Kill Your Darlings

This work explores what happens to the body when it becomes addicted to anticipation.

Dopamine is often mistaken for pleasure, but it is the chemistry of pursuit — the spark that ignites when we expect something rewarding. In a world of infinite scrolling, instant feedback, and perpetual novelty, that spark is triggered again and again. The cycle becomes relentless: stimulus, surge, crash, craving, repeat. The high shortens. The hunger grows.

Onstage, this loop manifests physically. Movements build but do not resolve. Phrases interrupt themselves. Focus fractures. Gestures repeat with increasing urgency. The body chases intensity, only to collapse into emptiness. The nervous system flickers between exhilaration and exhaustion.

As overstimulation rises, sensation dulls. When everything is bright, nothing feels bright. The performer pushes further attempting to outrun the crash. But the more the body reaches outward, the more fragmented it becomes. Flow dissolves into glitch. Continuity breaks into fragments. Aliveness becomes confused with acceleration.

The title Kill Your Darlings reflects this paradox. The “darlings” are the very things that feel beautiful and irresistible: the rush, the flash, the instant validation. Yet these fleeting highs begin to crowd out depth, patience, and presence. To reclaim stillness, the body must confront — and perhaps release — the sensations it clings to most.

What remains is a question rather than a conclusion. When the high no longer satisfies, what choice does the body make? Does it reach again for the flicker, or can it endure the quiet?

In a culture that equates stimulation with vitality, this piece asks us to consider another possibility: that true aliveness may begin where the noise ends.’