“Though I know my place
If science will allow
Will they know me
Know me, know me now?”
- Klaus Nomi, “Nomi Song”
When I was in middle school I felt so out of place and alien in the world. I had just moved to a new state and felt completely alone and out of touch. When I spoke, people looked at me like I had just said the craziest thing and chuckled in that way that said “Can you believe this person? How embarrassing to be like this with so little self-awareness.” I gravitated towards the school weirdos, the theatre kids, artists, and band geeks, but even in those spaces I felt distant. Like even there I was too much.
So I did what most other weird middle schoolers did and shut up. I stopped sharing facts about things I liked, I stopped wearing knee-high mismatched socks, and I even tried to stop speaking altogether. In high school I began to get really good at pretending. I learned what weird things were “cool” and what weird things were off putting. And it worked! I wasn’t cool with the cool crowd but the theatre kids liked me. They thought I was funny. They still never invited me anywhere or tried to be my friend, but at least they thought I was funny!
Once I graduated though, it really sunk in how meaningless it all was. What did I spend all that energy pretending for? What did I get for it?
When I was in middle school I stumbled across a music video on YouTube called “Simple Man” by a guy named Klaus Nomi. Right away, the song starts off bouncy and almost “clown-like,” but the real pull of the video is the man singing. A face painted white and lips black, wide eyes and expressions like a mime, he is odd and enchanting in a way I still cannot explain. In this video he is not ethereal, but ordinary in a completely unordinary way. He has a receding hairline and wears a trenchcoat, later changing into a goofy leather jacket cowboy look with red sunglasses. He sings about being a simple man and yet moves about like an alien or a robot. He’s like a gothic Pee-wee Herman but more frozen in place.
His words are punchy but operatic and the lyrics are fun. He has sucked me in and I cannot get enough. I come back to this video over and over again and I can never quite understand why. I feel like it gets me; like it is me.
Klaus Nomi was born in Germany in 1944 and studied opera. He mostly listened to classical music until a friend introduced him to American rock music and he cited that as a reason he later moved to New York. He was a self-taught pastry chef and had his own business selling pies in the day, only to emerge in strange makeup and costumes at night to perform at small theaters. He shocked audiences with the deep authenticity he brought to his performances. His performance of “Mon cœur s'ouvre à ta voix” from the opera Samson et Dalila would hush an entire crowd in awe. But why? He sings beautifully but it is not as polished and refined as the vocals of many opera singers. Maybe it’s his theatrical performance of wide eyed stares, robotic movements, and a descent into smoke. Or maybe it’s his unafraid weirdness. He seems so confident when he’s performing this song. Even without the lighting and smoke and plastic cape, he performs this with just as much dedication. After he sings his last note, there is a long stretch of time at the end of the song where crashing and thunderous sound effects play, a section I personally would have cut out if I were ever performing this song on its own. I would feel so awkward standing there on stage in front of the mic with nothing left to sing as the song transforms into a strange mash of sounds, but he seems unbothered. He continues to stand there, his hands up, moving back and forth rhythmically. Only when the song truly ends does he lower his head, bringing it back up to show his performance mask has dropped and he is smiling sincerely at the crowd.
Unfortunately, Klaus Nomi died in 1983 when he was only 39 years old. He was one of the first recognized figures in the arts community to die from AIDS.
I wish there was more work from Nomi. I wish he could have lived longer and done more. There are few interviews and videos of him online but the ones that are there are so joyful. I love the video where he makes a lime tart and can’t seem to stop smiling. His songs, both his covers and originals, are enjoyable to me in a way I genuinely cannot explain. They range from kitschy joyful fun to hauntingly tear-jerking. I know it won’t be most people’s cup of tea. I know that if I played one of his songs to someone, they would probably think it’s silly or unappealing. I don’t care. I want to not care. I want to exist in the way Klaus Nomi appears to me: authentically weird. I know that it’s a performance and makeup, but his performance feels more like a representation of himself rather than an unrelated persona he distances himself from outside of costume. I want to wear red sunglasses and a red cowboy hat and let my hair fall out if it wants to and paint my face if I want to and be the strange alien from another world I often feel like.
I chide myself for being genuine. Hiding and performing is a defense I’ve learned. It’s never really defended me though, and I’ve slowly been allowing myself to be myself more and more. It’s why I made this blog. I want to write about the Klaus Nomis that no one else knows or cares about, simply because I know and care.
It feels good. It feels way better than pretending not to care, even if it means opening myself up to the thoughts and opinions of others.
I wish I had a lime tart right now.