Orville Peck's mask can't hide the man

A mule is a hybrid. Half donkey, half horse — a mutation that leaves them belonging to both species in part but neither as a whole. They’re also workhorses, historically used for hard manual labour but also often underestimated. To be a mule, then, seems to mean to be a kind of benevolent, misunderstood freak of nature. A being often needed — and even used — by all but not quite allowed to rest or to be held with care. And occasionally, mules are even used as metaphors for smuggling and addiction, associated with dark deals, addiction, and illicit activities.Over the last few years, Orville Peck has felt like all of these things. There is, of course, the mask, a physical representation of the double-life that the Peck sometimes feels he leads, one that oscillates between expert-grade theatrical performances onstage and, in the reverse, slow, at times even lonely, nights spent alone at home. There’s the work — the perhaps never-ending work — of touring, spending months on the road away from familiarity, striving for perfection night after night. And then there’s the addiction, a theme that marked his pandemic and post-pandemic years, culminating in a “big rock bottom” near-fatal ove...