Interview: ALOK’s Infinite Transformation
metroweekly.comI’m marketed as the oppressed one, but I’m living life on my own terms, I’m not wearing someone else’s uniform.”METRO WEEKLY: How would you introduce yourself to someone unfamiliar with your work, who is meeting you for the first time?ALOK: I would say my name is ALOK and I’m an artist and I’m trying to create a world where we can talk in public about the things that we care the most about and where we learn how to love one another again.
I would say that I’m a poet and that doesn’t mean that I just write poetry, it means that I live it. And I would say that I’m trying my best to hold onto hope and to challenge cynicism and to actually make a difference in the world.MW: Let’s talk about your childhood. ALOK: I grew up in a small town in Texas called College Station, Texas, where I spent the first 18 years of my life.
I think it was really foundational for me because I was made to feel my difference really early on, in all forms, and that confronted me with that huge existential question of, “Who am I?”It seemed like everyone else around me had an identity or had a home, and it felt like I didn’t.
From a really young age, I actually started to question the world. I would ask my parents, “What would life be like if I was born an ant?
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