There was a time I felt like I was living behind my own ear. Very tiny and hiding and also out of proportion with my body. I took a rag-doll pattern and blew it up to 40x its size and I sewed pieces of moving blankets together to create these hollow floppy suits to get into. Its pretty brutal to be inside them. You can't really see or hear, and breathing is tough. Most people hate being inside them, yet some people, like me, really love it.

Usually explaining involves a lot of hand gestures, but here's an attempt. For you to be self conscious, there is a second "I" watching over and policing the self. That "I" measures other people's reactions, evaluates whats said and the tilt of eyebrows and all kinds of other things. By severely restricting the senses, and making the body and its language indeterminate, the Amandas eliminate that second "I", eliminate responsibility to others, and also all that chatter. You become all id and no sense. I think about it as playing in the uncanny - its not me, and its not not me. It feels like total embodiment - or as close as I've come to that.

Working with some other folks, we made a small play of them and performed it in a church. I think folks were kind of horrified. I know I was.