Boredom Chaser: SANDIE BLACK sits still for a Q&A

BLUE: I remember the very famous story about you being on a dock in Lake Tahoe. You walked off the dock by accident while you were posing for a photograph. Your brother was taking a photo and said, “Look at me,” and you started to fall off the dock and midway through your fall onto who-knows-what — boats, water, turtle, snakes — you still posed for the camera before you disappeared over the edge of the dock.

SANDIE: That’s funny because I remember being a very small child and always thinking, “What can I get away with?” I just never have lost that feeling. Or if I do lose that feeling, I’m not a very happy person. There’s something in me that just wants to perform and test limits. Someone wrote me about a Hillary parody Idid the other day and said ”Well, Hillary Clinton wouldn’t find this funny.” And I just wrote back that if I worried about whether someone was going to find me funny or not, I’d never produce anything.

BLUE: And you’re a very social creature. You like to socialize and you’ve always been the life of the party as long as I’ve known you. In the last sort of couple of years, but in particular in the last couple of months, I’ve seen that you’re very reluctant to do the normal social thing.

SANDIE: I go to social events and feel like I’m wasting time. I feel like a bit of a recluse. I’m not necessarily comfortable with that, but that’s how I feel. As a result, I’ve spent more time by myself or with people with whom I am producing something.

BLUE: Couldn’t you say though that you’ve also spent a lot more time with almost perfect strangers? You’re writing more letters than you ever have in your life. You’re in communication with more people than you’ve ever been in your life. You’re constantly cooking up some scheme with somebody. All these people that you’ve met on YouTube, with whom you have a unique sense of comedy in common. As if you and they know there will always be an element of comedy in life, regardless of the success or recognition it might bring.

SANDIE: I am engaging with more people now than ever before, most of them are strangers. I haven’t met them in person but I respond to comments or I watch their videos or email back and forth on YouTube, so I feel very close to them. I consider them friends because there’s a kindred spirit there. It’s nice to have someone who doesn’t think that I’m crazy, or if they do think that I’m crazy they appreciate it, and that’s not necessarily the case with a lot of the people I love and who love me. Someone I dated for six years doesn’t like most of my videos, doesn’t even find them funny, yet here I’ve found new friends who can’t wait for me to get the next video out or really enjoy it when I watch their videos. It’s surreal.

BLUE: The likelihood is, when you meet these people, it’s like the line that “I met this person and it was like meeting a lifelong friend or a long-lost friend.” I don’t think that when you meet any of these people from YouTube and from your internet life that you will be disappointed. On the contrary, everybody you meet will just take it for granted that this is Sandie Black. This is my friend, Sandie Black, and you’ll be good friends right from the get go.

SANDIE: It’s very wild. I have made these friends all over the world that I could visit and hang with. It would be a real laugh, and I know certain things about them personally, even from Youtube. What’s interesting to me is when you meet someone after you’ve seen their videos. Your impression of them then is different, as opposed to meeting them first and then seeing their videos . . . I’m not sure what the difference is. But I’ve had close friends I’ve known for years tell me that had they seen, for instance, my Strange Faces video from the Jay Leno show, they would’ve thought I was a crazed lunatic.

BLUE: But you’re doing the things that a lot of people on YouTube are just finding the courage to do. To act wacky, to go to the wedding and go crazy on everybody and jump up on the table and dance up and down while somebody’s filming you. This is normal behavior in the Sandie Black world. A lot of people would like to do it but they’re trapped in formality and routine, with the expectations of their families and friends. Trapped in such a way that they aren’t allowed to act out.

SANDIE: It’s interesting that for me the hardest thing to do would be to just turn the camera on and just do what I’m doing right now. Being myself is a lot more difficult to me than trying to be some odd, strange, character. I think that’s a theme I’ve noticed with other performers who do parodies or lots of character acting.

BLUE: That it’s hard to be yourself but easy to be somebody else?

SANDIE: That I prefer to act like some other character. Just give me an accent, and a situation, and I’m ready to spout out all sorts of things. It’s odd.

BLUE: But don’t you think that most people feel that way? Don’t you think that most people would like to be a figment of their own imagination? Isn’t that a very base desire in all of our minds? To escape our own realities by adopting these extreme characteristics of the superhero or the super slut or the super engineer? Because a lot of people we know are growing more bored by the minute with being their own selves.

SANDIE: Boredom is what terrifies me. It’s my navigator. I really think it motivates me and is one of the reasons I jump around so much, and act so . . . distracted. Boredom just terrifies me, and always makes me want run away from it.

BLUE: Do you think that most people get a chance at some point in their lives to give in to that impulse, to run away from the boredom of their lives?

SANDIE: I don’t know. I don’t understand a lot of people’s lives. I look at some people’s lives and I don’t understand how they do it. But they aren’t bored. For me, they’re on another planet. I know that I seem odd to other people. At least, I have that sense that people are always saying how different I am. It makes me feel weird that they would view me that way, but my aunt yesterday said that I was on Planet Independence and made me laugh.

BLUE: Did she say this in a way that was admiring?

SANDIE: I think she was looking at me and thinking: Why am I not married? Why do I not have children? Why do I not have a regular full-time job? Why have I traveled so much? Why am I immature? Why am I silly?” All these kinds of questions I just don’t want to hear. I just don’t want to be compared or made to feel like I’m somehow developmentally-delayed. Maybe my babies are my projects, designed to make myself laugh. And hopefully a few other people will laugh at my babies as well.