly can be thinking of you here in Sienna.

MORGAN: Right, right.

NEIL: Or I forgive you. You know what I mean? That’s it.

MORGAN: God, you know how people write postcards for political campaigns? Wouldn’t it be great if the cards just said, “I forgive you. Vote for Carolyn Maloney. Please vote for Carolyn Maloney.” I would love a card from Cynthia Nixon that says, “I forgive you.”

NEIL: Okay, Morgan, I’d like to end with a question I ask everyone. Fill in the blank for X and Y. What’s a bad X you would take over a good Y.

MORGAN: Oh my God. Okay. This is the first one that’s coming to me right now. I would take, okay, here’s what I think. I could leave… People are like, “It’s a beautiful view.” I don’t need it. I don’t need it.

NEIL: I’m so with you.

MORGAN: You know what I mean? I don’t need it. “Oh, it’s a beautiful view. You got to see the view.” I don’t want to. I don’t want to. I don’t want to. I’ll leave that. I’ll start with that, and then I will take a fine BLT. You know what I mean? It’s fine. I don’t need it to be artisanal, any BLT. I’ll just stay here. I’ll stay at base camp. You go on, see the view. Yeah. I’ll enjoy my BLT.

NEIL: I think it would be great to end on protein. Let’s end on protein. Morgan, huge thank you for being on SHE’S A TALKER.

MORGAN: Neil, thank you so much for having me. It was really a pleasure.

NEIL: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of SHE’S A TALKER. I really hope you liked it. To help other people find it, I’d love it if you might rate and review it on Apple podcast or wherever you listen to it. Some credits. This series is made possible with generous support from Stillpoint Fund and with help from Devin Guinn, Aaron Dalton, Stella Binion, Charlie Theobald, Itai Almar, Alex Qiao, Molly Donahue, Justine Lee, Angela Liao, Josh Graver, and my husband Jeff Hiller who sings the theme song you’re about to hear. Thank you to them and to my guest, Morgan Bassichis, and to you for listening.

NEIL GOLDBERG: What’s the salutation you want? You’re probably very flexible about salutation.

MORGAN BASSICHIS: Oh, yeah. I’m like, well, actually, that’s not true. I definitely, if people just say, “Morgan comma”, it scares me. I’ll spend the next couple of hours and I’ll be like, “Everything’s falling apart,” and it’s like, “No, I just got an email that just said Morgan, kind of. That’s it. That’s all that’s happening.” You get emails when you’re a teenager that, “Morgan, come to the principal’s office?”

NEIL: Hello. I’m Neil Goldberg and this is my new podcast, SHE’S A TALKER. On today’s episode I’ll be talking to brilliant comedic performer Morgan Bassichis, but first I want to tell you a little bit about the podcast itself. I’m a visual artist, but for the last million or so years I’ve been writing passing thoughts down on index cards. I’ve got thousands of them. I originally wrote the cards just for me or maybe to use in future art projects, but now I’m using them as prompts for conversations with some of my favorite artists, writers, performers, and beyond. I’ll usually start each episode with some recent cards, but since this episode is going to air the day after Halloween, I thought I would break out a couple of cards related to Halloween.

NEIL: The first one is, the pleasure of Halloween for me as a young gay boy was getting a peek inside neighbors’ homes to see how they decorated. I was super not into Halloween as a kid. There was something about whatever got unleashed when people wore costumes. I felt it was really important personally to stay leashed, probably connected to my gayness. But I did love when you would ring a neighbor’s bell, and they’d opened the door, and it’d be like, “Oh, okay. They’re doing that with the wallpaper.”

NEIL: My other Halloween-related card is, I wasn’t prepared for the responsibility of trick-or-treaters asking me how much candy they could take. We live in a big apartment building. You can sign up downstairs for whether you want the kids in the building to knock on your door to trick-or-treat. We go for it, if for no other reason than we have this black cat, and we kind of feel a responsibility to be Halloween citizens. What I wasn’t prepared for on the first year that we did this was how many kids would ask me, “How much candy can I take?” I found that to be an overwhelming level of quasi-parental responsibility.

NEIL: Originally, I tried to throw it back on the parents, but also I didn’t want to presume that the people with them were their parents. I think the first time I said something like, “Well, why don’t you ask them?” No one wants to hear their parents referred to as them. But anyhow, I finally just landed on, “You can take two.” There was this category of kid who I think might be my favorite, who when I would say, “You can take two,” they would say, “How about three?” They would sort of negotiate. I respected that.

NEIL: Moving on, I’m so excited to have as my guest, Morgan Bassichis. Morgan is a truly one-of-a-kind performer across a number of disciplines. They do standup comedy. They’re an accomplished musician with a truly gorgeous voice. Also, Morgan’s work often shows up in visual art settings. They were one of the artists featured in this year’s Whitney Biennial. I should say at the top, in case it’s not obvious, Morgan and I are both Jewish and gay. This episode touches on some issues of internalized antisemitism and homophobia.

NEIL: I spoke to Morgan this June, right around Gay Pride in a recording studio at the New School near Union Square in New York City. Here goes. Morgan, you’re in an elevator and someone asks what you do. What do you say?

MORGAN: I know. I’m the worst at it. I just make this really absurd gesture of holding a microphone to my face. I go, “It’s just this. That’s all I do.” Then, often I go, “You got the idea. You don’t have to come.” People will say, “Oh, I want to come.” Then you say, “Oh, it’s on June 14th.” They go, “I’m out of town.”

NEIL: Right, I know. It’s almost a set-up.

MORGAN: I’m out of town.

NEIL: Yeah, exactly. You’re like, “Okay, well, right.”

MORGAN: Yeah, I’m not pleading, I mean, I am. Now it’s evident that I’m pleading with you, but I go, you got the idea. If I’m trying to really be explicit, I’ll say it’s comedy and music. “Sounds interesting. What kind of comedy and music?” I know, I’m like a Jewy that I know. I’m always like, “It’s kind of Jewy.”

NEIL: Yeah. Are you Jewish yourself? We’re in a city. I’m playing, I’m role playing.

MORGAN: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

NEIL: That’s good, because we are in this elevator together.

MORGAN: Yes.

NEIL: It reminds me of, do you remember the guy from 60 Minutes? What’s his name? The guy, like a professional crank at the end of 60 Minutes?

MORGAN: Andy something.

NEIL: Andy. Andy Rooney.

MORGAN: Right.

NEIL: He famously said about gay people, “They’re fine, but I don’t want to be in an elevator with them.” He’s totally right. I mean, god, I remember I was in an elevator with some queen friend of mine. The doors opened just as we were saying something about like, “I think the word the lube.” It was something like that. We were like, “I guess that’s what happens when gay people are in elevators.”

NEIL: Okay. Another question, what do your grandparents, or did your grandparents say you did? How would they describe what you do to friends?

MORGAN: Right. Well, my adoptive grandmother, Lil, a couple of years ago when I had this performance at PS1, I was very excited about it. She didn’t know what PS1 is. I said, well, “MoMA, MoMA. It’s owned by MoMA.” “Oh, you’re performing at MoMA.” She said, “How many times?” I was like, “Oh, just once.” She said, “Well, will they have you back?” It’s like, “I don’t think so. That’s it.” I think she was a little baffled by that. I think they didn’t quite understand, maybe they thought it was a play. I think they thought I would miss doing plays, an actor. They thought I was kind of being an actor or something.

NEIL: Okay. Another question. What do you find yourself thinking about today?

MORGAN: The real thing I’m thinking about today is how to get as much protein as possible. How to not prioritize every possible thing I could worry about or do, instead, eat protein, which actually is very tied to self-parenting. It’s tied to presence and mindfulness. It’s really about being where you are instead of where you think you should be or being somewhere else. It’s really like, “Oh, I need to actually get protein in my body right now instead of running out the door, because I think that’s what my boyfriend needs for me to run out the door right now.”

MORGAN: It’s like, “No, make some ground beef and put some cumin in there, and make some bone broth.” If I’m to be honest, there was another door I could have walked through with that question, which was, which it could be, which is authentic, which also about memory, and history, and nostalgia, and these kinds of things. But if I’m to tell you the truth of it, it is protein.

NEIL: What are your preferred proteins? I heard-

MORGAN: I love… Okay, first of all, that was such a healing encounter because I love the idea of people asking, instead of preferred pronouns, preferred proteins would make me feel so much better in a go-around. I’m always like, “I don’t know.” But then proteins I could, I could really go in for that conversation. It depends on what time. I’m really trying to do meat in the morning. I’m going to have a talk show called Meat in the Morning.

NEIL: Right. Cheers.

MORGAN: Meat in the Morning with Morgan.

NEIL: What about your preferred proteins?

MORGAN: Well, I have spent my whole life kind of as an aspirational vegetarian daily, aspirational bottom, aspirational vegetarian. Both things I totally linked. Yeah, absolutely linked. Oh my god. Okay. The guilt-free protein that I’m most into these days is edamame. I love hummus. I love hummus, but it’s got a lot of fat in it. It really does.

NEIL: Hummus?

MORGAN: Yeah. Not even a comment on it. I’m just let it point land. Just like giving it the space that it deserves.

NEIL: Okay. On that note, Morgan, let’s go to the cards. Our first card is, I’ve never felt like I left a party too early, even ones I’ve loved. That’s sort of how I feel about my own mortality, although I realize that may change.

MORGAN: I mean, I just want to say I agree. I love to leave, love nothing more. Yeah. Period. But then I often am the last one there, Jewish goodbye. I’m often like-

NEIL: Yeah.

MORGAN: I love to say I’m going to go watch television. I love a very clear. “I’m going to go watch television,” because I find it’s like, I apologize all the time, except for leaving. I apologize when I’m late, “I’m sorry I’m late.” I’m sorry I didn’t bring anything. I’m sorry it’s not good enough, the dish I made, but I do like to have a kind of dignified, “I’m going home to watch television.”

NEIL: That is so beautiful.

MORGAN: Thank you.

NEIL: What’s your sign again?

MORGAN: Virgo.

NEIL: Virgo. Okay. I’m sorry. When’s your birthday again?

MORGAN: The 15th. You’re the eighth or seventh?

NEIL: On the first. Okay.

MORGAN: I feel like we should apologize to planet Earth for us, but also-

NEIL: No.

MORGAN: … we’re very helpful. We’re very helpful.

NEIL: Yeah. We’re helpful, but it comes with a price. What is the price? I agree, but I want on your thing on the price?

MORGAN: I mean, for the people in my life, it’s like they have to constantly reassure me that everything’s not falling apart.

NEIL: That is so true. Right. I’ve never named it as that though, like the price. It is frequent reassurance.

MORGAN: Oh my god, yeah. They should be accredited in the past, retroactively accredited as crisis counselors. You know what I mean? Support or something.

NEIL: Right.

MORGAN: Sometimes I will tell my boyfriend, “Here’s the words I’m looking for. You can choose not to use them, but I’m going to be very explicit about the words that will reach me, because we’re different beings. We’re different creatures, so different words mean different things. You don’t have to use them, but here’s what it is.”

NEIL: Can you think of an instance where you mentioned to him, “This is what I’d like to hear”? How do you put it?

MORGAN: This is what words will reach me. I mean that all goes back to the reassurance thing. I have said that it really helps me after shows, because I’m in such an altered state afterwards, if you will just tell me explicitly and directly what you saw. In that first embrace when I get off stage, if you will just whisper something into my ear. I want to feel that he knows what a big risk or something. So often, it’ll be like that will be the word, that I just took a big risk or something, that kind of thing. He feels, but if I didn’t say the words, if I didn’t make it legible and transparent, we can’t read other’s minds-

NEIL: You want him to take-

MORGAN: … just want his best effort right now.

NEIL: You want him to acknowledge the risk you took.

MORGAN: Right. Sometimes we will get into accessing. You can also access a younger voice. You know what I mean? You can say like, “It was scary, and I had to wear a nice outfit. Did you see that? Did you see that? I was scared. A lot of people, maybe nobody said anything nice.” That kind of thing.

NEIL: Next card. In honor of Pride, I think we should write certain diagnoses back into the DSM-5.

MORGAN: I 100% agree. This is something I have been… Yes, I totally agree. I do have thoughts about what do we reinscribe or how do we reinscribe.

NEIL: Right. Oh, I am with this in principle.

MORGAN: I know. Then you start to walk it out. I was just hearing about some of the anti-psychiatry activists, some of these radical anti-psychiatry people who were against the move to de-pathologize homosexuality, and take it out of the DSM, and who were all about claiming that the terms of insanity and claiming the terms of crazy. What’s the question? In honor of Pride, oh, should we bring certain diagnoses back into the DSM-5. Are we on 5 already?

NEIL: Yes, we are.

MORGAN: When I was…it was 4.

NEIL: Things change.

MORGAN: Yeah. What should we bring back? What should we bring back, or maybe something new, toxic masculinity, I guess. Toxic masculinity is a total… Yeah, it’s a tough thing, right?

NEIL: Yeah. But I’m also thinking in terms of-

MORGAN: Putting gay people back in it?

NEIL: I think so.

MORGAN: I like to tune into my own internalized homophobia and antisemitism, not to correct it, but just to sit with it, possibly to correct it. Do you ever kind of engage with certain gay people and think their narcissism is somehow connected to their homosexuality? This is going to be very popular.

NEIL: I love this line of thinking that you’re walking in. Yeah, I just want to support you to keep walking in it, just as an ally to you. Right. Do you feel me or no?

MORGAN: There’s something in there. I mean, there’s also something about trauma. I mean, sometimes I think about the kind of… One survival strategy of dealing with trauma is a kind of self-involvement. I mean, it really is this kind of inability to escape ourselves. I think that there is certainly in some of the ways in which antisemitism is weaponized and used in these very strange ways to like refute, it’s guarding its own kind of boundaries, like this and this whole thing with concentration camps. We can share conservation camps. It’s not actually not just about us. Yeah. This inability to share. Period.

NEIL: I think you got there.

MORGAN: Yeah. I think we got there.

NEIL: Okay, next card. Morgan, what’s so wrong with being against nature? The classic critique of homosexuality is that it’s against nature. I know I can feel like, “Great, what’s so great about nature?”

MORGAN: What’s so wrong with being against nature? I mean, for me, I question the whole terms of that definition of nature. I’m in this process of reading the Bible with a friend.

NEIL: Exotic.

MORGAN: Right. Neither of us has read it. It’s very strange. I’m so in these narratives about nature, and good, and evil. I know it’s sounds so naive to say, but how intensely patriarchal, just absurd they are, these like narratives about what is the natural order of things. When I think of the debased, depraved culture of which we are ashamed members, I just love it. I love it. I just think, “I’m so proud.” I actually am proud of the depravity. You know what I mean? Actually, that will be the one thing I am proud of is their utter proximity to garbage. You know what I mean? Just how disgusting we are. I love, if there’s a bathroom or a basement, you know where to find us. What could be more natural than that? It’s just nature’s gross. We’re gross. Don’t be in an elevator with us. I just think it’s lovely. What’s wrong with being against nature? If that’s what is against nature, fuck nature. I think it’s a misrecognition of what nature is.

NEIL: Morgan, next card. When audiences start clapping along at a musical performance, but then uncomfortably have to decide when to let the clapping go.

MORGAN: Oh my god, it’s terrible. I just saw a play a couple of days ago, A Strange Loop. Did you see it?

NEIL: Seeing it tonight.

MORGAN: Seeing it tonight? How lucky are you?

NEIL: I know. We just lucked into the tickets.

MORGAN: I felt that there was a moment of clapping, and then the clapping goes away. I was just very aware of that exact moment. I just think that’s like a small death. There’s like a small, and it’s not graceful. It’s not beautiful. It’s not pretty.

NEIL: Like death, there’s this uncomfortable element of volition in it, in that at a certain-

MORGAN: I think choose. Right?

NEIL: Yeah, exactly.

MORGAN: Right. There’s a whole social dynamic to clapping in an audience that is, I think, it’s under-theorized except for you. I think the end of it is a kind of art that’s comparable with death.

NEIL: Well, the theory is now complete. Next card, Morgan. The way people in America, specifically I think, after a tragedy, talk about their community, how, “We all help each other,” as if that’s something exceptional, which speaks actually to how they’re not there for each other.

MORGAN: Right. That’s actually one of the only things that keeps me hopeful. I mean, I think you’re saying… I’m going to say the flip of what you’re saying, which is that, or I’m going to… I’m not sure who’s flipping who here, but think about what is grounded hope versus kind of ungrounded optimism. Things get better, progress. It’s like you’re just not true. You know what I mean? There’s like so says or fantasy, but where do we look to for grounded hope? I do think sometimes seeing how people deal with disaster together, there’s like Rebecca Solnit and this whole thing about Hope in the Dark. It’s an indictment on how we are with one another all the time.

MORGAN: It’s also this acknowledging of what happens in conditions of disaster, which are for many people all the time, not just acute, and how that window closes so quickly, too. I mean, it’s like this affinity that happens in moments in our precariousness, and then we go back to our self-reliance and art to art. What conclusion do you draw about that?

NEIL: It’s a paradox or something, because I do take grounded hope from the way people organically, or so it seems, come together in such moments, but I hate that they have to call it out. A flood happens in Iowa, and there’s such a self-congratulation around the fact that we came together rather than, of course you come together. I think New York keeps you. New York city keeps you in a low-grade state of disaster or that brings you together. But also, in New York people don’t talk about, even after 9/11, I never heard someone saying like, “Well, we New Yorkers, we stick together.”

MORGAN: Right. I mean, there is a sense of somehow looking out for one another, and some kind of in some kind of constituent fabric-y kind of way.

NEIL: I love it. Okay. Next card. Morgan, before using the word, labor, think about whether work will do. I think people of your generation-

MORGAN: We love to say labor?

NEIL: Yeah.

MORGAN: It’s because it’s more grand somehow, or it’s an extra syllable, has that extra. Yeah.

NEIL: Lay.

MORGAN: Right. It’s connected to birth.

NEIL: Yeah, and-

MORGAN: Factories?

NEIL: Yeah. Yeah.

MORGAN: Work factories. Emotional work. It takes a lot of emotional work. Emotional labor. Work feels like it puts the onus on me. Labor puts the onus on you. I’m doing work. I’m doing labor. Somehow it situates in an economy between the two of us.

NEIL: Labor does.

MORGAN: Labor, right.

NEIL: That is very true.

MORGAN: …work, it seems independent from you. I’m doing labor is like, “You’re the boss and not paying me.” You know what I mean? I’m an adjunct-

NEIL: It’s so true.

MORGAN: … kind of gig economy, but this is labor. Whereas if as I’m doing work, that can be I’m doing homework. Yeah. It just implicates both of us somehow in a web. Well, I do have to say, my favorite joke from the past year that I have developed is the labor of having a face, which I am very, very appreciative of, the divine source of all of our ideas for that. I do feel proud. If anything, I’m proud of that. I like my shows to have a moment where I turn the lights off to relieve me of having to do the labor of having a face. It’s the labor. I have to face that. Especially, the audience has to do labor for me by showing me they’re engaged. I mean, it’s like this, they have to feed this insatiable animal. Just like, “Show me you care about this. Show me you’re registering the levity and the gravity. Tell me. I didn’t feel it. Give it to me.” You turn the lights off and nobody has to do that.

NEIL: Oh, that’s so wonderful. I love that.

MORGAN: It really is. It’s like a vacation from the labor of the face.

NEIL: The labor of the face.

MORGAN: Yeah. I just often find it relaxing, sometimes, if I’m sitting next to people instead of looking at you directly. You know what I mean? It’s just, let’s just, we can just take a break.

NEIL: Oh, yeah. That is great. Sitting next to each other.

MORGAN: Sitting next to each other. That therapy trick of when you don’t angle your chair, your chairs would never be angled directly towards one another, because it’s just too confronting. It’s just too confronting.

NEIL: Indeed, the whole thing of just lying down.

MORGAN: Right. I’m really anti-Skype.

NEIL: Yeah. Oh, Skype as a form of communication?

MORGAN: In general.

NEIL: Oh my god. No. I’m so with you.

MORGAN: Because you’re looking at your own, I’m looking at my own face.

NEIL: Cheers. Yeah, the worst. But also it’s so hyper-distilled. It’s like, talk about the labor of the face, it’s concentrated. It’s compressed. It’s like when you hold your finger over the spigot of a hose or something. It’s like this face inside this frame. But I don’t like the phone at this point either. I like texting. I mean, what’s…

MORGAN: I like postcards.

NEIL: Yeah. Postcards are nice.

MORGAN: I just can’t do a whole envelope. The whole, yeah, it’s much too much, but I love a postcard.

NEIL: Yeah. If someone important in your life dies, and you break into an envelope. I will engage an envelope for a major life.

MORGAN: It’s a heavy lift of labor.

NEIL: Exactly. A lot of emotional-

MORGAN: Licking.

NEIL: Absolutely. That kind of the melodrama of sealing an envelope. Are you fucking kidding me? How does anyone do it?

MORGAN: Sealing something that will be opened, like it’s almost so dramatic.

NEIL: It’s like I’m embarrassed by the drama. Yeah. Postcards are good. You don’t have to be… Okay, you reach a certain age where the postcard truly can be thinking of you here in Sienna.

MORGAN: Right, right.

NEIL: Or I forgive you. You know what I mean? That’s it.

MORGAN: God, you know how people write postcards for political campaigns? Wouldn’t it be great if the cards just said, “I forgive you. Vote for Carolyn Maloney. Please vote for Carolyn Maloney.” I would love a card from Cynthia Nixon that says, “I forgive you.”

NEIL: Okay, Morgan, I’d like to end with a question I ask everyone. Fill in the blank for X and Y. What’s a bad X you would take over a good Y.

MORGAN: Oh my God. Okay. This is the first one that’s coming to me right now. I would take, okay, here’s what I think. I could leave… People are like, “It’s a beautiful view.” I don’t need it. I don’t need it.

NEIL: I’m so with you.

MORGAN: You know what I mean? I don’t need it. “Oh, it’s a beautiful view. You got to see the view.” I don’t want to. I don’t want to. I don’t want to. I’ll leave that. I’ll start with that, and then I will take a fine BLT. You know what I mean? It’s fine. I don’t need it to be artisanal, any BLT. I’ll just stay here. I’ll stay at base camp. You go on, see the view. Yeah. I’ll enjoy my BLT.

NEIL: I think it would be great to end on protein. Let’s end on protein. Morgan, huge thank you for being on SHE’S A TALKER.

MORGAN: Neil, thank you so much for having me. It was really a pleasure.

NEIL: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of SHE’S A TALKER. I really hope you liked it. To help other people find it, I’d love it if you might rate and review it on Apple podcast or wherever you listen to it. Some credits. This series is made possible with generous support from Stillpoint Fund and with help from Devin Guinn, Aaron Dalton, Stella Binion, Charlie Theobald, Itai Almar, Alex Qiao, Molly Donahue, Justine Lee, Angela Liao, Josh Graver, and my husband Jeff Hiller who sings the theme song you’re about to hear. Thank you to them and to my guest, Morgan Bassichis, and to you for listening.

Jeff Hiller: SHE’S A TALKER with Neil Goldberg. SHE’S A TALKER with fabulous guests. SHE’S A TALKER. It’s better than it sounds.