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INTERVIEW: LYNN BREEDLOVE

Note: The following interview contains sensitive material that could be triggering for some readers.

Lynn Breedlove speaks calmly, honestly and resolutely. Nothing obscured, nothing censored. Through decades of work as a musician — Lynn was the founder and frontperson of the first American out dyke punk band Tribe8 — a writer, comedian, activist, CEO and radio personality, he has become a vanguard and visionary, working fiercely and fearlessly on behalf of trans, queer, POC and working class communities. Lynn Breedlove is revolutionary in his thinking, even if just for the radical potential he sees in unexpected things — the simple act of conversation, the nuances of a joke, a rubber dick, a ride home. In an era of immense uncertainty, Lynn is a light through.

Lynn was a keynote speaker at last week’s New York Live Arts' Mx'd Messages Festival, a series curated by Justin Vivian Bond that examinines the idea of a world without binaries — across gender, politics, theology, sensory perception and race. We were lucky enough to catch up with Lynn to chat about the beauty of vulnerability, the 90s queer punk scene and what daily resistance looks like.

You’re so prolific. You’ve written novels, you’ve toured in bands, you’ve had your own comedy show and radio program and you’re the CEO of a ride-sharing company. Do all of these satisfy different artistic parts of yourself? Or do you feel closer to one, and feel the need to constantly experiment with others?

LB: I have two talents, writing and performing, which I have spent some decades honing in to some semblance of skill. There are a million different options to express myself using those two talents. Stand-up comedy, music, books, radio. The easiest thing for me to do is get up and write, but then there’s the way of organizing the writing. That’s where I have to involve other people to help me, and it becomes a collaboration.

What is the collaborative element to performance?

LB: There’s an energy loop that happens between me, whoever I’m on stage with and the audience. All these different loops inform what happens next. It’s ongoing.

I was struck by your email signature, “Courage is fear with breath.” Writing can be a very private and personal endeavor, whereas performance opens things up in a very public way. How have you found the courage to translate the private to the public?

LB: I feel like self-disclosure is just a totally innate, natural impulse for me. I'm just like, "Blah, blah, I'm sad, my cat died." It's over-sharing. I've had to consider whether or not I wanted to put any boundaries on that. Sometimes I just blurt it all out, run around with my dick out, do all kinds of shit and later, years later, I'm like, "Oh my God. What were you thinking, dude? Really?"

Apparently people were entertained and it made whatever impression it was supposed to make. I don't even know if it made the impression that I wanted it to make. I let my gut tell me where to go and then if I have to make amends later with my brain, then I do.

With One Freak Show, my door was always open. I always loved to get off stage and talk to the audience members.

I was dealing with some pretty edgy stuff — a lot of discussions about what it meant to be trans. The whole LGBTIQ community — which is not a community, but a group of communities and individuals who have a whole bunch of different opinions about what to do and say — was having some issues communicating and accepting each other, so I was really interested in talking to people after the show and getting feedback.

And people would be like, "Well, you know, this part was weird, this other part was weird, too. And I would say, "Well, what do you think would be better?" Or "Do you think this part was too over the top?" And I'd be like, "Dude, can I tell people that I got your permission to say that so that they don't think that I'm making fun of stuff?"So, it was just really great to have that [dialogue]. There was one really memorable conversation with this guy. It was a daytime Tribe8 show where I had chopped off the rubber dick and threw it in the crowd and it bounced off of somebody's head and everybody felt better. Well, this guy didn't feel better. So, he went to talk to me after and said, "My God, this really hurt". And I was like,"Was that upsetting for you?" He was like "Yeah, yeah. It's abusive and I'm triggered." And I said, "Okay, well check this out. Imagine, you walk down the street everyday and you're in constant fear and constantly having to worry, just a nagging basic undercurrent that you're going to get raped. Everyday because everybody everyday is afraid. And every second that you're not looking out, you get attacked and jumped. And everybody you know has been raped. How do you feel about them? If that was the case, do you feel like you might want to sing a song that is symbolic of your suffering? Hm?" And he was like "Hm, maybe". And I was like, "Yeah, well that's how we feel. We walk around, feeling that way and we've gotta have a cathartic ritual. And we've gotta work out the anger somehow." And he’s all, "Oh okay."

So, I could have a friendly conversation with a guy afterwards and turn it around. And hopefully, he could go out into the world for the rest of his life and talk to all the guys that he was gonna talk to about this and spread different news.

Do you think that humor can be a medium to discuss change?

LB: Absolutely. It's the only way for me. Your heart opens when you laugh. Comics can tell funny story after funny story after funny story and then they come in at the end with the zinger and make you cry. Love that shit.

You lower your guard when you're laughing. You've got everybody laughing at themselves and each other and everybody's forgiving. And then you're okay. And that's how we learn.

But if you're constantly wagging your finger at people and saying, "You should do it this way because you're wrong," nobody will listen to that. They shut down. Nothing gets in.

So, yeah, humor is crucial, but comedy rots. Richard Pryor, for years, would say the N word and later, he was like “I'm actually not gonna say the N word anymore”. With One Freak Show, I use the T word a lot and I’ve been discussing whether or not it's okay to use the T word if you identify as trans, even if you use that word to describe yourself and you have for years, and suddenly along come some other people who are like, "Well, I don't like that word." What does all that mean? What does language mean? What does coping mean? So with humor, it's now. And then next week it's gonna be something different. And you have to constantly stay on top of where your culture is, where your society is, where current events are and what is okay to say and what is not okay to say, how to describe your experience and how to not describe it.

Lenny Bruce talked about racism. I thought it was very effective in 1965, but now, the words that he used and the concepts, the points he was trying to make, even if they were trying to take away power from people who had it, couldn’t be made now the way he made them then.

Does it retroactively make it less effective?

LB: If you look at Mark Twain’s Huck Finn, he used the N word quite a bit. But his intention behind using the N word was to say, "This is what southern society and southern culture is now. It's racist." It's built into their language. Language is culture and LOOK AT IT. And the only person that's transcending this culture is a child that's pushed out on the periphery by poverty. That kid is free to choose a different way. Even he is constantly questioning, "Is this right?"

And then they have people saying, "Let’s ban this book." I think we need to use a scalpel instead of a sledgehammer to figure out how we want to discuss ideas.

What do you think daily resistance looks like?

LB: Well, the first thing I have to do everyday is not go to my phone and look at the latest nonsense that DT, Dick Tater, is doing. (That's the drag name I made up for him.) That's not gonna drive me.

What drives me: I wake up and I do spiritual practice, first thing. Prayer, meditation, yoga, shooting hoops with the pals — whatever it is that helps ground me in my reality. And then, I feel solid enough to go connect with my people. And then, after I write my morning pages, and I know what I feel and what I think, and after I’ve written my dreams down and I see that I'm having stress dreams about the apocalypse, I can asses where I am. Then, I can go and look at the news if I want.

Maybe I'm just gonna get to work. I'm gonna hire people that I like, that I feel need work and that I want to work with. People that are POC, trans, queer — these are the kind of people I want to work with, that I want to make art with.

I want to create a world that includes people that I like and that I respect and that I relate to. And people that are all on the same road of resisting together by the things that we do everyday. Whether we're in a band together or we work together. That's how I want to create my world.

And then, if I have to chain myself to a fence, well that's great. Because I'm gonna be ready for that. Because I will have spent the previous month gearing up and being strong. If you keep revving at 100 rpm all day long and go to every protest and sing your guts out, you're going to burn out.

How do you think punk has changed from the time of its inception? How do you think it functions now in terms of art, music and politics?

Well punk seems to be a whole bunch of different iterations now. It started in the late 60s with Iggy Pop and Lou Reed and all those guys, and then later with Patti Smith and Bad Brains and everyone else.

And then you have the “four white guys” for ten years in the 80s. And Black Flag was one of those four white guys bands. But, now there's a lot of trans, queer, non-binary, non-gender conforming, and lots of different cultures coming through with the punk ethic, carried through all different styles of music. It's not as restricted by verse-chorus-verse-chorus 3 chords, monosyllabic grunting. There's drag and guerilla drag that I feel lbelongs in the punk category because of its ethos. Because it's accurate in what it represents, because it’s fucking it up, because it’s folk music, basically.

Like Woody Guthrie, but it doesn't have to be a guy with an acoustic guitar. Anybody that's bucking the system with music falls into the punk category.

Yeah, it's protest music. Tribe8 was insanely influential in that scene. You were deemed leaders of the queer punk revolution. Can you tell me a little bit about the impetus for Tribe8 and how it all came together?

Me and Silas had just gotten sober and we had a lot of energy and we had to put it somewhere. And I was just around, spouting and spewing all kinds of rhymes about being a dyke and all my hilarious mental illnesses like, "I just want to manipulate my girlfriend. I just want to play games with her head. I want her to do some mental push ups. I want her to apologize and beg.”

I thought it was hilarious and so did my friends and they were like, "Why didn't you put that to music and get a bunch of people together and make a band and play at my birthday party?" And we did. So then boom: we were all of a sudden a band and people were throwing panties at us.

But to be fair we did pass out the panties.

You passed out the panties?

LB: We passed out the panties to our friends to make them throw panties at us.

Still, that must have been a really good feeling even if you knew it was going to happen.

LB: It was hilarious. Everything we did was spoofing boy glam rock and stupid stadium rock shit that dudes had been doing for 20 years. That influenced us greatly. And we loved that. Silas grew up in Vermont, listening to Bon Jovi. "Livin' on a Prayer" and Motley Crüe.

We loved it — but it wasn't about us. And it wasn't for us and it wasn't by us. We had to reclaim it and then put a new spin on it. It was [a reflection] of what I was learning as an alcoholic in church basements. Which was that you've gotta look at your shit and then you've got to laugh at your shit. And you've got to tell people, "This is my shit, it's so ridiculous. But here it is."

That's where I was, and I feel like we all got to do that for a minute. We were like, "Oh my God, I fucking love Bon Jovi. That is so dumb but I do. So how are we going to work this in so we love it?"

They have so much fun. People with power and privilege have a bunch of fun. And for the people who don't have power and privilege that’s just sit on the sidelines and go, "Wah, they get to have all the fun..." That’s not necessary.

You see people singing gospel at church and you feel like you can't be a part of it because of your big queer mouth. But fuck you. I just did it. I'm Aretha Franklin and I just sang a gospel song about fucking, how about that?

What was the queer punk scene like in San Francisco in the 90s? Do you have a favorite memory?

LB: What happened is that all of a sudden it looked like the dyke scene was going down because all the dyke bars closed at the same time. I don't know what happened, all the dykes got sober at the same time and they couldn't fucking keep the bars open because they would come in there, order a Calistoga, pick out another babe and come back five years later and do the same thing. They couldn't stay open.

Calistoga, classic.

LB: We had to do something, so everybody started to go to straight bars and asked them if we could have a queer monthly or weekly night. And so we'd start having these queer punk dance parties, like Rebel Girl, Junk, etc. Then all these bands started cropping up all over the place, like DeathCard 13 and Her Majesty the Baby and so much other stuff. All these dykes and fags started to make bands happen and that was amazing because before that queers had to go to the disco if they wanted to hang out with other queers, and they had to order a fucking martini or a beer and they had to listen to Sylvester. Which was great, don’t get me wrong. I love Sylvester to death, and I loved Doing the Hustle in the 70s. But when I went home with my friends, we would listen to Queen and we would listen to Rock and Roll.

But you couldn't hear Queen at The End Up. You had to listen to Sylvester, which was great. Again, Sylvester was amazing. I love Sylvester. Sylvester created an amazing moment in the 70s where we were like, "Oh, my God. This guy is our guy and he is on the fucking radio." (At the time, we called Sylvester “he”).

But what the 90s queer-mo punk scene in San Francisco was about was the culture. It was kind of the epicenter of the queer punk scene and when we went to Europe and stuff we would bring that culture with us. New York had its own whole other thing, which was pretty rad. I would say the dyke punk scene was happening primarily in San Francisco. Then we would carry it like a little flame around the world and say, "Look at what we're doing! We've got the Butch/Femme thing and the Punk thing and we have mohawks and a face full of metal and ink and rubber dicks," and they'd be like, "Whoa."

How did other places respond?

LB: Well, most people were like, "Yeah, that's cool. For you. But we're not going to do that." New York did not actually get the Butch/Femme thing until maybe like the late 90s. I think a bunch of femmes moved there from San Francisco and they had to have a Butch makeover party at Meow Mix because they were like, “There are no Butches in New York. All the Butches are wearing lipstick and barrettes. We can't do this. No. So, they threw Butch makeover parties and, of course, all the dykes in New York wanted to go have babes fawn over them and put them in wife-pleasers and cut their hair and put them in boxers and fucking ties or whatever, but when they were done they're like, "Okay, now can we go on a date?" They're like, "Yep. All right." So, that happened.

But also, when we went to East Germany in the early 90s, well, what HAD been East Germany — the wall had just gone down a couple years earlier, but nothing had changed culturally — people were hella mad at us. They did not get the humor at all. They did not have humor in the DDR. That was wrung out of them and beaten out of them and if you wanted a sense of humor I guess you want to jail in the Yellow Misery, I think that was the name of the women's prison. The dudes were like, "Fuck you. How dare you. Really? You cocky bastards. How dare you walk around acting like you're something. You think you're something? You're not something."

They didn't get all the twists and turns of irony that we were pulling on them. They didn’t have the pool of reference, they didn’t get any of it. Everyone was wearing stonewash and the girls had big hair. They all looked like they were straight out of the 70s. It was scary. They were like, "You are a bunch of privileged Americans walking in like you think you're something, with your dick out."

They hated us, but in San Francisco when dudes would come to our show, they totally got it. They loved it. They fucking deferred. They got into the back, they got out of the mosh pit, they let the dykes take over. Bike messengers and strippers were always dating and stuff and they'd have a gnarly badass sex-positive feminist thing going on. So if you were a dude trying to date some badass chick in combat boots and cleavage in the 90s, you better fucking figure out what the hell she's trying to put down if you wanted to get laid. If you don't do what they say, you ain’t getting none of this. The dudes were pretty rad and feminist and standing up for their babes. And they still are.

We just did the Women's March a couple of months ago in San Francisco. First of all, there was what seemed like a half a million babes walking down the streets for hours, hours, hours down Market sStreet. Some of them had their boyfriends, their men with them, that had the coolest signs that were like “Her body, Her rights.” “Quit telling my woman what to do” kind of attitude. Just perfectly-worded signs that you're like, "Oh, my God. These guys get it."

Usually guys will just be like, "Oh, that's your thing. I'll just get out of the way." In the 60s, when feminists first started doing that, dudes were like, "Yeah, the pill will be good because I'll get laid more." So, I mean, yeah. We're getting somewhere.

I hope so.

LB: But the more things they change, the more they stay the same. Shockingly, there's also been this undercurrent rising — which for some folks has not been such an undercurrent. It's been really obvious and in your face. If you're a person of color or if your trans or a daily target of bigotry, you're going, "Yeah, no, this isn't really a shock."

I kind of thought that we were doing better. I thought people actually were changing. I actually did things that the assholes were in a way smaller minority and I was like, "Yeah, it's too bad you don't like having a black president. Isn't that hard? Shut it." I didn't feel like there would be such a major backlash of a retaliation, "You made us be led by a black man for eight years. Now we're going to fucking fuck you up." Really? Whoa.

Hopefully it’s the last, desperate gasps of that ideology, grasping at it as if for air. At least now it’s becoming visible for everyone that there’s so much darkness among us. We’ve always known it existed, but it’s actually showing itself in large, monolithic, terrifying ways.

LB: That’s really important. Awareness begets action. If any of us have been in denial about what level of bullshit exists, what element of bullshit exists in this country, we now know. Now we can deal with it. It's not going to be dealt with totally painlessly. I'm going to Europe and I feel like I have to sew a fucking maple leaf on my backpack.

What has been keeping you inspired?

LB: I'd say there's a lot of stuff being put out by trans women of color and people of color in general which is very inspiring. There was a video I saw the other day about parents of color teaching their children what to do when they see the police. It was heart breaking. It was fucking heart breaking. That that's what a person has to do to keep their child safe. Telling them, when you see a police officer, that is not your friend but you have to show them respect anyway and you have to put your hands up and say, "I have nothing to harm you," and this child is five years old. You know what I mean? But okay. That is what MLK would say, when you're going to sit at the lunch counter, you're going to have to maintain dignity and not fight back and you'll have to put your hands up. Gandhi said it, too. All the non-violent resistance actually worked and yeah, people understand and they're organizing and teaching them how to do that in the world. I think it is amazing.

What else. Coming together and organizing and saying to each other, "Okay, now who can get arrested? Let's not let the trans people get arrested. Let's not let the people of color get arrested. If they get arrested, they’re going to have shit to deal with, but if you're a white person who's never been arrested before and you're cisgender and you're not too queer looking, great, let's get you arrested. You'll be fine.“

I love the way we're all coming together and willing to resist. We feel because we have lived in a country with certain ostensible ideals, we do feel like we have some power to speak up and the difference between us and Franco’s Spain or Mussolini's Italy or Hitler's Germany is that we have that.

We're all “hell no.” I love how people are rising up. The city of San Francisco is planning a Trans Cultural District at the old Compton’s Cafeteria, named after one of the first riots against the police where trans people rose up and were like, "No, we're not going to tell you what kind of underwear we're wearing." This was before Stonewall. They’re getting a whole block of real estate, and it’ll have transitional housing for trans women coming out of prison. There will viable employment situations. I mean, I love that we just keep delving more into that kind of thing.

The more bullshit you want to raise about what bathroom I need to go in or whether or not I can get an M or an F on my passport and whether or not you're going to let me cross a border or let my friends cross a border, the more I'm just going to make my shit fucking be cool right here, in my house, in my neighborhood. I'm going to really work on my local politics, my local culture.

I love the way cities are saying, "Oh, we are going to be a sanctuary city. No, we're actually not going to do what you say.” The New York Police Department standing up and being like, "No, we’re actually not going to harass immigrants. Fuck you." That's what needs to happen.

The police, the military, the people who have the guns and the sticks and the badges, they need to not fall into the trap. My mom was raised in Nazi Germany so I grew up asking, "Hey, mom, why did the [Holocaust happen]?" She was like, "Well, we were scared." People were always saying, "Well, I was just following orders." It's like no, that can't be your excuse. If your order is wrong, you can't follow it. You do have to take that to your grave, knowing that you're responsible for following an immoral order. So I was really impressed by the New York Police Department.

What advice do you have for queer and trans youth?

LB: One of the first things that happens when a dictatorship comes into power is that people start to anticipate a new law and start voluntarily following that law before it’s even a law. They start doing things that they think the government is going to want them to do as a defensive move. Censoring themselves, hiding who they are...It’s important that we become even more visibly queer. Even more visibly trans.

But again, everybody has their own way to resist and for a lot of people, visibility isn't the thing. That feels unsafe.

Everybody needs to follow their own gut about how to do that, but I feel like maintaining integrity and staying really connected with your community and not isolating oneself is crucial. Because I think it seems really alluring to go lock yourself in your house and sit in front of the little glowing screen and just drink and smoke a lot of weed and take a lot of pills and just pretend it's not there. No. I mean, it's easy for me to say because I’m clean and sober 27 years so I can't expect everybody else that's already been drinking and smoking weed and popping pills all day to suddenly decide, "Now's a good time to stop."

But I do think what's needed right now is clarity. I feel like the higher you are, the easier you're going to be to manipulate and taken down and thrown in jail and have other things done to you. You have to get your brain cells together and connect with other people with their brain cells and we need to be strong physically, mentally and spiritually and fuck shit up. They want us to be scared and to be high and be ineffectual.

Right.

LB: There was a trans person performing the other night who was totally amazing and she was like, "I'm so freaked out, so I am really high right now. I have to be really high all the time because that's how I'm dealing with this.” There were several trans women murdered in New Orleans recently, and that was really, really scary for trans women of color. That is a terror. I definitely would not judge somebody who feels that drugs or alcohol is their only out, but there are a lot of people in the world that will help you out of that. If you feel like that's your only option and you don't want that to be your option, there's a lot of people that will guide you to other options.

Tell us about Homobiles.

LB: Well, there's Homobiles [the rideshare service] and then there's The Homobiles, the band.

Homobiles the ride service was started before Uber. Uber existed as like a limo service, a black car service, and it was kind of high priced and Lyft did not exist. We started zipping around doing this text thing, loosely inspired by my all girl bike messenger and truck messenger delivery company called Lickety Split. Homobiles were really time-oriented and all about queer people and those who are, because of their gender or sexuality, a little more vulnerable at night in the city.

We were handling people coming out of gay bars that cabs were whizzing by and ignoring and then Uber was like, "Wait a minute. This looks like something good. Let’s do what they're doing business model wise, only it’s for profit," and then Lyft came in and they were like, "Yes, we're going to do this." They became billion dollar global industries in that space, but we became a non-profit. Basically, the way it works is if you have money, good. Donate it. It goes into this kind of transportation fund and if you don't have money, then great. You'll still get a ride. There's no price on safety.

We really like to help people get home from their sexual alignment surgery. Maybe they don't want to get in a car with some random person that's not going to treat them with the dignity that they deserve. They want to get into the car with people who have some sensitivity training. The public utilities commission actually pointed out Homobiles when trying to regulate other rideshare services. They said, “See Homobiles is doing it right. You guys should do it like them. Don't discriminate against people because of their race, their gender, any of that. Treat them with respect. Don't gouge them.” I feel like even though Homobiles isn’t the only option, any time you get into a [rideshare] vehicle these days, 99% of the time you're going to be treated fairly and with respect because of the standards that Homobiles put into place. I’m pretty happy about that. It would be nice if we made a million dollars, but the primary goal is everybody's getting home safe.

What about Homobiles the band?

LB: There's a band called The Homobiles. We sing songs about cars and babes but also crimes and change. Ed Varga, who was the creator of Homo A Go Go, is the drummer and his wife, Corrie is the violinist and Stephany Joy Ashley's the executive director of St James Infirmary, which is a clinic for sex workers in the Tenderloin. She’s the singer and I'm the singer and Fureigh from the Shondes plays guitar and Mya Byrne is the bass player and we're about to go to New York to play this fabulous of refuting binaries called Mx'd Messages. And yeah, that's that. We’re having a good time.

Thanks for reading. If you’re an artist, too, feel free to use code ARTSCHOOL for a discount on any room at Ace Hotel New York.

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