Ocean Vuong

So for me, I told him, I said, look, I share the same shame and doubt that you do, but you believe, I have a sense that you believe that there is a kind of comfort there.

and agreeability to being in the center of power, right, in institution.

That's what people, normal people have.

They don't feel like they're imposters.

They feel like they belong here, that they should be here.

But I tell them, I said, the day that I feel that I belong in institutional power is the day my creativity dies.

I never want to feel comfortable here.

And we turn that into a pathology.

We say, you are ill, you have a syndrome.

But I refuse to believe that.

To me,

It's an immune system.

I have imposter immune system.

What does that mean, imposter immune system?

It means that when I'm in the center, I don't believe that being in the center alone is anything valuable or dignified.

You have to still have conduct.

You still have to have behavior and ethics.

And also that when you realize, you go into these spaces and you realize, actually, what I learned back there

in my hometown that I thought I was escaping from was much more useful for me than what I'm seeing here.

That this charade of power and belonging is truly a hallucination.