1/31/2025
So. I’m working on this album, a familiar process for me, though this one - probably for a number of reasons - feels a little bit supercharged with creativity. I attribute that to a few things: one, I’ve been doing this type of therapy that’s been really helpful in actually moving through things and getting unstuck (ask me about IFS!); the second is that sometimes a stupidly beautiful gift from the universe just falls into your lap with no explanation. For me?!? And then I think there’s a part of me that feels like in response to the awfulness of the past eleven days - what feels to me like the anti-potential of humanity on full display - a part of me that feels like, this is what I do in crisis. This is how I create meaning, how I balance the scales in the only way I can, and how I push back against people (are they, still?) who seem only interested in cruelty, power, harm, greed and self-preservation. Like lizard-brain billionaires, except that I have a fondness and respect for lizards.
Anyway. I’m running a Kickstarter for aforementioned album and would usually do some stuff on social media to promote it. Including taking out some paid facebook ads, except in this case I had this moment of coming to a screeching halt because I realized - the $50 or so I would spend on an ad is now going to support a man who just gave $25 million to a regime that’s actively working to dismantle and harm everything and everyone I hold dear. What to do. Write a blog, maybe.
So here I am. In the recording of a song this week I also had a bit of an epiphany, which was this: I’m putting together this track I refer to as ‘My Bohemian Rhapsody,’ and it’s a song about Van Gogh. So I love it for many, many reasons. But when I listen back I can’t help thinking to myself - my voice sounds kind of like John Lennon on this track. Now I like John Lennon, and admire him, but it was a bit like the proverbial grain of sand in the clamshell. This irritant that I couldn't seem to ignore as much as I tried to push it away. And then, in part because of this therapy I’m doing (ask me about IFS!) I’m able to step back, take a pause and a breath, and say - Hey, what’s going on here? And then realize that what was going on was - I didn’t create my reaction, or conjure it up, or goad it into existence; it simply was.
And I'm talking about the reaction of being so, so conflicted because I went through adolescence under the influence of testosterone and that’s the vocal apparatus I’ve been working with for most of my adult life. And let me take a moment to say that I’m incredibly grateful for that apparatus, because we’ve worked together to create and express some pretty sublime and meaningful things over the years. And yet there’s this little bit of conflict and dissonance, because unbidden comes this thought/feeling that I wish I sounded more like a woman. Which woman, well, that’s a question for the ages because you could be Ysaye Barnwell, hanging in there with the baritones, or Mariah Carey singing whistle-tones most singers can’t even imagine. Nonetheless the conundrum is there, and after turning it over in my mind a few times here comes the epiphany: I didn’t choose to be trans. I didn't choose my reaction to the way my voice sounded any more than I chose my reaction to an article I read about a trans person when I was twelve - Oh, okay, so THAT's what I am.
Now you’d think that 22 years and 15 albums later (Ask me about my Kickstarter!) I would have moved past this a long, long time ago. But I’ll tell you something: almost every time I get up on stage, with few exceptions, I feel apprehensive. For the most part because there’s a part of me that thinks, I hope my voice doesn’t give me away, I hope it doesn’t tip people off. Now truthfully I’ve navigated into some pretty interesting vocal territory, playing with timbre, range and plenty of other things and I daresay that sometimes the sound of my voice maybe does approach something that’s much more feminine than what I started out with. And that maybe when I get up on stage the truth is that most people don’t know. At the same time there came the question of - and what if they did? I mean barring questions of emotional or physical safety, and yet one more reason to be potentially rejected - what if people did know?
Which was another aha moment. Because it came to me that this fear of being discovered was rooted in the belief that Who I Am is not okay. I’m not saying I agree with that, or don’t aspire to believe something better - it was just the realization that this belief had been laying there like the carcass of a bloated, beached whale, festering and poisoning the air around me. And I had at best been spraying a little bit of Febreze on it.
Because I thought to myself, there’s another choice here: on the one hand, I sing a certain way, someone pegs me as trans, and then I have the immediate reaction that it’s something to be ashamed of, worried about, or hidden away. Apologized for. But the other script I was writing in my head was responding with something like - Yeah, I am, actually - and I’ve worked pretty hard to try and come up with a way to sing that felt expressive, authentic and that wasn’t hurting my voice in the process. I worked through all of that in real time, on stage, and came to a point where I felt like I had something I could work with. In spite of the fact that at times it felt difficult if not impossible, and in spite of the fact that I'm an incredibly sensitive person who was publicly existing light-years outside of my comfort zone. All of this was because I have this profound desire and need to self-express in the hope of heeding what surely feels like a calling, and in some small way leaving the world better than I found it. And I’ve never given up because my need to be true to that calling seems to be stronger than anything that might try to impede it.
After all that I went back and worked on the song some more, and I can not WAIT for you to hear it. It's just the most outrageous, funny, meaningful, dare I say queer thing I've ever made. And I’ll tell you, the world feels like a dire place these days, at least our fifty states, where every day I wake up with some new thing to be outraged about or afraid of. At the same time - I heard this great interview with Alok, who’s a non-binary activist and comedian - and I’m going to paraphrase something they said that really stuck with me. The gist of it was about using comedy as resistance, and at first I was like what/yeah/no/I don’t get it. It sounds like a soundbite. But when I listened to them talk here’s what I took away: There are people in power who hate you and want to erase your existence, who would thrilled beyond measure if you’d just go away. And you know what? Those people? They’d love nothing more than if they could convince you to get on board and hate yourself too. So every time you make a joke, or laugh, or feel joy? You’re thwarting that objective and it’s the most subversive thing. To say to them - in spite of all your best efforts, I woke up this morning and made myself laugh, I walked outside with my trans body and breathed in the air with my trans lungs, listened to the birds with my trans ears and felt trans joy surging through my trans veins.
And you know what? I’m glad I didn’t take out that facebook ad. Because instead it pushed me to write this, and Mark Zuckerberg inadvertently nudged this trans artist into doing something more worthwhile, into reaching out, sharing, connecting and creating. And now this corner of the internet has a little bit of meaningful content that wouldn’t have existed otherwise.
Something to be proud of.
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If you'd like to support the making of the album - Moving Pictures: Songs Inspired by Painters and Paintings - here's the link; if you're not able to support financially (I get it) sharing and amplifying are great ways to help. And if you can't do that I love you just the same, you beautiful, complex, Enneagram-4 introvert <3