// “ All the money goes to the world-building.” — Chappell Roan

Roan, roan, roan your boat, gently downstream to the mainstream.

Today, I won’t be looking for the real Chappell Roan. No… not because she isn’t “there”, but because she isn’t the point — and because the hunt for the “real” person behind a persona is exactly the modern sickness I want to talk about.

Roan is a persona. An act. A built world. That makes her far more interesting, not less — but, it does raise a question…

… apart from the outright/explicitly mentioned snippets and origin stories that the Real-Roan wishes to share and link to the persona: what right does anyone — journalist, fan, industry bigwig, stranger — have to psychoanalyse a constructed character as though they’d cornered the human who made it?

I am speaking of the idea of persona, of acting, of self-storytelling, of world-building for creators, celebrities, entertainers, and honestly — all of us — even the suits&ties amongst us, whose personas are world-building brands and personal brands, which are just different variations of personas.

Let’s jive in.

The Two Types of World Building

Split your personality at every opportunity.

Each of us creates — intentionally or unintentionally, affected by biological/social/cultural forces knowingly and unknowingly, consciously and unconsciously — our own world-view.

That’s one type of world-building. It’s often more Unintentional in style, and we end up labelling it “my opinion” or “my mindset” or “my view/thoughts/feelings/attitude” — or we just end up saying, “that’s how the world is”. The kind you mistake for reality because you never chose it.

The type of world-building I’m interested in is the Intentional World-Building. It’s where we consciously develop a persona — a spin-off Identity — an alter-ego of sorts — built deliberately and ready to take into the Public Sphere/Square of Humanity. It’s a performance, but an intended one.

It’s not playing our roles that society says we should — “the woman-as-mother-and-other” and “the-man-as-bread-winner-and-brother” — the ones we slip into in different scenarios without even realising… it’s far, far more choreographed than that.

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“To invent yourself and to build a world around this additional identity is power & powerful — pure and simple.”

— Le Moi

In this type of world-building, the world does not (seem) to come before the persona. There’s a central character that is birthed, moulded, and injected & lit with Promethean fire, burning brightly (often against something or someone in the ‘real’ world). It is both and escape and a challenge/fight/duel. It’s in response to the world that new worlds are born.

And in these worlds of a persona, a universe of curation is given birth — often through what we label an “escape”, but is often much stronger and empowering than such a word-sleight-of-hand right there would have you believe. To invent yourself and to build a world around this additional identity is power & powerful — pure and simple.

The persona can then act as an infinitely malleable manifestation of the Original’s hidden sides. Sometimes it’s a weapon. Something it’s just for fun; for the pure joy of existence. Not everything requires justification, and just like how sometimes a cigarette is just a cigarette, sometimes creativity is just creativity.

(There’s a whole philosophical basement under all this — Kant’s noumena and phenomena, Schopenhauer’s veil — but you don’t need the footnotes to feel the thing working).

Never take up a concrete persona, they'll always crumble.

Playing the Persona Game

These worlds become curated castles/temples/extendable arms of the persona. I, myself, am following this path — I am a case study unto myself — inventing myself, building personas, such as The Identity Consultant, Neon (from my Generation Why serialised novel), and adding bricks-by-bricks-by-bricks the architecture of my own world.

One that I share because I’ve given permission to share. I accept feedback — good, bad, ugly, horrific, soul-destroying, sometimes uplifting and world-buildingly-constructive — because I want it. I want to play the game of life that modernity has led us to.

I give permission for my persona to be torn down and built up and scrutinised in equal measure.

Because those are rules of the human game — whether social or biological, we have needs and expressions to critique others or to join hands and world with others.

Some worlds align, others collide — others merge, like the Greek myth of how humans were once whole, but the Gods split us in two, searching, endlessly, for our other half.

Return of the Roan (After A Large Minor Digression)

Chappell Roan is a persona. An act.

We know this. Yet… we’ve blurred (and will forever continue to blur) the line between the persona and the Original so completely that a feeling about the character twists itself into a fact against the person. We learn to hate the human, when all we ever met was the human’s creation.

That doesn’t make it any less valuable, respectable, or ‘real’. Unless I know (personally), the person behind the persona, the Original (if that exists, but that’s a different story/blog/world), why do I/we feel the need to judge or throw a comment their way?

Building a persona and an accompanying world around its beliefs and values and desires and dreams does not then give some deep ethical license to speak ill on it (nor to speak positively on it).

Yet, these are the current Rules of the Game. Personas are the public sphere punching bags that artists, creators, entertainers, celebrities, and increasingly business people and their “personal brands” are releasing into the wild, wild Western world wild (and further).

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Maybe the Rules of the Game can be changed. Maybe a persona will come along whose world is one that rails against that rule-giving machine. But, for now, personas give an implicit license and outlet for others to comment upon.

It’s not quite a shield of the Original, as things trickle down — people want the Real-Roan — the Real-Gaga — the Real-Donald-Trump — the Marilyn Monroe we built…

(I.e., the versions we ourselves built and then mistook for a discovery!)

But, it’s a start.

And what I throw my support behind — that is, I want to help the people build, extend, and amplify their Personas, and to help them in their world-building efforts.

As these worlds often need a co-creative director, (like me) an extra dose of insanity, to take it to the social sphere/public sphere in a way that feels “right” and has the power to “do” things, whether that’s make a statement, or to direct thinking and culture and society a certain way.

And hey, — maybe a persona will arrive one day whose whole world is a revolt against that rule. Until then, this is the deal you sign when you make yourself on purpose.

Why Build At All?

Because to invent yourself, and build a world around the invention, is power — pure and simple. Some worlds align. Others collide. Others merge, the way Plato’s split humans spend their lives searching for the half they were cut from.

It takes a person to make a persona. In this century, it takes a village to build that persona’s world out where others can live inside it. That’s true for a pop star drowning in lipstick and lore. It’s true for a brand. It’s true for you.

Roan was right. All the money goes to the world-building. So does all the meaning.