My father is a liar. I haven’t been in contact with him for years, but only now can I see how, in severing myself from this persona, from this authority, from this primal connection to the world, it was as though I had cut myself loose from a ship — a father ship.

I kept floating on a raft, steering myself, free but without anchor or sail, while the ship drifted slowly and heavily away.

A lie is unsettling, but it is also full of magic: it creates a world through words. Just like a show. In this sense, my father is a performer: he stages, he impersonates. But when does the performance end? Where does the boundary lie?