JVL
official daine visual archive
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🩵 avery cochrane 🩵
Stranger Things
if i look back, i am lost
art blog(derogatory)
Claire Keane
noise dept.
EXPECTATIONS
almost home
KIROKAZE
Xuebing Du
todays bird
Mike Driver
tannertan36
I'd rather be in outer space 🛸
untitled
d e v o n
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@tonydoubeksound
To celebrate the release of ‘Positive Songs For Negative People’, I thought it’d be nice to showcase some of yours and mine’s best examples of Random Acts Of Kindness. Submit yours using #FTRAOK or view and like others’ submissions for inspiration – there might just be a Random Act Of Kindness from me in store … Continue reading Random Acts of Kindness →
This is such a stellar idea!
Speaking of November the 5th, Lana Wachowski is one of the brilliant minds behind the film adaptation of V for Vendetta.
Lana is my role model and hero in many ways, one of which being that she is a trans person living out and proud as an artist, but that her art and messages are so much larger than that. Through her work she convinced me that I can be a musician, I can make an impact with that music, and I can be more than a transman in my work and my life.
It is my dream as a composer to score something for The Wachowskis one day. Lana was the first transgender person who showed me I could be more than a transman. She was the first transperson in the public eye I saw not making her work all about being trans. She challenges us so much more. But she also LIVES HER LIFE.
I hope I can thank her personally for putting her privacy and anonymity on the line for those of us who never thought it was possible to realize our dreams not only of transitioning, but of being everything we dream of being.
It’s the 5th of November. So here’s Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture. Enjoy :)
Music hipster realization of the day
There's only us There's only this Forget regret-- or life is yours to miss. No other road No other way No day but today
RENT: YOLOing before it was cool
“REAL BOY is the coming-of-age story of Bennett Wallace, a transgender teenager finding his voice—as a musician, a friend, a son, and a man.”
I am so excited for REAL BOY because it is a film talking about more than just the FTM transition, but the whole life story that goes with it!
They have about $20,000 left to go! Please help them reach their goal to bring this film to life!
Just wanted to say that your piece in being the trans guy next door really hit home for me. I'm in a similar space where I came out in 2014 and felt I needed to give so much back. Thanks for that.
I’m glad it resonated with you. Thank you for reaching out. You don’t owe anyone anything. I do hope that we all will put in some sort of effort to help our community forward, but we can’t all dedicated ourselves to activist lives. So for my community I will write pieces about challenging society and the Patriarchy and outdated views, but I will also write music about the rest of this complex and beautiful world. I will not turn my back on my community, but I will live my life.
Hi, I'm a young trams guy facing rejection from family, and scared to lose my singing talent when I go on T. I've heard rumors that it ruins your voice, but seeing your pictures gives me hope. What were the effects of T on your voice?
It doesn’t ruin your voice by any stretch of the imagination. However, for 3-4 years your voice will be changing and your range will be shorter. I suggest just continuing to sing casually through that entire period to keep hearing yourself and feeling your voice. The feeling of your voice will also change. So keep singing. I am just over three years on T and my voice is just starting to settle down. My range is smaller now, but in a private lesson with my choir professor he told me that he could hear my range was about to settle and open up. He said if I keep singing and gently training and pushing it, it will open up into a much larger baritone range.
I do have to kind of start training from the beginning a little. I can carry a tune just fine and can properly hit ever note, but there is a lot I have to learn again.
That’s the one thing with your singing voice and transitioning, it takes time to really get there and there is a lot of work you need to put into it. But if you’re patient and consistent you’ll be just fine :)
The first time I wore a tux I was a butch little alto with an old tux from the costume shop. Today I sing in my first choir concert as a bass. I love the extra layers that come from being trans and a developing musician.
Behind every transition there is a story that is so much bigger and more complex and more beautiful. When we only focus on the gender transition we miss so much of the growth the actual person goes through. REAL BOY is telling that story. I feel so lucky to have been a part of their story and I can't wait to see the full story be told. Please help them tell this story by visiting their Kickstarter page at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1075763294/real-boy-a-documentary
Excerpt from the Performance Notes of my first non-traditional score “Escape”
“A book should be chosen for 1) the sound it makes (loud enough to be heard) 2) the size of the book (which must be longer than 394 pages) and 3) if possible, for it’s content so that the sounds seem in place with the style and plot. Player One will turn to page 394 after setting the tea kettle on to boil. Players who understand the reference to page 394 are congratulated on their geekdom.”
Awesome music alert!
#1 trend on Twitter fuck yeah!
Listen to ‘Victorious’ on YouTube. Get the song on Apple Music or listen on Spotify.
If you don’t see it up yet (ex-US), it’ll be up by midnight local time.
New Panic at the Disco song!!
This weekend I am writing my first non-traditional score for my first experimental composition.
The assignment is to write a composition for objects that are not traditional instruments using non-traditional notation.
Sometimes the only way to make it through the day is to keep that one song on repeat until it is the only thing left in your mind.
This is Berkley. Berkley likes to tell me when it is time to take a break from practicing. Berkley also likes to sit on my lap while I play Debussy.
Singing goals right here.
Why I Am Done Being The Transboy Nextdoor
I’m out for a run. My feet keep time with music that sounds like it belongs in an indie film about self discovery. I imagine I am in the film, then wonder why I’m running. Reflecting on the past year and a half I become aware of the many reasons to be running.
The year I came out as as transman was also the year I became an activist was also the year I left music was also the year I became angry at the world was also the year I began losing the ability to really feel anything. As the token transman on campus I was asked to tell my story to countless classes. I ran workshops on different campuses and wrote a blog about my transition. Every new person I met turned me into their trans 101 educator, and even conversations with friends and family were littered with references to my gender identity, the most recent attack or death of a trans person, the newest queer vocabulary list, or their own ideas and perceptions of what gender meant to them.
By the time I graduated college I believed that I was a political activist, that because I was trans it was my duty to go through this. Even though I felt out of place in that world, I fully believed that the stress would decrease, that I would get used to a life spent ineffectively providing society with band aids from my ever-diminishing first aid kit. After a year in that life I had come to realize that organizations were being forced to compromise their missions and each other in the scramble to financial stay afloat, politics had none of the answers for fixing a system broken so long no one knows if it was originally supposed to work and that bandaids were not going to change the world.
I was also reaching a point were I was getting tired of feeling like a petting zoo for cisgender people with hearts in the right places and questions in the wrong spaces. Being a drag and queer burlesque performer I am often found at the bar between acts with my shirt off. One of the first rules stated in these performances is literally “Don’t fucking touch us” without our consent. And while they are often asking for consent, by the time they have finished asking “Can I touch your scars?” their finger is already an inch from my chest. They are drunk, I am a character. To keep them coming back to the shows I continue the performance, but when I am home being asked yet again to tell my trans story, I find myself frustrated that the only story people seem to care about is the one about my body and not about my life.
When I looked around at many of the trans and queer activists I have worked with I remember how much pain they are in and I wonder if it’s because they don’t have the time or space to develop themselves outside of their gender or sexual identity. In the life of an activist your day job is to take care of people who have been and will continue to be damaged by a system you can’t stop and when you finally get home, your free time is spent coping with what you’ve dealt with. Eventually you hit burnout and you either leave or you push through and stop feeling.
As I began to realize that this was not the life I wanted to live I started turning back to my love for music. There are many reasons I have told myself over the years of why I left music. I left the Music Department because I didn’t feel like the program was teaching me but molding me into what they wanted me to be. I left music because I honestly felt that because I was a transgender man, the only thing I should, or maybe even could, do was activism. I was unsure that a transgender person could live as an artist, that anyone would be interested in what a transperson had to say about the world because at the time, it seemed like the only thing people were interested in hearing about was what happened with my body.
So when I was asked yet again to tell my trans story I decided I would tell a new story.
I am a transgender man. In 2012 I came out to myself, my friends, and my family. When I came out I threw myself into the world of activism in the hopes that I would change the world through grassroots organization and political change.
For three years my identity was wrapped up in being a transgender man, partly because I spent three years trying to figure out how to be a transman and partly because it seemed that people were only seeing a transman. That cycle continued until my head was spinning faster than my body could keep up.
I burnt out. I stopped feeling. I shut down and shut people out. And I started searching for who I really was.
That search started on a stage. Milwaukee is home to several drag and burlesque troupes who welcomed me with open arms and questions about who I was. Never did they ask about my transition, my genitals, or my birth-name. Their questions had my questioning myself. Other than a man with a vagina, who am I?
That simple question brought me to the rediscovery of my nerdy-side, specifically my love for Harry Potter and Dr. Who, which I translated into stage performances. Spending more and more time listening to music and learning to dance my passion for music began to reignite and I found myself dusting off my keyboard.
I finally indulged my wanderlust and took a road trip across Route 66, leaving technology, and by extension activism, behind. In ten days I drove 4,000 miles, hiked in Arizona, stood on Devil’s Bridge, dove into a 32 degree water chute, meditated in a Sedona’s energy vortexes, slept under a blanket of stars in what can only be described as the middle of absolute nowhere, experienced the overstimulating power of Las Vegas, took a very deep breath in Denver, and drove home feeling as though a flood had cleared my mind. I felt open to the world in a way I had never experienced. And almost instantly music rushed in to fill the space.
My mind suddenly felt like an echo-chamber of inspiration. Lyrics freely bled from my pen, singing became a daily ritual, orchestras provided soundtracks to my grocery shopping, and the softest viola solo kept me up at night.
I began living music again. Every waking moment was spent thinking about music and daydreaming about the life I could have if I became a musician again. The only things holding me back were the belief that I would have nothing of interest to say and a sense of responsibility I felt towards the queer community. Would it be a betrayal to stop making everything in my life about being an activist? Could I make music and an impact?
Then, one night as I sat browsing Netflix, like you do, I began watching Sense8 and was delighted to find out The Wachowskis were the brilliant minds behind this incredible series. For those of you who don’t know, the Wachowskis are a directing team made of Larry Wachowski and Lana Wachowski. Lana is a transgender woman, but that’s not the first thing I think about what I think of her. I think of her and her brother’s artistic brilliance. I think of the genius behind their films, their artful interpretations of Cloud Atlas and V for Vendetta, a movie that first inspired me to challenge society.
I binge watched Sense8 in a week. Then I watched it again. And I thought more about how Lana was in fact a transperson but made her life about so much more than that. Since then I have watched the show 4 times all the way through. Each time I’ve found a new layer in the show, a new reason to be inspired, a new message I missed before.
It was the final push I needed.
Today I am a Music Composition and Technology Major. I am taking a risk on myself. A leap of faith that I can, and will, be more than the transboy nextdoor.
