About (is me)
Hello. I see you are curious.
In 2014 I had exactly 5 bucks left to my name.
So I went to the largest arts festival in the world, plunked myself down to busk “ave maria” in front of a crowd of 30 bewildered-looking Scottish people and never looked back.
Humble beginnings.
I was born and raised in a town of 7,000 people, which, for Alaska, is metropolitan! Complete with enough pedophiles on the run from justice to fill an olympic sized swimming pool, this jewel of a seaside town offers up quite a few special features including, but not limited to: a Walmart that my High School choir personally christened with the national anthem. The ceremony was complete with a presentation of the American flag. The mayor delivered a heartfelt speech followed a minister saying a blessing over the Walmart in the name of Jesus. People had camped out over night in the parking lot to witness the opening of the Walmart.
……it’s a place where dreams really can come true!!
(and then immediately die in front of your eyes.)
But it is pristine.
You can thank the Dena’ina for that . >>>>>>
How you and i met.
Despite the brand new and freshly “devil-free” Walmart, I’d sung enough “Lord I Lift Your Name on High” for one lifetime, and decided to leave Kenai for the United Kingdom on a one way ticket.
Upon reflection, this was a lot of assumption on my part. Despite needing the Heathrow desk clerk to fully explain to me the concept of a train, having never ridden one in my life before that moment, somehow it all worked. Performing opera on the street would make me my own boss, and take me around the world to perform and connect with thousands of people in ways I never thought possible. At one point, I even went viral in the Balkans and was featured on Bosnian and Croatian television. I have a tattoo on my dominant forearm of the Ottoman-style fountain Sebilj, an iconic national landmark the centre of Sarajevo. I received it in Bosnia to commemorate how deeply the Bosnian War, and subsequent resilience of the Bosnian people, informed the trajectory of the rest of my life. Legend says any person who drinks from the waters of Baščaršija will return back to Sarajevo. Below the fountain are the words “again and again” written in Bosnian. I wasn’t brave enough to drink the water, but I have gone back to tour Bosnia regularly as a comedian anyway.
In 2015 I returned to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival once again, and would stumble into a stand up comedy show for the first time. This was a game changer. The artform of disarming the masses with humour was intoxicating. Here, in front of my very eyes, was a way to meet hundreds of people at once, a concept which was previously unbelievable. I could simply “have a chat” with thousands of people I would never otherwise meet, learn about them in real time, and enjoy that process over and over again to my heart’s content. I went on to perform comedy in more than 30 countries, and as of just before the pandemic, in two languages. Street performing would give me the freedom to pack up and travel to any comedy club at will, and be able to perform for hundreds of international audiences and some of the best clubs in the U.K. Spending most of my adult life performing comedy for the acerbic sensibilities of the British public would burgeon my personhood in ways hither to unbeknownst to me. For better or for worse: I am who I am because the Brits are who they are.
Fast forward to 2020, in the beginning of the pandemic in England, I was, like millions of others across the planet, newly stuck at home. My universe for that first year was the living room of none other than Britain’s Got Talent Finalist Daliso Chaponda, who graciously took me in to his flat in Manchester. Under his direct encouragement, I began to fuss with an app called Tiktok to vent. Being the quintessential professional entertainers that we are, Daliso had a lighting setup purchased for the digital entertaining that would define the next year of our lives. And what’s more: he encouraged me fiddle with it to make my Tiktoks.
One fateful day I would attempt to channel “diabolical twat” while venting about misogyny on Tiktok, and the character who would go on to define me to millions of people was born. Americans, bless them, heard me and assumed I was English. I had, apparently unconciously, tapped into the American perception of what it is to be British. The cadence of speech I’d developed while living in England for most of my adult life was evidently the secret sauce for a very viral, and highly British-y, success. The caricature stuck, and would become my signature voice. My platform would grow to be known for those very same spirited “twatty” rants about politics, history, vaccine information, sexuality, and much more. I’d somehow managed to merge comedy and activism, and was able to use the power of what I’d been given to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for grassroots causes around the world during the wake of the pandemic. I was able to finally, on an unimaginable scale, share what a life away in Europe had taught me. I was free to raise my voice for things I had come to cherish in a lifetime spent experencing human beings out loud behind a microphone. I now reside in New York.
In March of 2022, after exposing a popular male feminist for using his massive platform to take advantage of a myriad of nearly identical female partners without their knowledge, a message containing personal details of my abortion was leaked by one of his supporters. I swiftly became the internet’s punching bag and I attempted suicide. However, by the grace of someone who managed to get my address, I was rushed to the hospital via ambulance. My mental health collapse was turned into a viral trending sound that still lingers in the entrails of the internet to this day. Many people have told the story, but none of them have ever contacted me or bothered to mention that I was hospitalised in a psychiatric ER.
I turned what happened to me into fuel.
After many months of treatment and a clean bill of health, I returned to creating what I loved. Rather than stay down, I was determined to stay inspired by the world I had come to love in all my years of travelling. The magic of propaganda is taking a small sliver of reality, embellishing it with confirmation bias, and selling it as the gospel truth. This phenomenon only travels faster on the internet. I wasn’t about to let strangers who hadn’t been with me in all those many streets performing Opera, those who hadn’t been with me in all those 11 hour car shares to comedy clubs in the English countryside, dictate to me who I was. It was the strength of my joy in creating that picked me back up again and kept me going. And if I can help even one person see that it’s possible to come back from the brink and love your life again, it’s worth it.
I am Chelsea Hart. Chelsea Hart is me.
My work has continued and only grown, now informed by my experiences. I refuse to let anyone be as alone as I was. Creating comedy, singing, modelling, and speaking are the ways I know I can contribute my small piece to the world. I turned my viral pain into a critically acclaimed Edinburgh Fringe Show, inspired by the Persian phrase “Damet Garm” (May your Breath be warm) and drawing on the words of slain Iranian protester Ghazaleh Chalevi “Don’t be scared. We are all together.”
The inhumanity of the world we are facing today is indescribable. The only way we can press on is by building a new one with each other. A world moved and shaped by empathy.
I am so thankful to my many fans who have seen and stood by me through all these years. Without them, none of this would be possible.
We are desensitised.
“Resensitizing” is the name I chose for my podcast because it’s a word I’ve often used to describe my own walk of learning, re-learning, and realising. As I grew deeper in moving away from the types of understanding that I grew up in, my sense of the world around me exploded. There was a reality happening at all times, everywhere, that my heart had been conditioned to be numb to.
One might say it’s like falling in love. The rush of information that came to me, it kept me awake at night with fascination. Beginning to truly “feel” all that I was feeling was like having a new crush I couldn’t stop thinking about. It’s as if the nerve endings of my very soul began to plug into the world for the first time. Learning by experiencing things “out loud” would be my biggest teacher.
That sense of splendour: it’s what I wish I could gift to everyone.
In a country where one half of the population is voting to make abortion illegal, and the other half is publicly jeering at those whom it directly effects, we are numb. Though, I know I don’t have all the answers, I don’t plan to stop asking all the questions. It’s the only way I’ve ever been able to learn. Maybe we are too far gone. Perhaps the rot of this country is now, finally, terminally unfixable.
Maybe there’s hope.
Whatever the case may be, I plan to feel every part of it. And I invite you to “Resensitize” along with me.
