My Performa journey began on November 4. Dick Cheney died that morning, and Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor of New York that night. In between, I was fidgety, nervous, and excited for what the city might become. Still, I managed to sit patiently through some performance art like it was my job. The show I saw that evening was fittingly on-theme: War Songs, Diane Severin Nguyen’s meditation on the role music played in shaping popular understanding of the American War in Vietnam.Performa is