I’ve long been obsessed with other people. An early vivid memory comes from sitting on the school bus in front of the lipstick building watching lives cross in front of other lives and wandering what those lives consisted of.

I was born the daughter of Eastern European immigrants who one the one hand tried to distance themselves from their origins through assimilation (American dance music and clubs, say Studio 54; an obsession with fashion; the constant refrain of “I’m a free man in a free country) but also sending their daughters to parochial Jewish day schools with the children of other immigrants from the Soviet Bloc. My education felt at once sheltered and expansive.