What do you call it?

Years ago, I was hanging out with a few bandmates, including an acquaintance who I was progressively becoming friends with. He was (is) a very charismatic and high intensity high energy individual.

At one point, between rehearsing or recording, I don't remember what we were doing, he put on a YouTube video of Ricardo Iorio, an Argentinian metal legend whose ideas and politics are all over the place and never understood (so much to write about here, another time).

My acquaintance friend started to play the video, put the video on mute, and we all watched the video as he, in a perfect Iorio imitation, recited the complete interview word for word, sound by sound, breath by breath, and expression by expression.

I was in awe.

I was also freaked out.

I was envious/incomprehensive/immature/ (roll all of these up into a perfect German word).

Approximately 15 years later, I can't stop listening to Bo Burnham's song "All Eyes on Me". I sing along to it. And in the break, when he starts talking / doing standup / reciting, I notice myself saying every single word, with his exact intonation, and his exact expression.

And I remembered my friend.

What was he doing? What was it he did? What is Bo Burnham doing?

It's not comedy, reciting, spoken word, performing... Categorizations get us nowhere.

Best to not know exactly what it is. But if we must, let's call it art.