So true and so silly

Of all the years in my life, this has been one of them.

I guess what I’ve been thinking about in this social media space is how much of my art hinted at upcoming gender trouble, even way before I was the slightest bit aware of it. That’s the stupid reason I posted my Think About My Cock poem and my album art for Seeing Someone on Instagram. Erin called it a soft pre-launch for my coming out. Which is so true and so silly.

Last year I was in a lot of pain and suddenly a disembodied voice told me that I’m a trans person and I felt the most incredible, unexpected, tangible, vibrant feeling of relief. It was shocking. It was unlike anything I’ve ever felt.

One of the first things I remember thinking was something like “Of course! Now your music makes sense!” Nes once reminded me that my music isn’t for everyone, “you sing about dead dogs,” and that’s also so true and so silly — but I thought, “Of course! With this context, suddenly the art makes sense.” I don’t know what dead dogs have to do with it, but I wrote and sang extensively about gender in a lot of different ways.

Some of them subtle — a song called A Man Named Sue that opens with the lyric “What it is to be a man,” is innocuous enough, but the album art showing non-gender conforming people? And the poem that includes the actual words “my cock is a pussy.” It is as if I should’ve noticed.

That’s part of the reason I’m making a post for trans day of visibility — I think one of the reasons I didn’t put a finger on it earlier is that I was not aware of very many (zero?) positive representations of trans people. Trans people were usually jokes, or disgusting, or both. But here I am. Just some fuckin rube. Some jabroni. Some hooligan, hoodlum, regular old fucking yokel. I think people need that.

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Sam ColumnaComment