Transcript for:
Lecture on Queer Loneliness and Self-Discovery

[Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] my friends rby and Hans recently started a new band so of course I went to their first concert at an apartment in cback and while I was there I felt lonely I was surrounded by people smiling and laughing but I felt lonely it took me back to early on in my transition when I didn't want to meet up with Ruby or Hans or other cisgender heterosexual friends of mine they couldn't have been more supportive of my transition but I think I took them not being trans or at the very least not queer personally I was struggling with the weight of transition falling on my shoulders the weight of having to work at it every day to seemingly fight against my body to advocate for myself in a flawed Health Care system to radically change almost every part of my life all while trying to find some joy in it even though I was accepted by my friends I still often felt like the odd one out I still felt like the other and though I've come a long way since those early days of transition Blues I was at this concert and once again I felt lonely the truth is I don't know for sure if everyone there was s hat or even if there weren't any transer non binary people there but my brain made an assumption and built a wall and I want to say it was a defense mechanism because of discrimination I've experienced but I think there's more to it I think there's also just a stubbornness I haven't fully gotten over at the start of my transition I thought that if I did it well enough I'd find acceptance and subsequently Comfort but now I know that being quote unquote normal while also being openly trans was never really an option to begin with now I've been to a gynecologist who was totally kind until I mentioned that I'm trans after which they refused to treat me and stopped referring to me as a woman I've also been followed and harassed by men while being paranoid about whether or not they know I'm trans because I have vivid memories of how quickly misogyny can be supplemented by transphobia when trans acceptance often rests some being as quote unquote normal as possible while transphobic Prejudice is often motivated by claims that trans people are tricking others sometimes it can feel like to be trans is to be inherently isolated from society to be ostracized from gender conventions regardless of if you want to be queer people are more likely to feel lonely than their s peers and if you ask someone in the community about loneliness chance s will hear about a version of it that seems queer specific and while I was sitting at that concert I was thinking about that I was thinking about queer loneliness what even is where it comes from and why I was feeling it this is the kind of Southern Gothic portion of the set it's another song about death this is will you miss me when I'm gone [Music] close the I and this heart shall cease to be and they lay me down to in some flowy boundary tree Miss Me me when I'm will you miss me miss me when I'm miss me miss me when I'm will you miss me when I'm [Music] [Applause] so it's been about 10 years since I came to Berlin for the first time and when I first came here I was 19 so in 2014 and I didn't really know much about Berlin or really much about life at all but I immediately fell in love with the city and part of that was because of the queer culture and in Berlin a lot of like the queer culture means like clubbing and music and all of that stuff in between and I have a very complicated relationship with that I think when you get to Berlin it's almost like write a passage for young queer people coming to the city to get here and be like oh my God the party never stops and party party party and then eventually you realize that like oh it actually never really stops and so you either like leave it completely or you develop a new relationship with it or you succumb to it or watch your friends succumb to it and for me that's been like a long road and I'm now sober so that's my journey with that but I do know some people who like have a much different relationship with it now like for example the building behind me beine I know some friends who will like go there at like 5:00 a.m. on a Sunday and then party for like 12 hours and have a great time and then just go to sleep and get up for work the next day and so they've sort of ort of adjusted their life around clubbing which is very important to them respect to them for being able to handle that I don't think that I could ever handle that ever again and so the first and only time that I've been to beine was 10 years ago and I'll never forget waiting in line with a friend of mine like trying to look as cool as possible I was smoking a cigarette and holding a copy of Albert camuz The Stranger which was very much my vibe at the time and so when we to are surprised all got then we went around and I was in let's say a certain state of mind and in this certain state of mind I wanted to dance and so I just like completely lost it and was dancing and was having so much fun and was listening to such beautiful music and was seeing my friends have fun and just having such a great time but something that happened was that over the course of the night I started to become increasingly lonely and sad you can be in a room full of people and and you can feel completely alone and my goal that night was to hook up and so I was trying to hook up I like went to like the sort of sex area downstairs and I was not successful so as I increasingly went on and I increasingly got more and more desperate I started to feel like just the loneliness just sort of compounded and because I was in a state of mind I just got really sad and the night kind of ended with me literally running around the Dance Floor asking people if they were gay which is literally just wild the fact that I was so desperate to hook up that I was just like any gay person any gay person will do and that was really like disturbing to me in a way later when I had the sort of come down I entered like a sort of depression that I had never felt before and a sort of loneliness that just made me feel completely pathetic and after that experience I was like okay I can never go back there again and I it didn't stop my relationship to like clubbing and certainly not substances but it did kind of instill in me a type of like loneliness that I didn't really know about before or at least hadn't experienced firsthand but to be honest even though I've like developed a different relationship to substances and clubbing and all of these things I don't think of this as like a particularly negative time in my life because what also happened during the summer was like honestly like the Troy saon music video for Rush like that was my life I would be like partying with people and just like having an amazing time just like discovering Pleasures that I had never even considered before it really did feel like this sort of like liberatory thing that I was going through which was discovering the beauty of just like enjoying things that sounds silly but like I don't know I'm grateful to the city I'm grateful to the sort of Creer culture that I've experienced but it has been a journey and eventually I realized that the party really never to stop here but it had to stop for me when talking about loneliness many queer people focus on clubbing and parties older men I dated often made a point that they weren't into the scene which basically meant that they didn't like queer celebrations whether that meant going to clubs or Pride parades and exactly why it ranged there were some men who seemed focused on blending and withr society as much as possible because of some unresolved shame they had for being gay but there were also others who had been around the block and struggled with addiction and viewed clubs as places for substances destroyed relationships and Community the men who weren't into the scene also often talked to me about feeling lonely and isolated it wasn't that they didn't want to be a part of the queer Community they just didn't think that there was a place for them in it the link between queerness and nightlife historically came out of necessity in societies where it wasn't possible to be yourself in public queerness was often confined to venues and situations out of view of the mainstream and when queer people also often face discrimination and abuse addiction isn't far behind for me getting up was a way of dealing with gender dysphoria it was an easy way to get out of my body to forget the pain I was feeling but as I dove deeper into it I realized I wasn't escaping I was drowning and I was alone I was in a relationship with John but we were living on different continents and I was lonely and as I saw friends of mine fall off and get into some pretty dark places I felt like that could happen to me too if I wasn't careful enough so on a casual night of getting drunk as as quick as possible I caught myself saying this is what life is all about as it set in and it was then that I realized there was no way around it I had to get sober if I wanted to live because it was clear I couldn't ignore needing to transition and it would only get worse discussions about substance abuse and toxicity in queer spaces aren't new and while some people respond by either not questioning it or just distancing themselves from the community as a whole I've seen others try to find Solutions whether that be through substance testing initiatives other party safety approaches or reconceptualizing the scene entirely I used to think that getting sober meant basically removing myself from most of the Berlin queer scene but since then I've learned about the large post for sober parties meetups and queer spaces that don't center around night life and through that I've been reminded of what it feels like to be a part of a community to be connected with a group of people Beyond a specific time of night to live full everyday lives alongside each other I recently got coffee with Tom and he told me that he started drinking again I asked if he was okay and he said yeah that for the first time in his life he feels like he actually has a healthy relationship with alcohol long after he first got sober he's a completely different approach to life and pleasure that allows him to not overdo it honestly I could never do that even though I feel like transitioning has helped me work through many of the insecurities that led me to drinking I just get hooked on Pleasure too easily but I do want to go clubbing again now that I have a body that actually feels like my own I wonder what dancing will be like being in the of people and not feeling lonely Christopher was a sad lonely old man and he was in love with me and for a period of time I was in love with him too we met online when I was in my freshman year of college I was 18 and he was 71 I was not kidding y'all when I saw him into severely older men I saw his profile and was so drawn to him I sent him a message we had what in retrospect was my first real romance we wor each other constantly and we called every day it was one of those romances that only happens from a distance he lived in another state so we kept things virtual for a few months it was incredibly passionate the love I felt for that man and it's interesting I think at the time I was very lonely because I was in college and I was feeling very isolated from my peers because of my sexuality not necessarily being gay but the whole older man thing it was always something that was never really taken seriously it was always just like some sort of comic relief or punchline and that made me feel very isolated because there was definitely a long period of time during which I felt like I was just so weird and that there was something wrong with me and it's funny because I had already gotten over the whole is there something wrong with me because I'm gay thing so it was really just is there something wrong with me because I'm only into older men and this was years before I Tred to seriously date someone my age and hurt their feelings in the process as I realized I couldn't do it but yeah I was feeling lonely and so is Christopher he was a retired gay man who was living in a town where his gayness was accepted but at the same time there weren't really gay people for him to feel Community with we had a shared love of Cole Porter elep Gerald old movies we had a similar taste in literature and at the time I was writing a song every day and he was always down to listen to what I was working on he himself was an artist and honestly I was just so attracted to him there were a variety of reasons as to why it didn't work out but mainly I think that despite being infatuated with him there was a slow burn of realizing that I wasn't in love with him as much as he was with me and recently while I was going through old things I found a letter he wrote me one time before I was going to go visit him now that it is warm crocuses crack the Earth with their slender spring choots and the days grow longer the air rides heavy with feudal firmament Vapors and blue Skylight is stronger Mosaic colors hold forth to Winter's white rment and I can't contain the thoughts of your arrival I have rehearsed each word line and verse I love you three dehydrated words drained dry from overuse confusing words although concise my dear I do love you three words weakened by diverse meanings each language has its [Music] version if on occasion I say them will you feel them this is the hurt my body teams with the untranslatable you hear the words three tense monosyllables that can't convey only say the Indescribable Christopher a verse recollected because of you I think it's a beautiful letter but after I read it I postponed going to see him and we continued our passionate virtual romance and then he came to visit me and that was when we started getting even deeper with each other and that was also when I realized oh yeah this isn't going to work out and I cut things off with him and that was that Christopher stayed a distant friend up until he died last year I would message him every once in a while to check in and sometimes he'd send the exact messages I'd expect someone in their late '70s to send but yeah he would always be kind to me he would always share my music he would always share my Pursuits on Facebook talk about me to his friends it seemed like he was very much in love with me still but he also wasn't bitter as my life moved on without him he was always just very supportive and after he died I went through old messages and I remembered just how passionate it was for me I think I kind of remembered it as just him being more interested in me than I was him and though that's definitely true I think that framing allowed me to downplay my own involvement and make it a sort of one-sided Romance when in reality it was very much not that it's rare that I offer someone that much love and I'm completely infatuated with them and I completely forgot how passionate it really was the last thing I heard from Christopher was when I came out and he commented on my coming out photo Brava this song won't bring you back but it will remind me of what it was once like to love you what it was like to reflect the affection you gave to me to experience passion in a way I never had before it's been almost a year since you died when I found that letter you wrote me over 10 years ago I honestly couldn't believe I forgot about it but then it all came rushing back if you dare not speak its name then I won't write this song and we won't have to figure out where I went wrong and watching nor myself with every passing rge and always being ready to jump off the conquered Bridge today I found a letter you wrote me 10 years ago I almost couldn't really believe I forgot what you said to me but then remembered why I wanted to leave [Music] learning more languages will never give you the words to feel right in saying how it is you really [Music] feel guess what I'm trying to say is that I once felt shame I too felt shame I once felt [Music] shame so I'm sorry if anyone ever told you that the love you felt could be [Music] wrong hi y'all um I am in bed because I have a concussion let me take my glasses off um um okay so when I was coming home from that concert on Friday night I was just in the ubon minding my business listening to music and this woman tripped and I guess she knocked over someone in front of me who then knocked into me and the force like slammed my head into the window of the uban like the glass area and I don't know I slept it off I thought I would feel better in the morning and then I was like oh I'll go to the library I'll get some work done but then as soon as I got to the library I sat down and I was like oh something is is wrong so I went to the hospital yesterday I was there for like 9 hours thankfully it seems like it's nothing major the doctor seemed reassured by the tests but told me to just really take it easy until I feel better and that's what I'm doing I am lying in bed listening to podcasts or whatever with my eyes closed generally and icing my head or whatever but I wanted to start recording because while I was at the hospital it was interesting with the whole like I don't know trans stuff like the doctor did not know that I was trans until I told her she was talking to me about just just like just general health things collecting my info and she was like oh um what medicines are you taking and I was telling her like oh I take you know cutting and she was like oh what's that and I was like oh it's um it's estrogen and I also take like progesterone and she was like oh why are you why are you taking those and I was like oh well I'm I'm a trans woman and she was accepting but she also like kind of changed the way she treated Tre me after that like when I got my release papers or whatever basically up until that point I've been referred to as patient like in German there's like masculine feminine and then various ways to say gender neutral and up until that point I was referred to as a patient in the feminine sense but after I told the doctor that I was trans she listed me as like in the gender neutral way I think that was her way of trying to be like Progressive because I I in Germany it's a hugely controversial topic and people who want to support trans and nonbinary people usually use that a lot and it's it's ultimately a good thing but in this situation it was really interesting for me because I felt fine I I mean I liked being gendered correctly up that sounds so weird to say that but I mean I I liked I I was fine with being gendered correctly up until that point there are always silly moments in medical stuff like when the person giving me a CT scan was like oh is um has pregnancy been rolled out and I was just like yeah it has but in my head I was just thinking like girl it's been ruled out like believe me yeah but all of the sudden to just be put into like a separate other category just because I'm trans was very interesting because I feel like I feel like just people a don't know gender as well as they think they do but also like trans acceptance is already built into our society if you're if you're talking about like binary trans people like there's no reason to siphon off trans women into a separate category of person um I think it's good to have gender neutral language and stuff for people who want gender neutral language to describe themselves and that's what I use when I when I refer to people in plurals in German and stuff like that but it was a weird experience for like me being a transwoman the doctor obviously like well-intentioned approach to referring to me kind of felt like offensive because it was like degendering me um and that made me feel lonely it kind of just reminded me of like even even when you're in a situation where like a medical professional is accepting you and is trying their best to like be transpositive it's still can feel lonely or like othering and it's still like a reminder that like trans acceptance doesn't necessarily mean like trans inclusion you would think that like being accepted into a system means being like folded into it or like being included or accommodated but this seemed more like creating an extra Branch at the system to categorize you in and it felt very uncomfortable um yeah and also just like while I'm recovering I'm also forced to just like do nothing of course I tried to get up and work and record music and work on the script and my brain was just like no like calm the down so here I am am in bed doing nothing which is very hard for me cuz I do not enjoy it it's also reminded me of just how lonely I feel like I don't know I miss I miss John I know he's coming here in August and I'm so looking forward to like finally living a life together for an extended period of time where we are there in person to comfort and show support for each other but right now it's like oh God I feel so lonely and it's not just because I'm alone even though I am alone and lonely at the same time you don't you can be alone without being lonely and you can feel lonely when you're not alone while growing up I was surrounded by the idea that time is linear progression and because of that a lot of the societal goals I was raised with reflected that go to school find your passion get a job fall in love get married have kids grow old and retire the exact order isn't always the same but the growth is often very similar as you grow older you progress through your life part of the dissonance of being queer in a society that expects you to well not be is understanding that your relationship to this progression will not only be different but it might also be completely out of order or without certain parts in his book in a queer time and place transgender bodies subcultural lives Jack halberstam looks at what he calls queer temporality basically the idea that since queer people don't progress with their lives in the same way as their suset peers do their entire concept of time is different he uses this framework to look at a number of topics such as how trans people are represented in media and how queer people responded to the AIDS crisis shortening their lives by reimagining their trajectories queer uses of time and space develop at least in part in opposition to the institutions of family heterosexuality and reproduction they also develop according to other logistics of location movement and identification some gay men have responded to the threat of AIDS for example by rethinking the convention emphasis on longevity and Futurity and by making community in relation to risk disease infection and death and yet queer time even as it emerges from the AIDS crisis is not only about compression and Annihilation it is also about the potentiality of a Life unscripted by the conventions of family inheritance and child rearing in the first few months following my bottom surgery I often said that it felt like my life was finally beginning it's not that I hadn't lived up until that point but it was fractured and confusing I spent time as a kid who was sometimes bullied for being gay before I even knew I was then I had a sad gay boy period Then I F at being a gay bear and then identified as nonbinary before realizing that I'm actually a straight transwoman and when I started transitioning at 27 I came to turns that many trans people describe as a second puberty basically when you start hormone therapy and your body adjusts to different fluctuations and it very much feels like how it was to be a teenager higher highs lower lows and physical changes in a way it felt like to get to my future I had to go back in time for a bit and rethink who I was and honestly I feel lonely when I think about what could have been I'm approaching my 30s and when I catch up with friends who are starting families and having children part of me feels jealous that I can't give birth and when they talk about growing up as girls I wonder what my life could have been like if I knew what being trans was at an earlier age but ultimately I can't change the past so I think about my loneliness differently though I frequently felt isolated from my peers I've since met other queer people and learned that I was never truly on my own that there were other people alongside me experiencing similar things I just didn't know that they were even there and since realizing that I've noticed how other people have dealt with their pasts through my Affinity for older men while in college I met a lot of guys who had never had gay experiences before who spent their entire lives married to women starting families and working at stady corporate jobs they didn't really care about and for some of them who are used to having to pay to hook up with younger guys meeting someone like me who genuinely wanted to not just sleep with them but hang out out and develop romances or friendships allowed them to live a life they never really thought they could and in a way get back some of the lost time from their 20s when they weren't able to be gay some saw it as a beginning to a new gay life but others were happy staying mostly in the closet and so I became a secret from their perspective they had their chance so they were just happy to have fun in private separate from their quote unquote normal lives there's a certain Beauty in loving someone that no one else sees to meet a man at a cafe and see him act like you're his work colleague and well straight before you go back to his house and he closes the door it's a type of strength I was never good at to put up a shield so fiercely and when I saw it dissipate as soon as we were in private it felt like watching an Olympic feet like watching Atlas put down the weight at the sky he'd been carrying he had carried it so well I always forgot it wasn't just a part of him until he abruptly stopped there's something special about watching someone go from who they were to who they are to see how their demeanor changes when they're not stressed out about what other think to see how their body falls when they don't think about where it falls at all L Sullivan was a trans activist writer and historian he was also a gay man and spent a lot of his life advocating for Trans rights during a time when medical institutions often didn't allow you to receive gender affirming care if you weren't straight within an oppressive definition of transness created by sis doctors being trans meant changing herself to fit heterosexual Norms despite the fact that not all trans people felt or feel that way L spent most of his life not only figuring out who he was but also trying to prove to others that he existed he passed away from Aid related complications at the age of 39 by that point he had already been diagnosed for a few years and that was turning point at which medical professionals started taking notice of his life and in a way I I I don't even feel bad about having AIDS in a way I feel it's almost a poetic justice that I've spent my whole life trying to be a gay man and and running into a lot of opposition and and being told that I couldn't do it it was impossible I feel like in a way that this AIDS diagnosis because AIDS is still seen at this point as a gay man's disease that it kind of proves that I did do it and I was successful and I kind of took a perverse pleasure in contacting the gender clinics that rejected me and said you know that uh they've told me so many years that it was impossible for me to live as a gay man but it looks like I'm going to die like one mhm I recently read lose Diaries and honestly it touched me in a way that few other books in my lifetime have I'd never seen such a detailed look into a transp person's life starting from a very young age and basically following them until the end of their life understanding who he was and then finding a place for himself were two separate paths that sometimes intersected but often with an Ean flow that contradicted a lot of traditional tropes about trans Stories being linear progressions of self-hatred to self-acceptance and love told Steve danne I don't feel like a man trapped in a woman's body and he laughed and said nobody does that's just a catchy phrase coined by the medical profession and that being a transsexual does not dictate anything other than your feelings about yourself and I have a perfect right to be a gay man if that's what I want throughout his life Lou had very fluid relationships with others though he started to think of himself as a gay man it didn't start out that way in an early diary entry he even wrote I love being a girl though a Fascination not just with boys but wanting to be like boys quickly came out during his childhood as he came into adulthood he flirted with different understandings of gender variance he identified as a transvesti but also enjoyed passing as a man and through that his relationships with his Partners became complicated when they saw him as a woman despite him not feeling that way Jay had already reproached me for babying him so much just about buttering his toast in the morning I always wanted to be him and be free of myself his progression was complicated he'd experiment with gender presentation go back to being a woman and describe himself differently depending on the situation until he was finally was able to convince himself that Not only was it possible to transition but that he could and that he wanted to sometimes I worry and I know I worry too much too seriously that I will have the same self-doubts and uneasiness as a man as I have a woman I worry that I will fail to find the happiness I think I will but as I wash myself and prepare for this surgery when I buy my new shirts and look at my breast and think they're sexy I know I'll come out of this better person I need to remember that I I've made the choice of being a defective male instead of trying to continue as a defective female that's when I know I can make it as a man when I remember how useless it was to struggle on as a woman I really relate to the way L described his experiences because I feel like I've had similar struggles albeit in a different direction there was a point at which I could have continued living my life as a gay man but once I realized that it was not really the life I wanted I couldn't unsee that there was a particular loneliness about it that felt exist essential to be in a happy relationship and still feel so much struggle to realize that the confusing part wasn't who I was attracted to but where I was standing and that's why I could never be a man in a relationship with a man because it feels so different than being seen as a Woman by a man and once I realized I had to go on that Journey it gave me a sense of direction but it didn't necessarily alleviate the loneliness early on in my transition it felt like a struggle like I was desperately trying to swim upstream but every once in a while I'd see a distant Shimmer a glimp of euphoria how my life could be and I remember why I was swimming this afternoon we leave for New York I'm reading through the New York section of city of KN and remembering how a little over a year ago I was so alone desperately trying to find where I fit in in this gay world where I knew I belonged somehow and how graspy in the dark I knew I had to go to New York I just came on this line in city of night that I'd marked then because even before I got there New York had become a symbol of my liberated self and I knew that it was in a kind of turbulence that that self must attempt to find itself when thinking about certain historical and medical interpretations of what it means to be trans it can be easy to make generalizations Christine jurgenson neatly fit the guidelines that the Cy doctors constructed but just because those were often the only types of trans people being studied doesn't mean that they were the only trans people even candy darling someone I've spoken about before as fitting very much within traditional VI of binary transness was hesitant to get bottom surgery because she was was worried she would no longer be unique if she did she realized that uh she wouldn't be candy darling anymore she had seen other people who had sex changes and they weren't fabulous they were like normal women and even with Lou he was someone who both valued being stealth cruising without men knowing that he was trans but also was a big trans Advocate and completely open in other contexts and he acknowledged that difference and how it affected his life and there was one time when a work colleague approached him about someone having seen a TV appearance he did as an openly trans man when he didn't think anyone at his job would notice and he denied that it was him in a time of more open acceptance for Trans and non-binary identities I sometimes see myself and others make generalizations about the past without acknowledging that a lot of our understanding of our recent history is limited to the type of trans people doctors screened for and often without acknowledgement of non-binary or third gender identities at all so when I read lose Diaries I'm comforted seeing a trans person from a different era so thoroughly break down misconceptions through just sharing his most intimate thoughts and showing that trans experience just like queer experience has always had the potential to be many things at once a way of trying to make sense of the world around us and our place within it sometimes I think my life has changed so much I no longer know what is or isn't good or bad or important or unimportant I just got high and went in front of the mirror to really look at myself and really try to see myself as others do I immediately see the worry lines carved into my face now aging and showing all the fighting in my eyes I see a deep sadness a deep down panicking of always striving towards something you'll never have I think I better start slackening up on myself and stop running stop being afraid of every situation I want so much to relax into being a man but I just spent so much time running from being a woman that now I've got that hopelessness that Despair and almost horror etched into my face how will I look in 10 years like a frightened man I need to relax all my muscles sometimes I wonder if my discomfort with transitioning taking these steps to have agency over my body I wonder if that frustration I sometimes feel actually has to do with transition or if it's just part of what it means to be human finding a way to take control of your life and Find meaning in it while you still can 1 hour after they unhooked me from the transfusion I was in the car with Jerry and I'm now at a weekend retreat called the California men's Gathering it's a 3-day event at Camp Swig near San Jose last night was the welcoming ceremonies and what a rush to hear and be among all these men and whooping and groaning and breathing heavy lots of bongo drums and swaying back and forth there was lots of intense and intoxicating male energy and I became quite overwhelmed one of the few times and I just let the tears fall thinking of my life of the journey I've made how was sad and hopeless I was as a young person feeling I could never belong never be one of the guys I found my place in this world when before I felt so alienated a creature from outer space this quote unquote male bonding ritual just seemed to bring me to the peak of my journey I've made it and then the irony the brick wall the downward spiral of this disease in my body but I feel so proud to have really reached my male aspirations my goals that to be faced with an end to my life seems not so awful Christopher came to visit me in Rochester and I realized that I couldn't love him anymore I'm not exactly sure what it was I mean I was completely enthralled with him but I think it just became clear to me that this idea of what I thought we were was obviously different than the reality I think it makes sense that when you communicate with someone online that when you meet in person you find that there are things behaviors mannerisms and just like energies that can't really be conveyed over text or even through the phone but to be confronted with those differences after months of having a different image in your head said well it made me wonder if I was just misinterpreting things or if my feelings had really changed so like I mentioned I'm from the US I live in um right now in Rochester New York um and I technically study classical music and relates to the story though because I was this song is from my freshman year so about 3 years ago I was 19 um and I was talking with this guy cuz I'm always talking with some guy at any given moment in my life for some reason and um this person in particular though he decided to come to Rochester for a weekend and so he came and he had a hotel room and it was going to be very romantic and stuff and what ended up happening was that we went to see the Rochester philarmonic play Beto design Symphony and the morning after or during that I had this Epiphany that I couldn't reciprocate the feelings and so the next morning I broke it off and then I got drunk the rest of the weekend and watched Sex in the City in my room and um this all relates though because I had this Epiphany when I was watching Beethoven 9 where um I realized that you know you work really hard sometimes to get to a certain point or get a certain promotion or for example get into a Classical Music Conservatory but then sometimes you find that some itches once they're scratched they don't need to be scratched again and that can be kind of scary at first glance and this song is about that it's about realizing that not only did I have the burden of breaking this person's heart but also my own heart and kind of realizing that I might be in the wrong profession when I think about all of the people I've [Music] kissed the number is much larger than those I've missed but as we stand in front of a coffee shop I wonder if I'm ready to hold [Music] still and we look a kiss as you take a swing as my heart Springs from my soul into the orchestra the sound of lovely things I'll come from the strings a cliche view of how I relate to the orchestra CU I swear the reason why they're there it's not for higher purpose but to make a point another lovey doy stand but what do we stand for outside these metal doors is it to learn ra or or just Spike someone else but you I can't tell you the truth but I know that I have to leave you now but I still have a chance to try and try [Music] again to find some other artificial joy to fill my heart like in Orchestra a warm sensation fills my heart I feel our endings start CU I don't care about the music that they play no not today I won't care about the music that they play just the way it looks when you look at me that way never look at me that way but never look [Applause] [Music] never look away so don't look at me that way never look at me that way cuz now I'll walk away I'll walk away so I'm going to need you sit here and stay [Music] do do do do [Music] [Music] something I didn't mention about that be kind story from earlier is that while I was going through my experience I was keeping an eye on a friend who was partying with a man he had just met when I started coming down and I noticed the sun was up I went to go get my friend so we could leave and I spoke with the guy and he introduced me to his boyfriend a very fem twink when he introduced himself and I heard his voice I laughed it was one of those involuntary laughs where I could quickly stop myself and covered up with a cough and in a lot Club nobody really noticed anyway but I did I'm gay not a f was something I said quite a bit when I was 19 I hung up with a lot of very masculine gay bears and while I was really just a bear in training I clearly picked up on their mask for mask worship a type of queerness that can be simply an aesthetic preference but it can also come with a worldview that reinforces a type of internalized phobia an expectation that gay men should act a certain way and when I caught myself laughing I realized that my preference had turned into a Prejudice just like it had for many of the masculine men I spent time with and I felt a wave of Shame wash over me I don't think anyone noticed but I felt incredibly uneasy like I was going to vomit we left beine and went back to my friend's place I didn't want to explain what was going on in my head so after a while I left and rode the esbon back to the dorms and I couldn't stop thinking about how much I hated myself a few hours earlier I was running around a dance floor trying to find anyone who was gay and somehow I thought I was better than someone else what exactly was I clinging to if the confidence I thought I had was built on resentment towards others I was too sad to really answer that seemingly because of the Comedown so I just got in bed and slept for 14 hours straight the next morning I decided that it was time to finally put a picture of my dating up profiles up until that point I had been someone who was both openly gay but also somehow faceless on the apps I always just sent photos from people asked but after the shame I felt from the night before it was clear that if I wanted to be a better person I would need to truly accept myself not keep playing this weird game of discreetness while also so harshly judging others in my head pain becomes pain it's a cliche to say that her people hurt people but it's also no surprise to me that after struggling with hate I received from others I would Embrace a type of queer existence still had a lot of internalized quer phobia in it and there's a specific type of loneliness within that basing your entire life on what's essentially a defense me mechanism so even when you're actively oppressing others through your own prejudices you still feel like you're under attack and through that queer loneliness becomes a weapon and isolating others from a community they have just as much of a right to be in as you do becomes a strategy and I've yet to see anyone participate in that cycle of harm unscathed there is a type of desperation in loneliness and sometimes when dealing with [Music] using that control to dismantle it you run the risk of Simply perpetuating it and that's not how communities are built it's how they're torn apart and redefin quer phobia to point it away from yourself is a different thing than overcoming it so when I see queer people show Prejudice for other parts of the community I can see it as an ultimately irrational and destructive way to try to find acceptance but I can also remember how I once struggled and for me the reality is that the process of untangling the cryophobia I grew up around did not end when I came out and there were moments along the way when I thought I was Finding Community but it was more like joining a group of friends who also wanted to ingest poison only this time we made it ourselves I keep returning to this interview that Randy wicker did with Sylvia Rivera in 1995 at the time she was homeless and in the interview speaks about her life work and what's most important to her I've always been a rebel and I'm not even thinking of myself and getting myself walk the streets at this point I'm thinking of more of the people that have have HIV virus Sylvia often focused on parts of her local community who were ignored by the larger qu rights movement and her activism along with the work she did with her close friend Mara P Johnson had a huge impact on trans and gay culture of the mid-60s onward and through that both have been sort of deified as key figures in founding the modern day trans Rights Movement but when this interview was filmed Sylvia was homeless and she talked about her struggles about going deeper into alcohol after learning about Marsha's passing and a recent attempt at taking her own life and though her influence was WI spread she faced difficulties within her local community it actually was like the fourth anniversary game lach when I was beat up on stage by vetoo Mama Jean told him to go ahead and do it that's when Gino ly got powerful and Dre queens were no longer needed in the movement I have been beaten I have had my nose broken I have been thrown in jail I had lost my job I had lost my apartment foret Liberation and you all treat me this way but despite opposition to her she stayed focused on direct action and helped others who struggled like she did but even through the end of her life she felt at odds with the mainstream career Rights Movement I see this movement becoming a straight gay movement that only believes in that Almighty dollar I don't understand we do not owe the straight Community a damn thing so why should we be giving them our money this is no longer my pride I gave them their pride but they have not given me mine when I think about syvia I think about how much I admire her perseverance and insistence on living with dignity and helping others do so as well and I also think about Prejudice within the career Community how much racism is a part of it how people struggling with homelessness addiction and mental health are often cast aside in favor of those who are deemed more quote unquote presentable to the mainstream and I think about the people I've seen thr queer spaces who said or did horrible things while struggling with addiction or experiencing a mental health crisis and I think about how I didn't really reach out to them how I didn't make sure they had somewhere to go assist them in getting help making amends and getting their life back on track because I was afraid of being seen as enabling someone who was causing harm so instead I just watched as my peers people who also considered themselves Progressive queer activists isolated someone who was clearly struggling and I think about how useless the notion of community is if we aren't truly committed to helping everyone this is what I refer to all the time is the things that Marshall and I did by the both of us hustling the damn street to help our the community did not help us at all that's what community is is caring for other people and that's what we're supposed to do and this is why say you're the sister that fees her this is our community fantastic endorsement of you I know now if I ever get hungry that that sister Sylvia will take care of me she' take care of of those that need it right I've been doing it for years you know in yonas I was named M syvia by all the Queens I took them in oh we don't want to get that Moss stuff let's dye the hair with be sister Sylvia okay let's take a break I need when I first moved to Berlin I began probably the most painful relationship I've ever had to this day I feel like I'm still healing reminiscing forgiving and trying to make sense of what feels like such an utterly senseless time in my life when that all came crashing down I felt a loneliness I had never experienced before after spending enough time being who someone else wanted me to be I couldn't recognize myself throughout a relationship we were living in MAA the city center in a building that was soon to be destroyed my ex was clinging on to his cheap rent so as the area was renovated and gentrified we stayed huddled in a piece of early 2000s Berlin as the building was literally being torn down around us after the first few days of lying in bed after the concussion I continued to take it easy but started slowly getting back to my life while listening to my body and one day after an acupuncture appointment in Ma I decided to take a walk around and see a part of the city that I honestly don't go to much and I found myself on our old Street for the first time in years the building wasn't there anymore it's been replaced by luxury apartments someone went inside and I briefly caught a glimpse of the courtyard but then the door shut and I was on the sidewalk looking at a building I didn't recognize with a body he wouldn't [Music] recognize it's a short walk from here to the silent green and maybe the weather won't be as bad as it seems if you listen closely you'll hear the sound of my heart changing its be and the lady downstairs who never wants to sleep this morning I was torn out of a dream and realiz the things I thought I want AR what I need what a horrifying thought and one I also can't see the things I thought I want aren't really what I [Music] need I've never seen the the Sun a better shade but there's no sun out right now the sky is cry but the absence of an image allows me to fill in the hole so I don't think I've seen a sun so beautiful wait haven't I had that thought before already carried all this weight that once was yours but if you hear me come you might not even recognize the sound the last building on your street to be torn down the last building on your street to be torn down sometimes I wonder if I'll ever be found honestly y'all I just feel really lonely I think maybe there's part of it that's like okay now that my body is like in alignment with itself I feel like I can express myself more and that with that comes like the urge to do that maybe that's part of it but it also just feels hormonal I don't know it feels like just a very existential type of loneliness that I've never felt before because I think really I think the issue is that my gender expression and just my experience of gender in the world has always been like output but also input it's how I express myself it's how I conduct myself in the world but there is also a type of like external validation I like it when people see me as a woman I like it when they react to me as a woman I don't really understand why that is gender is like a social construct right so part of it is me acknowledging it and finding comfort in it and then there's also part of it being that people are acknowledging my role in this sort of gender binary and so I think that's where a lot of like the existential loneliness comes is that I am starting to feel comfortable in myself and I'm starting to put this sort of vibe out into the world but I'm not really able to experience the sort of external validation that I typically associate with like gender Euphoria and to not be able to feel that is such a weird weird thing especially when it was like before I don't know sex was not really like the driving force of my life I do so much to keep myself occupied with like music and work and making videos and just learning about the world that it was always just like something that was lovely and I loved but it wasn't like it didn't my self-confidence didn't rest upon it but posttop post hormone fluctuation for the third time I guess it feels different and I just want to note that because when I'm thinking about like why I've been feeling so lonely and specifically like queer loneliness and specifically like trans loneliness it is this feeling of being incredibly in tune with myself but not being able to share that with anyone else and the only way out of it for me is just to wait until John gets to Berlin and then we can kind of just have a normal life that isn't Bound by distance so much okay so I did not get that far into that segment before I realized that something was wrong and basically what happened was that since my operation in August I've experienced three types of loneliness that I feel like were new to me I don't know I just hadn't really thought about before and I'm still including the footage from earlier because during that clip like while I was filming that I was going through one of them so let me break down exactly what happened so the first type of loneliness I experienced post bottom surgery is just posttop sadness because bottom surgery is not only like a really intense operation to have but it's also like it requires a lot of recovery time and a lot of like after care and even when I was in the hospital even when I was like surrounded by people who were there to help me and had a lot of experience with it I was still feeling very lonely because you're in this experience where like your body just went through this major trauma and you're kind of just like completely paranoid like always worried like what was that like was that an infection am I bleeding like what does this mean and honestly like there is something just traumatic about that and I'm grateful that John was able to go visit me in the hospital but he eventually had to leave and even when I was home alone in Berlin he couldn't stay in Berlin with me the whole time so I was mostly on my own and even though I also had like a bunch of trans women who I could contact at any point to ask them questions it still felt like very isolating and that was a type of loneliness I didn't really anticipate but of course all of that for me was definitely worth it I wouldn't be talking about this in such a positive light if it didn't change my life in just such a radically positive way so that was the first type of loneliness I experienced that was quite new to me and the second type was like hormonal when you go through something like that quite literally your body radically changes like not just with regards to your generals but also like for me like your body stops producing as much testosterone as before and for that reason your body might react differently to the same dose of hormone therapy and for me I also like added progesterone to my routine which isn't necessary for transfem HRT but it is something that many transend people opt for because it can sort of help with feminization in certain aspects of like breast development and then also it can sort of affect your emotions positively and early on in my transition I went through what many trans you will describe as like second puberty which is like when you start HRT and your body has like different hormone levels that are fluctuating but after the operation I also experienced that sort of like acute loneliness that I associate with like pubescent like angst I experienced that in like a new way because of these new hormone fluctuations post bottom surgery but also just like being in touch with my body and like my sexuality and ways that I was discovering for the first time and therefore it felt like a new thing for me entirely and so in the months directly following bottom surgery I was often describing it to people as like a third puberty and I hadn't really seen anyone describe it that way until I was reading L Sullivan's Diaries in which he describes his experience after bottom surgery of like discovering his body in new ways and stuff like that as being like a third puberty and sort of coming into a sexuality again and that's an incredibly positive thing it's incredibly wonderful but it can also be quite Lonesome because you often feel like isolated you feel kind of thrust into extremes that you never had before and that can be quite difficult if you're not expecting it but that brings us to the the third type of loneliness that I was experiencing which I was experiencing In that clip I showed after the operation starting in August I had these sorts of like mood swings that felt like they were destroying my life like I felt like everything was sort of slipping out of my fingers and I felt like both that I had zero control over anything that was going on but also like my entire self-confidence rested on a man holding me It produced like a really deep depression and a really deep loneliness and specifically it had like a huge effect on my marriage because I would experience like these sorts of very rapid mood swings and like very long periods of like irritability and sadness and loneliness and just like sort of desperation and normally JN is like the person I talk to every day he's the person we talk for like 2 hours at least every day so when I was having these feelings where I felt like I was completely isolated from the world and like I felt like I was going through this huge emotional thing but nothing seemed to really like solve it I started to get really scared and I started to sort of close off from him but then I'd feel better and so it was like okay whatever we just move on he was always super kind and understanding but then it would come back later and it wasn't until recently until I was editing that clip from earlier that I sort of was going through text messages and just like trying to find moments where I was really sad and going through this like existential horniness this sort of like complete chaos in my mind and stuff I was looking at the texts and I noticed oh huh there appears to be like a regular rhythm not only does it happen once a month but I started counting the days and I realized that it literally happens every 25 to 28 days for 5 to 6 days and that was when I realized oh my God I'm like PMSing obviously I don't have a uterus so my body is not literally shedding and like having a period That's why like I'm hesitant to describe it as like PMs cuz it's not technically a menstrual cycle but at the same time trans women and Transplant people who take HRT do appear many at least anecdotally report what basically appears to be like a monthly hormonal cycle unfortunately there isn't much research about this but I've known enough people who have anecdotally reported this and also just like the physical symptoms like I was also experiencing some sort of like physical discomfort what could be described as like cramps okay take three because I suddenly felt like a wave of sadness wash over me and so I stopped and I tried to get through the rest of the day and just get some work done and do things I could do but just to let youall know like how the rest of the day went for me I later on spoke with John on the phone he is like the absolute best and he's currently in Colorado working on a theater show and as he was walking to the theater he sent me a selfie and I started crying because of how hot he was so so that's kind of where I am at this point it's it's interesting these sorts of like hormonal shifts that I have experienced and it's honestly like comforting a way to know that those are exactly like where those feelings come from because I feel like in the past I was always just so curious about like finding out why I feel a certain way and just like sort of interrogating myself constantly um I think that just comes from like growing up when I didn't even know that you could gay or trans while also realizing that like I was and because of that I feel like my way of processing that sort of dissonance was by creating my own road map and just like my own understanding of the world around me and through that every time that I feel emotions I feel like my impulses like to analyze them and just be like okay why why am I feeling this way what is exactly is going on like let's try and figure it out but what I've learned is that not all feelings have to be worked through I mean some of them just have to be just acknowledged and it's kind of comforting to know that now and like with the sort of pmses symptoms to know that like when I'm experiencing these things I don't have to really wonder about them and wonder like what they represent because that's what I did before before I really understood what was going on I was so worried that it symbolized like my marriage falling apart or me not feeling satisfied with my life but now I know that it is not as dramatic and when I I think about like the relationships I've had with other queer people it's been very comforting to sort of realize that before I thought that I was really on my own with understanding how I was in the world and I was very angsty about the fact that sis head people often have like a sort of communal understanding of like their life trajectory and cre people just don't I felt very alone and it took me meeting other queer people to sort of realize that not only is there like a sort of larger trajectory or just like people who experience similar things that I didn't really know about before but also that there is a sort of power of just sharing your feelings and not necessarily trying to resolve them there is a sort of power in acknowledging that even though we all might experience incredibly individual things to our lives and it truly might be impossible to really understand exactly how someone feels at any given moment the fact that we all experience different things can also unify us and with queer people especially knowing that like you're going through this really unique individual sort of pain or loneliness but there are people who are not going through the same exact thing but something similar like that is comforting and as I've been experiencing these sorts of PMS things before I knew exactly what they were I was of course thinking that my life was falling apart so I was calling friends and asking for advice and one of the friends who just gave me such incredible insight where's my friend Gerald hi I'm here for Gerald learn become ker the man who needs to succeed at all costs who recognizes that or expend you're la oh hello it's you hi hi come in my darling marinaa yes yes how are you I'm wonderful how are this is s this is Marina hi nice is a close friend from Berlin and other places come in my dear and sit down I'm glad to see you sure this is wonderful this is Gerald Busby one of my dearest friends John introduced us in 2018 when I was 23 and Gerald was 82 he's been living at the Chelsea Hotel in New York City since he moved in in 1977 at the time the hotel was an artistic Hub a place where some of the most influential figures in music art literature and film passed through he got a room through his mentor composer Virgil Thompson Gerald was a then emerging composer himself having discovered his passion for composition in his late 30s after spending a lot of his life in other jobs both in and out of music just before moving into the Chelsea he wrote probably his most well-known work the score for three women Robert alman's three women will make you reexamine everyone you've ever wanted to be rated PG Gerald continued to make a name for himself and he's been working as a composer for over 50 years now and during that time he's been through a lot he was diagnosed with HIV in 1985 and after losing his partner Sam in the early '90s to AIDS related complications he struggled with substance abuse before eventually getting sober at one point the New York Times ran a piece about him in their neediest cases section that said back from the edge and living his life no not by note and his late ' 80s he's still doing that he writes music on a daily basis and though he's often alone he's never lonely throughout the years I've been inspired by Gerald's Lust For Life and his perseverance that allows him to have what seems like complete peace with the everchanging nature of the world and he's always been such an encouraging person in my life we've written each other a lot over the years and have shared music philosophy and when John and I got married a few years ago his gift to us was writing a song using lyrics I'd been working on he's one of the last remaining residents at the Chelsea and though a few years ago IID navigated construction site to visit him it's now a place where people can pay a couple hundred a night to stay in a renovated Hotel while the remaining residents pay around that much for their monthly rent people are going to a hotel looking for Nostalgia that was never theirs a version of New York from a Time Gone by while those who lived through that time are still there hidden in plain sight and Gerald is still there writing the soundtrack to his life so I wanted to talk to him about it so I I was telling John um I told John a lot about essentially how I refer to you as the last living downtown composer like downtown in the traditional sense like downtown well the New Yorker said their title was the last Bohemian I was so surprised to hear that I didn't know I was B you have an incredible back catalog but what I feel like a lot of people don't know is that you're turning out new music on a daily basis yes yes I'm working on my 48th stream quartet which is so crazy it sounds insane well he's obviously insane whoever he is can you show me part of it I'm with pleasure okay of course I'll show you all of it that I've done this is for French horn and strings I added every now and then I edit an instrument [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] and I wanted to ask you about what has composing been like in the last 10 years you've been composing on a daily basis for such a long time yes but I don't know how how has that changed in the last 10 years for well the the only change is that I have sort of consistently in the last 50 years just written music almost every day but and that's the only thing that have changed that have been some kind of Crisis my being sick or like my my partner Sam dying yeah or something like that happening M certainly made big changes in the last 10 years for me it it was my own health yeah getting older and and making the sort of classic mistake of getting up on a ladder to do something and falling down and fracturing my hip and then the price I paid is that I I can't really walk without assistance now yes that put me out for about oh 6 months or so I had my colon removed major surgery and then I went I I was sent to a a so-called Rehabilitation which was actually a kind of hosal for dying people the routine I had when I came from from that that situation of almost dying was that I would be awake for about two hours then I was sleep for about two hours then I'd be awake forste of that 24 hours a day and and so the time I was awake I would immediately come to the computer because you know that was the only thing there was for me to do that was interesting and I went to Facebook and I wrote music yeah writing music particularly was kind of my way of staying alive that assured me that I could still think and I could still work and I could you know there it was so I I immediately began to I set this goal of writing 50 string quartets for the time I was 90 actually I'm going to I'm going to exceed that I'm on 48 now and I'm 88 char music has taken on a variety of different forms throughout his life but something that's always struck me is his approach to Harmony the way he conceptualizes pieces is very fluid and the harmonic world or basically which notes he chooses is usually based on intuition and because of that his music often doesn't rely on key signatures or other traditional ways of grouping notes to me it feels like falling asleep slowly mesmerizing and then all of a sudden you're out of this world [Music] [Applause] [Music] how do you think of Harmony I don't think about the whole thing is not to think about what I'm doing and not to generalize and not to theorize and not to do any of that yeah I I start of when I worked for Paul Taylor who was really the first genius I worked with yeah he didn't give interviews he said I do not talk about what I do yes he says to talk about it is is a form of of creation and in talking about it you start saying and doing things that really are not what you do I mean what you do is what you do and it doesn't have a name other people can talk about it and say oh he's doing this or he's doing that for him to talk about it is for him to to interfere to intrude on the very process of doing it so I learned that from him like the less you do that the better I mean just let it go whatever it is it doesn't matter if anybody really cares or ask you what you're doing you say you say give them some music say you tell me when I was dealing with those postsurgery PMS emotions last fall Gerald was one of the first people I spoke with I felt so confused and angsty and was trying to attribute my frustration to something what exactly that was changed frequently as I realized that nothing quite solved my confusion but when I spoke with Gerald I was scared about mortality I was returning to insecurities ah had early on in my relationship with John regarding our age Gap my worry about us not having enough time together and what it means to fall in love with someone while you're both at two different stages in your lives well I remember a few a few months ago I called you and I was very much struggling specifically with my relationship with John yes this is after after my bottom surgery yes and I I called you and I was just very confused about it seems so silly now to say but I was very preoccupied with the age difference between me and John specifically me worrying about like oh my god I've been waiting my entire 20s to be with this man I love yes and he will have gotten to Germany and becoming more disabled yes and I was very insecure and I remember asking you about like how do you how do you reconcile the sort of like unpredictability of life and mortality with just like keep going yes and your response was kind of very apathetic not not to my cause not not to my experience but but more apathetic to caring about that sort of stuff yes you were in like a positive way you were like you were very encouraging to sort of let go of those sorts of worries what what how do you feel about that well that indeed well it's like letting go of good and bad yeah how do you how do you proceed to your own Advantage honestly and truthfully without without reference to any form of of of ultimate good and bad or what you should do or what you shouldn't do so your reference is not in looking for a principle to follow yeah but in looking in yourself to see what produces the most how you Blossom what do you do that makes you Blossom the most yeah it usually begins what makes you really happy something I I don't know if this is too personal do you feel do you fear death no yes and no yes yes no I I feared in the sense of of being disappointed that I can't have any the sensations of you know of eating and seeing and sleeping and sucking and whatever else that I don't do but dream about so in that sense I I do but in an overall sense I don't really I don't really fear no yeah it's not a major thing it gues me pause yeah there's no question and delighted that I can still put sentences together at the age of 88 you've been through so many things yes and you have such a Lust For Life I do would you say you do I I feel like you do I do I agree with you I do I do I I really do I love it wonderful I love it after I was done asking my questions we hung out and caught up for a bit I wasn't having the best day and honestly took a lot of solace in hearing what he had to say about his life music and the world around him when I talked to Gerald I feel less afraid of loneliness of death and of life and seeing a friend who has been through so much be just so confident about how grateful he is to wake up every day well it gives me hope so even though the interview was done I quietly started recording again there's a thing about going old that you get slowly the discomfort State increases yeah it's not major but you never feel you know really really good he's got of M thing because things are falling apart or you know rotting or whatever they're doing U but and and you have to counter that with pills or you know whatever imaginary things but so there's that some of that but that doesn't really you know get me down at all uhuh I cons you know consider myself incredibly fortunate to to be able to to be at the computer computer it's a God I can't imagine what it would be without that what do you want your legacy to be as a composer as a person I comp I I'd love to be remembered as a as a major composer but who knows I don't and of course that's nonsense too that's like you know who knows what that that mean I want I when I say major I want to be remembered as a composer who stirred emotion and you know and that's was what Alman told me about three women the only thing he ever said to me about it we were we were at a production of an opera that he that he directed in Chicago and and he said oh Gerald and I wanted to tell you and I think it's it was not long before he died so maybe he just want tell me before he said I think your music for three women is so perfect that I don't know how to talk about it wow that was it yeah yeah and that meant something to him I mean the fact that he couldn't talk about it yeah whatever that might mean but it was an ultimate compliment I never had a compliment like that that's one thing that makes death not difficult for me is that i' I've least written one piece maybe two pieces that will live beyond me yeah and I'm glad of that that's good yeah maybe some others will maybe they won't yeah I won't know it but those those will yeah and that's that makes me happy now how long you going to be town I love Berlin year round but there's a certain energy that comes out in the late spring and early summer that reminds me of when I first came here 10 years ago I arrived at tole airport to study with a composer and had no idea my life was about to radically change when I posted about it on Facebook one of my friends commented be prepared to never come back and as soon as I felt the sort of magnetic pole I have towards the city I understood exactly what he meant I was 19 and life in Berlin felt unlike anything I had experienced up until that point the men I slept with the people I partied with all of them encouraged me to find joy in living which was honestly something I hadn't really considered I then found out that I love speaking German and learning languages and my Affinity for 1920s queer music led me to become passionate about that part of the city's history so it makes sense that I felt drawn to staying here I would go back and and forth for the next few years as I finished up school in the States but my heart was always pulling me back to Berlin to the point where take a shot every time Jake mentions Berlin was a joke among my friends even when I was mainly making videos about Disney music Berlin would sometimes find a way in like when I spoke about how three Penny Opera influenced the little mermaid or about a lesbian Mickey Mouse Cafe and its proximity to the city's complex and disturbing queer history in the early 1930s recently I saw ano waiting for the ubon he's one of those beautiful men who reminds me of a exactly why hairy gay guys are called Bears a wonderful smile a thick beard and just a joyful cuddly demeanor I hadn't seen him since we last had sex in 2016 and when I approached him and explained that I used to be Jake he looked confused like he was wondering how we knew each other but then his face lit up and within a matter of minutes we had explained what each of us had been up to in the last 8 years and I made a note to go see one of his performances sometime when I met up with ano in 2016 I was feeling incredibly lonely I was fresh off the heels of a breakup and was feeling well broken up I was switching short-term supplet every week or so and was trying to figure out how I would go back to school after having dropped out for a year music during sex was too distracting but beforehand it was almost all I spoke about and through the man I slept with I learned about music I would have never heard of otherwise music from their upbringings in countries cultures and eras I never lived in and in return I'd show them something that they had never heard I often played Bill's music for them Bill Veno was my great-grandfather and the last last person in my family to write songs he was a musician who originally made money conducting Vaudeville orchestras but with the Advent of takis and the waning popularity of vaudville couldn't find work and took a job with RKO pictures he wrote songs between the 30s and 50s but they never became welln and while I was in college I inherited his 78s recordings of his music that hadn't really been heard by anyone outside of our family with him on piano and his friend Earl or my grandma's friend Donna singing I recorded my own versions of his songs and played them at shows and after having the 78s Digi time I listened to them all the time so while laying in bed with men talking about music we loved I often showed them Bill's songs and they loved them listening to Bill's music has always comforted me in a way it's difficult to describe I never met him but I also feel like I kind of have through his music loneliness for me feels like the absence of empathy it's easy for me to think that the way to work through feelings is to understand them better but recently I've learned that's not always true sometimes it just needs to be recontextualized like realizing that my monthly existential crisis es aren't a sign that my marriage is failing but that I'm having hormonal things I just have to wait out instead of trying to work through those feelings it's better to just acknowledge that they're there and give John a hug while they wait for them to pass queer loneliness feels isolating but sometimes all it takes is just talking to another person also experiencing it to recontextualize those feelings and realize that sometimes they don't need to be worked through just shared empathy doesn't make emotions go away or make them make sense but it can shine a new light on them recently there have been some pretty daunting changes to trans and non-binary life in Germany transphobia is mirroring countries like the UK and causing esteria that's having a widespread effect on the political landscape leading to the future of trans Healthcare being uncertain as well as a self-id law that makes some things better and others worse since I've been keeping up with these changes last October I was asked to give a workshop at the dolls a transfer group in Berlin to explain the controversies in English and share my interpretation of how things were going and what we as a community can do to advocate for ourselves it was one of my first times going to a social event after my operation which also meant that it was one of my first times really being in a trans space after having basically locked myself in my apartment struggling with self-hatred and loneliness for over a year I was upset by recent changes and spent a lot of time reading about them so I was glad to share my interpretations with others and brainstorm how to navigate this situation and find a way to live with dignity as transs but the most meaningful part wasn't when I was talking but when I was listening before the workshop and during the break when I was listening to other trans FS talk to me and share their experiences it's one thing to be a part of the trans Community online and talk about it with others but it's a whole other thing to be there in person to see other people and have them see you I'd forgotten about that and suddenly I noticed that I felt less lonely after the workshop I was chatting with some people and someone walked up and handed me a little aerial figurine she'd been watching my videos for a while and when she saw that I was giving a talk at the dolls she had to come by and say hi at the same time I was also Al in the thick of feeling like a complete failure not knowing what to do next after having ended my channel and honestly I didn't even really know yet if I wanted to fully return to making videos again but that kind gesture gave me Faith and made me feel seen and that night I could feel the tides changing later on while I was waiting for the bus Aurora one of the organizers of the event passed by and asked me if I was okay getting home on my own I said yes and she walked away with a friend after which the bus arrived and I got on and as I looked out the window as the bus Barrel threw KS back I put on Bill's song the nearest thing to you and thought about how much I've changed how much I've lost and how much I've gained since coming to Berlin and I remembered that actually getting somewhere you reached for isn't really the point it's the reaching that matters the most the nearest thing to you sweet as you are the nearest thing to you is the lovely star [Music] when night draws near you both appear loving you so much but like a star you are never meant to [Music] touch the dearest thing to me would be your love so must you are always be like a star above why must you stay out of reach oh why can't I teach your heart to love me too let me be the nearest thing to you [Music] I must you stay out of reach why can't I teach your heart to love me too let me be the nearest thing to you