1
UNMASKED
Fall 2006, New York City
I’m in my dressing room, if you can call it that. It’s really a tiny gray space, one that feels as small and colorless as I do on this day. I’m seated in a barber’s chair, facing a mirror encircled with bulbs. In moments, I’ll begin my second photo shoot of the day—my fourth this week—on the three hours of sleep I live on. My head pounds with exhaustion and my lips surrender to a slight tremble as I clutch the edge of the stool. In a voice that sounds at once distant and familiar, I hear my name: “Ali?”
Three years earlier, I’d released my second album. The album everyone calls an artist’s jinx. The one that’s supposed to fail. But beyond my greatest expectations, The Diary of Alicia Keys exploded. With adrenaline in my veins and gratitude at my back, I’d hit the road on my second tour, glimpsing as little of the country as I had the first time around. “Even the circus stays in one place longer than we do,” I’d joke with my crew. We’d do a show one night and then, boom, we were on to the next city. The next hotel room. The next stage. The next blur of buildings flashing past my car window. Half the time, I wasn’t sure where we were. “What’s the city again?” I’d ask my manager backstage, fearing I’d go out and yell, “Houston!” to a crowd in Oakland or Atlanta or Detroit. My team was filling every available space in my days while I, overly obligated and out of breath, sprinted hard on a treadmill I knew might suddenly halt. With a lioness’ focus and a hustler’s determination, I charged ahead.
By then, my armor was securely in place. If I woke up feeling down or lethargic or cranky or pissed off, I’d taught myself never to show it. Instead, when any hint of my humanity broke the surface, I shoved it down and plastered on a grin. “Alicia, can I take a picture?” Sure. “Hey, Alicia, can you do another photo shoot?” Absolutely. “Alicia, can I have your autograph?” Of course. I no longer belonged to myself; I’d become captive to every request, every demand, every surge of fear that came with even the thought of saying no. And amid the constant moving, the constant packing and unpacking, the constant pleasing and pretending, I’d delivered my grandest performance yet: convincing the world that, behind my smile, all was as perfect as it appeared.
In my dressing room on this damp autumn day, the show ends. I study my reflection in the mirror. My face is covered in the layers of makeup used to create another character, another pretense, another retouched version of someone I am not. And all at once, my iron mask turns to thread, unraveling to reveal the face—and the emptiness—I’ve kept so carefully hidden away. I do not speak. I do not move. For a moment, I stop breathing. A single tear escapes.
“Ali?” I hear again. I look up to see Erika, my day-to-day manager and my best friend since we were four. She walks toward me. “What’s going on?”
The compassion in her tone sends me into a full-fledged Ugly Cry. My tears tumble out and splash onto my white shirt as I cup my palm over my mouth and attempt to squelch my sobs. Through gulps and stutters, I try to tell her what words feel inadequate to convey. That I’m beyond burned out. That I’ve never felt more alone or disconnected from myself. That after years of running, rarely slowing down to breathe and reflect, my body and spirit have come unhinged—disassembled, scattered, lost.
“You know, you don’t have to do this,” Erika says, gently resting her hand on the small of my back. “We’ll cancel this thing today. Forget it. You can take a break.”
A break. On this miraculous path I’ve walked, this dream that so many stretch toward but seldom grasp, the idea of stepping away has never occurred to me. For my place in the limelight, my role at center stage, relentlessness is the price of being cast. It’s the cost of sharing my music, my soul, with a world I feel most connected to through song. And in such a magical story line, you don’t take a break. You don’t dare imply you’re unhappy. You don’t tell your truth and risk appearing ungrateful. Instead, you strap on your boots, you keep your gaze fixed on the road ahead, and you work. You put away your feelings and you pull on your daily armor. Until the afternoon, beneath a merry-go-round of unforgiving hot lights, when a quarter century of tears and suppression collapses onto your shirt.
I don’t just want a break, I tell Erika. I want to bolt. I want to run as far away as I can from this cage I’ve lived in, this land of fake-believe. I stare at my friend but don’t speak the questions reeling through my head. If I take a break, what would happen to all of this—the appearances, the photo shoots, the concerts, all of it? And where would I go?
And then, from someplace underneath my soul and beyond my comprehension, an overwhelming response arises.
Egypt.
Copyright © 2020 by Alicia Keys
