Miranda July

performance artist

I grew up surrounded by people exploring

their own trips, in the very progressive city of Berkeley in California — my parents are both writers. They were really involved in their own world, so I was not coddled. I have a big brother who would make dolls’ houses and playhouses and furniture out of wood. He was the one who taught me from such a young age that you could just make something. The physical act of gluing something together was really formative for me.

If I have an idea, I have to write it down

right then. Sometimes I’ll turn and write something down on my phone, and now my 4-year-old son has just started saying: “Oh, do you have an idea?” Part of me is like, oh shit, I’ve been busted that I’m not thinking about him. On the other hand, I guess he’s learning about the importance of writing down an idea.

In New York once, I saw a man harassing

a woman on the street. I stepped up with the intention of physically assaulting him. My husband held me back. This guy just stopped of his own accord and wandered off. Lucky for him. Usually I jump in when there’s some sort of public injustice that apparently I need to be the saviour of. My husband and I are two people who never thought we’d be married. We frankly thought we’d be fine if we weren’t married, and decided to try it. Everyone’s ready at all times to have to be alone. It’s been 12 years and it’s more or less like our first date. I’m still totally into it.

I’ve always had a dog phobia. But in my defence, I’m married to one of the greatest dog-lovers on Earth. When I met my husband [director Mike Mills], he already had two dogs, and I think we both downplayed our relationship to dogs at the beginning. My grandpa had a personal guard dog. Sometimes I’d be told: “Go kiss Grandpa, we’ll hold back Sam.” Samantha would be seething and going wild as I crept towards my grandpa, who I didn’t want to kiss anyway.

I was so punk and uninvested in the

mainstream [when starting her feminist film archive Joanie 4 Jackie], that I had forgotten mainstream matters. Just because I had made an underground feminist network that served me and a few hundred women, didn’t mean that world at large had survived. And that mattered to me.

When I was 28, I went into anaphylactic

shock. I was rushed to the ER and filled with adrenalin to bring my heart back. The doctors said: “A minute later and you would have been dead.” All I remember is that as I was fading out of consciousness, my boyfriend at the time and I looked at each other, and there was this basic knowledge exchange between our eyes — we don’t love each other. It was the beginning of the end. Later he acknowledged that, too. It’s kind of heartless, I know: “She’s not the one, which is a good thing, because she might be dying.” Observer