This is the lead up to my birthday. I’m turning 48 this weekend and I’m going with some friends to sing karaoke. It will be fun. I’ve also been practicing Life on Mars, which has two high notes that I CAN hit, an improvement from Goodbye Yellow Brick Road which I don’t think I was able to hit the high notes. It is a very weird feeling to go up that high. BUT I was measuring the pitch and recording it while singing and I generally am getting more consistent with the high notes in most of the chorus. Mars is still the high note I can’t quite reach. I’m SO CLOSE to it, A4 and the high note is Bb4. I just need to tip myself over a little bit and be able to sustain it. It’s crazy, singing is like running hurdles or something. Or for that song in particular.

I am steadily getting work done. I marked most of my stuff and now it’s just the late assignments in one class that I have to mark, hoping to finish those tomorrow. I got my grades in the other class approved, so I don’t have to do anything with that class anymore. Unless they offer it again and let me teach it. But yeah I’m glad the teaching stuff is wrapping up. I’ve got more time in my schedule for other work. This weekend I am going to work on a script that is due early May. And I also have to continue scanning diaries for snippets of things.

I was scanning one diary and realized some spirit kept talking to me in my mom’s house for a while. I don’t know who it was though. There’s this feminine spirit that I am sure is not related to me but I do sort of get messages from her. She was really upset with someone I was kind of seeing, but like I do not know who she is. Maybe some guide or something. Or a spirit who followed me at some point I don’t know. But I found it interesting that this old diary from 2006 had messages from another feminine spirit, is it the same one? If I was a spirit I would follow people maybe. Although I do like staying home, but I don’t know if I accept the idea of being tied to a house forever. Maybe it’s just a spirit who likes following me and wants things a particular way. The ghost roommate.

I was talking to my Auntie Lori today on the phone and decided to declutter some wires in the corner of my living room and I discovered there were all these A/C chargers that were plugged in but charging NOTHING!!!! Like I unplugged one end but not the other I guess. The corner is a lot cleaner anyway, I also found a curtain rod that I should have thrown out but I guess I just put it in the corner? I’m on a bit of a spring clean kick I guess, in free moments of the day. I put together my new tv stand last night and it’s a million times better than the old one. ALSO it makes the uranium glass look nicer. I need to find my velcro and see if I can attach the light to the top of my stand to light up my uranium glass without burning into my retinas.

Ha ha holy ADHD. I just got up and found some industrial adhesive and velcro so I could put my light up. I’m not sure it will work. It might! I guess we’ll find out tomorrow when the glue is dry.

I didn’t do keyboard OR guitar practice today, but theoretically I could do it now if I used headphones. Ugh but I would rather not because I’m also super tired. I got something off my plate today though so I should be happy.

I have finished POOR entirely! It is at Vtape if you are interested, or you can message me for screeners if you might want to program it. It’s not experimental. Just so you know, I know everyone thinks that’s all I do but it isn’t! I also do dramas and comedies. Anyway whatever, the point is I managed to finish that film this semester so it kind of goes against my theory that you can’t make art and teach at the same time. I am still looking forward to this break though until whenever I decide to teach again. I have some travel this summer and other projects to do.

I guess I should write something about my birthday. I don’t know, 48 is a nice number, 4 is half of 8. It’s an even number. I’ll be 50 in two years and will probably want to do something much fancier, but this year my only goals are to sing karaoke, eat cake, and go to the cherry blossoms. Should I make a goal for myself? I feel like I am always doing that with my career. Maybe I need a personal goal I don’t tell anyone about. ACTUALLY there is a sex thing I want to finally do this year so probably I will work towards that ha ha. You can just try to imagine what it is and then ask and I won’t tell you unless I think you might be of assistance. In more serious life stuff I need to be going to the gym again because my cholesterol sucks and my blood sugar is like, pre diabetic? Pre PRE diabetic? I keep walking this very thin line and honestly I had a lot of candy the last while. I was eating Twizzlers like nobody’s business, AND Sweet Tarts which are basically just pressed sugar.

I finished my semester. Did a bunch of grading today. I just have one assignment left to grade and then any late submissions. So I am on top of it all and relieved. My film is almost done with the sound, I got a copy of it today that I still need to watch before bed. But if all sounds good then basically POOR is done! So that is very exciting, I’m hoping this week I can take it to my distributor. I submitted it a few places but need to do some more.

What else is going on? Keyboard class was cool, I am learning basic technique and how to tell where the notes are on the keyboard. So that’s cool. In singing classes I am working on Your Song by Elton John, but I am also trying to learn Life on Mars by Bowie which is also super fun to sing. My voice fits with Your Song really well though. Of the two I am going to perform one at my recital so I need to decide which one. In guitar I am learning I Love Rock and Roll which has been super fun, also working on Call Me by Blondie. Which is also fun but like, A TON of power chords. Like almost all power chords.

My projects are going well. I have a lot on my plate but basically I’m still going through them to get stuff done. I’m glad POOR is done. I am really ready to put it out there. I showed a lot of friends the film when I was working on it, but now it’s actually really done. Or will be very soon! I have to make a video exploring my gender clues in my diaries from childhood to now, which is going to need a big deep dive. I’m sure I will discover things about past me that don’t fit the me I am now, because I noticed that last time I made a video like this going through my diaries for mentions of love. But I haven’t sought out gender clues before. It’s for a performance in Helsinki I’m calling Gender Shimmering because I remember a time early in my transition that I went out for drinks with another trans dude early in his transition and I could see his gender shimmer back and forth, sometimes looking slightly feminine and then other times being so clearly a man. So I think that’s sort of a state I lived in for a long time before transitioning.

Anyway I also have this climate doc to finish but I’m giving myself another year of editing for that. And my last ditch attempts at getting it funded. I don’t know what is going on with it, if people don’t have faith in me as an artist, or if people just don’t think trans people and climate change is particularly important or interesting. It’s been frustrating though. I did get some funds but not enough. So yeah I don’t know, it’s very frustrating, I don’t think we are being adequately funded at large and I think the Liberal government we have is basically the Conservatives Lite delivering austerity because rich people love that shit. It’s not austerity for them after all, they aren’t losing money.

I am having fun with music stuff and thinking of dressing more rock star when I do recitals. I have a ton of leather and shit. I even have leather pants! I could be the dreamy rock god ha ha.

I’m still very much a beginner though. But I am using the drum machine on my loop pedal to try to strum in time with. It’s better, I am actually able to do it pretty good. I think learning in a slower speed to begin with is still the best though. But yeah I am able to strum at the right beat! I’m impressed.

I have to remind people I came into this not knowing ANYTHING about music. I pretended to play saxophone in band class in elementary school and then quit because I guess I just didn’t want to be a sax player. But guitar is fun. And yeah I didn’t even really know how to strum at all when I bought my first guitar Stanley. I don’t have a name for my telecaster yet, but that’s only been in my life for a year. But I think I was a bit frustrated with my telecaster until I got a real set up for it with Long & McQuade. It had a buzz but I don’t notice it anymore.

Anyway blah blah blah. The point is I survived the semester, my film is SO CLOSE to being done, I have two more films I gotta finish/get shipshape by May/June. And I also have to do some last edits on my script before it goes back to my producers at the end of April/Early May. So there’s a ton of deadlines but I really did get so much done today and I’m relieved. I am in a much better position for getting ready to put my marks in later this month. I am doing some work tomorrow with filmmakers in a workshop about their project. And then I am getting a massage, and then later is my singing class. I’m thinking of asking to change the time again, I go in at 8:30pm for this class and it’s LATE, but was the only way it would fit my schedule. But my schedule has opened up again.

Here I am again. I’m busy with a lot of things. I am finishing a rewrite on a script this weekend and also marking students projects and papers. It’s my two tasks. Today I got my quota of student projects marked. I have some marks I need to put in that have already been marked but on my notes app in my iPad. It’s almost the end of the semester. Next week is the last week for Indigenous Cinema and the week after is the last week in Video Art Production. So it will come to an end and I’m trying to gather short term jobs over the summer and maybe beyond. I have a plane ticket to go to Saskatoon in July. I bought it when I had money a little while ago because I knew the gas prices were going up and plane tickets would get more expensive. I used points but it was a lot more points than usual. But at least I have the chance to see my family this summer. My relative is having health issues and I would like to see everyone again. I need to visit my Auntie Beth too and I don’t know how to do that. We were doing zooms for a while but I guess I’ve been too busy to visit her. And zooms aren’t the same thing.

I have been sick all week. I got a little cough and then it was at its worst on Wednesday and I had to zoom into work. I felt SO SICK. And then basically every day since then has been a little bit better. I don’t know where my COVID tests are either. There’s a games day my co-op is doing today that I was supposed to help with but I don’t want to infect all the children and adults at the co-op. So I’m staying in with my dogs blowing my nose.

I am getting a lot of work done though which is good. I have met with the sound designer/mixer and she is working on POOR starting today. She said I exported the files perfectly which was good to hear because I’ve never made AAF files for a sound person before. Actually even though I didn’t get paid to edit my film, it did teach me a lot of things about editing dramatic shorts. Probably comedic shorts too. I think it might be fun for me to try and get some editing work so if anyone has any please let me know. I have Premiere Pro and am starting to learn DaVinci. Although I still love Premiere just because I know how to use it.

I submitted it to some festivals and I’m just going to see what happens with that. I think it will get programmed somewhere hopefully. It’s kind of a hard piece. But also this morning I got up super early to present in the Disabled Legacies panel at the Paul Mellon Centre and watched three really emotionally difficult films I made about madness (Anhedonia, Madness in Four Actions, and Love & Numbers) and realized I’ve made really hard work before and it does find the people who are interested. I think Anhedonia was the most difficult film for me to make because I was having a massive depression, tension at school, and also it just brought up a lot of emotions I was trying to process while finishing a program. It’s interesting to make a film so deep within the feeling of depression and then to make another film about sort of the same themes but as a drama. Most of my mental health films have been experimental. Videos, they are videos although Anhedonia was shot on 16mm. Anyway I can’t spoil exactly what my film is about.

Ugh I have to get a poster made. I don’t know. Do I want to cheap out and make it myself? I did make some of the graphics for the call centre office. I think the image of me typing my username into the porn sharing site makes a good explanatory image. But also there’s an image of me looking anxiously up the stairs that is kind of calling me. Ahh. But anyway I should think about that next month.

I am starting keyboard lessons next month. Tuesdays! Which will make singing lessons on Mondays, Keyboard lessons on Tuesdays, and Guitar lessons on Saturdays. A lot! I am aware that is a lot to be learning but I’m only taking the keyboard lessons for two months. I just want enough to be able to play around with it. But who knows maybe I will want to spend more time learning it after 8 weeks. I feel like it’s going to finally help me truly understand music theory which I have had difficulties with. I think learning guitar and then music theory is harder than keyboard and music theory. But who knows. It’s also hopefully going to feedback into helping me learn singing. My singing teacher can listen to a song and then just find the exact notes and play it on the keyboard and I’m just like wow a miracle I could never! I’m still learning.

The next film I need to pay attention to is Unsettled Climate. I need a cut for June as part of my residency so I’ll be working on that outside of writing duties and obviously marking assignments for the next little while. I interviewed a climate data scientist who is also transgender and we had this amazing conversation. It is going to be really hard to only use small clips of all these brilliant people. I did end up writing another grant. I’m trying to learn not to feel so hurt about rejection. But it would be a long time since I got a grant from Canada Council that wasn’t travel. So yeah boo ha ha ha fuck.

I read somewhere that Monty Python and the Holy Grail was funded by some rockstars who needed a big tax write off. That is what I need, some obscenely wealthy celebrity who needs to help lower their taxes by donating me a huge bucket of cash to make something. Why is this so hard to find? I was talking to people about privately soliciting funding for my practice, but this friend told me you have to ask a rich person five times for money before they will give it to you. And I was like, fuck, FIVE TIMES!? That’s like some kind of fae rule. But also maybe the wealthy scare me. I mean not like I am never around them, if you’re in the arts there’s often some incredibly wealthy donor at gallery events and stuff. But those billionaires who keep making rocket ships and shit, those guys scare me. Especially with the files coming out. Like this is nuts, that level of wealth is so unhealthy for everyone.

Anyway blah blah blah.

I hope no one tries to preserve my brain after I die. Isn’t Einstein’s brain in a jar or something? Let the man decay, he did enough!

My film POOR got colour graded so I am happy to show some stills from it. I did a lot of work! My friend Yuma Hester did the colour correction and showed me enough that I was able to apply the grades to a couple shots that didn’t get graded because they were on a different timeline. I also fixed some sizing issues. I’m pretty stoked that it’s SO MUCH CLOSER to being done. I think I have added all the credits I needed to add. I fixed someone’s name. It’s got to go to the sound designer next week and then it’s finished. So I am happy about that.

It just looks really nice now. I was wanting to see what it would really look like for so long and now I know and yeah. It’s a good feeling to be close to finished with this film. It took so much work and most was unpaid for me. Especially the post production since my grant for it got rejected. I think it’s an important film but yeah I could only convince a few people who had money decisions to make about me.

Anyway I’m staying in this weekend marking projects and listening to tunes and playing guitar. I’ve been learning how to play I Love Rock and Roll and the B is a power chord B. Which has been tricky for me, but I am getting better at landing on a power chord while doing a progression. I’ve been practicing Call Me and it’s the guitar that does all the power chords, so I am learning how to land on them up and down the fretboard better than before.

On Sunday my electric guitar got all busted and sad so I had to take it to Long & McQuade in Scarborough because they were faster, and I got it back on Thursday. So it’s all shiny and fixed. I’ve been noticing the strings are still stretching a bit because they aren’t holding a tune for hours after playing. So that’s ok it just happens. I think my Martin needs to be restrung soon. Maybe next month, I did put it away for a while.

Anyway I better go see if I can get into the laundry room.

My real diary hasn’t gotten many entries this semester as I’m usually too tired on the days I am working, and I close my diary on my computer all the time I’m working too so that my students don’t find out rude things about my sex life they really don’t need to know. It’s kind of weird having a computer that is routinely hooked up to a projector. All kinds of personal things are on my computer! Anyway so far so good.

I’m really looking forward to the end of the semester, as are my students.

I feel like there’s so many things I want to do and I need to work on my priorities. Like making music has been fun, and so has making films, and teaching has been fun and so is writing. But sometimes I get anxious about how much time I actually have to pursue my interests.

Also! I have discovered that except for going on Grindr and Scruff to find hookups, I really haven’t been doing fuck all in terms of looking for an actual partner. Also I’ve discovered my desire has changed and I think I want to be with a man as a partner. Although sometimes I meet women that I have massive crushes on. So it’s a bit of confused bisexual times over here. But also I’ve discovered that I’m having difficulty letting myself love men, I think just because of how much misandry was around me. Not like misandry is a structural oppressive system it’s just a whatever thing. But it is oppressing my heart and I think probably my own self esteem to boot. I know my parental figure doesn’t think there’s anything to like about men, so it’s been hard for me to grow up liking myself knowing I was likely a boy/man. I just felt it was easier to say boys are assholes. And some are but not all and I’ve never really aspired to toxic masculinity. But that’s a type of masculinity, I like to think I have a more gentle masculinity. Gentle not feminine. I don’t know, I just know I’ve been around a lot of people one could call man haters and it’s really fucked over my sense of self. Maybe if I was more obviously a boy growing up I would have bonded with men more.

I feel pretty solid in terms of my relationships with other trans men. I have trans men I’ve been friends with for years and never felt that they were toxic or anything. There’s some kind of barrier for me with cis men though and I’m not sure what it is.

One issue I’ve noticed is that some guys on Grindr don’t recognize my gender, they only recognize my genitals, and that’s annoying as hell. Even as a bottom I feel like a man and not a woman when I’m having sex. So yeah, less of that. Another thing I have noticed is I just don’t have a gay male friend group. I have queer men who are friends, but not queer men who will go to the bar with me.

I went to a gay bar on the weekend and I felt kind of out of place. But I also feel out of place at women and trans nights. So I’m trying to figure out how to acclimatize to queer mens spaces because those are where I find the sexy guys. BUT ALSO I want to be open to kissing some guys big beardy face and telling him I love him and I’m just not there yet. ALSO I’m watching facial hair come in at a glacial pace and some part of me feels like I would be more comfortable in mens spaces if I also had a beard. So it’s a lot of complicated things.

Anyway I gotta go teach. I love making stuff but also falling in love has been a nice feeling in the past and I kind of miss it. I’m learning to sing Your Song by Elton John but I have no one to sing it to.

A screw fell out of my humbucker today while practicing and I realized putting it back in required more skills than I have right now. So I took it to Long & McQuade and I hadn’t gotten a set up yet and it’s been less than a year since I bought it, so it qualified for a free set up. So hopefully the screw is easy to put back in. I have a feeling it is but I’m not ready to take it apart to fix it. I was having a lot of fun with it too. I’m finally able to do some of the power chords better in Call Me by Blondie, and was just starting to learn I Love Rock & Roll by Joan Jett when the screw came out. My screw!!! It’s also got some other things wrong with it. It’s funny because compared to my Martin dreadnought it’s been so finicky having a telecaster. So many things that go wrong! But the only issue I’ve ever had with my Martin was the action being high and someone showed me how to fix it. A little trooper ha ha. So I guess it’s back to the Martin until my Fender is back from the shop.

I had an alright weekend. I got the music back from the composer for my film, so I have been trying it in different spots. I’m close but not quite there yet, I am assuming on Thursday I can finalize it. Friday I am going out of town to do colour correction with my friend and then the last thing to do is send files to the sound designer to put more in and also mix it. So it’s getting there! I’m pretty happy with it even though it’s a sad film. It’s still really real about poverty. Like not a dirty face begging on the street level of poverty, but a kind of poverty people can find themselves in when they are stuck getting on welfare. Which I have done in the past.

Anyway blah! I also am working on this sort of secret project that I am envisioning as a novel. Or novella. But it’s been told to me as a book but a spirit told me the story to begin with and I am wondering if they only knew books as storytelling mediums. And now we have tv and limited series and movies and video games and blah blah blah. So many options to tell a story and I have used a lot of them. But there’s still something about this story that makes me want to write it as a book. I like writing and I’ve done a lot of blogging and essays and screenwriting. And not a lot of prose, so this would be fun for me I think. I’ve never studied creative writing, I mean I have done it a lot but I never went into a program specifically for writers who write books. No BFA or MFA in Creative Writing.

I’m starting to let go of needing to get a degree in something to be allowed to do it though. Like I didn’t do any classes formally in video game development, but I did a workshop and since then I have done it a few times. I am taking guitar and singing classes, but I’ve never gone to a music undergrad, so I don’t have a paper for that either. Anyway I guess I just like doing multiple things and I should accept that and not feel guilty for not having the time or money or funding to take multiple undergraduate degrees.

It was shot day and I didn’t remember until 9pm when I saw some video about chasers asking trans men not to take T and I was like fuck I gotta take my T. I used to do it Mondays, and I used to see my therapist on Mondays too, so it was my favourite day of the week. But then I started teaching so I had to shift everything around and now my shot is on Sundays.

There are only three weeks left of one class and four weeks left of the other class. So it’s coming down to the end!

OH right, but the story I am telling in this book I am trying to write was blocking me because it’s kind of an epic story and needs a long timeline with multiple events in it. So I spent a few hours on Friday writing down key events into this long chronological list. I think it needs more events though, so I’m going to work on it a bit more before I commit to writing down the actual outline. Because I did write 27 pages of the story but it moved way too fast, and I think it needs a slower pace so you can really think about what is unfolding. I think it was a tiktok version of a novel ha ha only written down not a video. But too short and snappy. Still it was working for me overall, the idea is really solid. I think as soon as I get the main points down I will write it really quickly. Or rather, write a first draft quickly. I tend to write a lot anyway every day. I’m also rewriting a script right now so that is taking priority. It is changing, I am finishing it. I’m hoping to be done it next weekend (the script).

I’m coming up to the time where I need to worry about money again. I am okay right now, but money goes fast. And I did have to get some stuff done like the dogs had their annual shots and check up and that was a bunch of money. And groceries are crazy expensive in Canada because we have a billionaire robbing us. Anyway.

I’ve been quite literally starving over last year, because of a few things I think. One, the pro-Palestine posts blacklisted me I think. Two, the bullying and slander in the 2S community lead by Jas Morgan convinced some people not to support my work anymore. And three, the rising fascism in America lead to people not working with me anymore either out of fear or a feeling that what I have to say right now is unimportant. So it’s been really frustrating to see my art career I’ve built up for 31 years just fail, for multiple reasons. I am still making work but I’m not really funded except for this artist in residence position at U of T. I’ve been rejected twice, potentially three times for funding for Unsettled Climate, the documentary about trans people and climate disasters, so it’s just this residency getting me through and these teaching jobs. But they all end after April and I have no grant to tide me over after that. So I’m not sure what I am going to do for money, I will probably be unable to afford groceries again. Maybe Zionists can take bets on how low my weight will go this year without funding. I’m sure at some point I’ll be posting one of these graphs again.

The really disappointing thing about starving is that I can tell my brain works better when I am fed. I also have more energy and can get a lot of things done in a day when I’m eating properly. So seeing that improvement in my health go away again is going to be depressing.

I have to stress that I am not currently starving, and it’s not the end of the semester yet. But it’s coming and I’m just dreading it. I’ve got to write another grant, I did take a break from applying for grants after I got all those rejections last year. But I guess I am supposed to write these fucking grants begging for money so I don’t starve to death. It’s just not a dignified system. There’s nothing worse than groveling for a jury of my peers trying to explain why my project is important to humanity. Especially when I know people don’t want to support trans folks.

Anyway argh. Yeah that’s what I’m thinking about. I gotta go to bed tho, I am teaching in the morning. I have a ton of stuff to say about the American/Israeli war against Iran but I am too tired to write about it tonight.

It’s been a while, I was usually writing every week and it’s been something like two weeks since my last post.

Well, I’m doing ok just really busy. My mom was visiting this past weekend so we did a lot of eating. I took her to the fanciest steakhouse I’ve been to and we had these amazing steaks. It’s my one super expensive dinner I’m letting myself have this semester. I enjoyed spending time with her, although my apartment is small and I like being alone with the dogs the most (but if I had a big house maybe I would feel differently). She also got us snack-y groceries, we demolished a big bag of Twizzlers together. Lol fuck probably I’m going to find out the Twizzler CEO gave money to transphobia ha ha. Everything in our world is tainted!

I got a keyboard! I’ve been wanting a keyboard for a long time and I figured out where I can fit it (I have to find new places for what used to be there though) so I did SO MUCH RESEARCH. Because a keyboard turns out to refer to a variety of instruments who vary wildly in terms of what they can do. I had it narrowed down to a Roland Juno D6 because I wanted a synthesizer which could play multiple tracks and record and etc etc. BUT I bought it from Marketplace and it wasn’t exactly a D6, it was a DS61 which is a bit older than what is out now. It had no speakers so then I also had to get speakers and speaker cables. I had a USB mixer already so now I’ve got my computer and keyboard running through these inexpensive studio monitor speakers. Which even though they are inexpensive, sound amazing. It’s nice to be able to hear a really nice sound through them. Maybe one day when I have obscene amounts of money I will get some fancier set up, but honestly this is nice enough.

PLUS now that I have these studio monitor speakers, I can use my vocal mic and actually monitor my voice better. I can hear myself singing! Before I was wasting batteries by using the mic running through my Zoom recorder and then into headphones. But when I am learning a new song I like singing with the original singer and it’s hard to hear a track while listening to headphones because my mic is so precise that I can only hear my voice and not the song. So it’s upgraded my life.

I have a lot to learn about my keyboard, I was playing around with the different sounds it can do and how to play something that sounds nice. There’s this beat I keep going back to in the drum kit and I think I want to make a loop of it so I can play guitar along with it. So I’m looking forward to being able to know how to use this synthesizer. It’s still a relatively recent model so there are a bunch of Youtube tutorials on how to use it. And it does do all the things I wanted.

I’ve been watching this Game Theory professor on Youtube talk about the US war with Iran. He says the US is going to lose and destroy their empire. And then he explains how that will all happen and it makes sense. His Youtube channel is Predictive History. One point he made is that Iran is using drones that cost 50,000 dollars and they can make 500 a day. While the US uses million dollar interceptors, sometimes two or three to take down one 50,000 dollar drone, and can only make six a day or month (I forget!). He also explained all the ramifications of all these decisions being made and how fragile some of these areas are in regards to access to water, etc. It’s a mess.

In therapy today I was talking about the war (and a lot of other things) and I was talking about those schoolgirls who were killed and how war destroys potential. Like we don’t know what impact those girls were supposed to make on the world. I think it just cuts off so many future possibilities when people die senselessly, or are murdered. Not to say those girls didn’t already make an impact in their short lives, but like what could have been if this international crime of war hadn’t been committed?

I think we need to make a better world but we are being overwhelmed by all this global trauma so we don’t seriously change the system. It’s really disappointing to see how the concept of money has twisted this world, to the point that people seriously want to make more money for a short term future instead of fighting climate change for a long term future. I also am starting to wonder about information from the Epstein files desensitizing people to truly heinous abuse and murder. Like descriptions of abuse, I think there’s a line between “we should probably be aware of what has happened” and losing empathy or becoming abusers because people are getting bad ideas from all of this. I don’t know how you can protect your heart like that, not really sure. I’m not reading much about it now but it’s not because I don’t believe it, it’s just a lot to hold and I am only one person. If I feel like I need to understand something about it maybe I’ll read those stories again, I just need a break. And really tl;dr, obscenely wealthy capitalists do evil things with power.

Anyway.

I’m doing well with my music stuff. It will be two years of playing guitar in August. And 1 year of singing in August. And a week of having a keyboard tomorrow. I still feel like a baby bird in terms of being a musician. I can’t tell you much music theory at all because I get bored of it ha ha. Although I know knowing it would help me. I’m learning two guitar parts in Call Me by Blondie. It’s going ok! My guitar teacher is also having me warm up by doing these blues licks and then improvising with them. So that’s been fun. I learned how to do vibrato but I feel real silly wiggling my finger so I don’t think it’s right yet. I’m learning Friday I’m In Love by the Cure for singing which is really fun and upbeat. Except the end when they are going woah woo do do do, I mean it gets really complicated ha ha all these utterances. I was able to do the verse and chorus really fast, but the bridge that gets really fast and is a different rhythm is harder to do. But it makes me happy to sing and make music.

I think the keyboard will be fun. When I first started playing the keyboard it was 2007 and I was spending six weeks in a psych ward. And they had all these birdhouses you could paint, so I painted the hell out of those birdhouses (I was manic) and then I wanted to express myself so they had a keyboard I liked playing. Except it was in a common area so one day this woman flipped out at me for playing. Omg ha ha she was an intense lady! She told me one other day “You pissed off a tree” BUT SHE WAS RIGHT! I nailed something to a tree but no one knew! After I got out of the psych ward I went to the tree and gave it a cigarette to apologize ha ha. Which sounds silly but honestly it’s just putting down tobacco, I could have taken the filter off though lol.

So yeah now I can play my synthesizer at home and explore sounds alone without another psych ward patient getting pissed off at me.

I think I feel like I’m in a chrysalis musically, like I’m just transforming into a musician in private and I guess I’m still mostly not ready to be out there. I do share videos on Instagram. But the guitar has been mostly learning other people’s music while the synthesizer is more intuitive and I think will mostly be for my own song writing. I find the layout of a keyboard makes choosing complimentary sounds easier because they’re literally laid out in a sensible order, while for me I still don’t know all the notes on the fretboard of a guitar and I haven’t completely absorbed what makes one note sound good with another. However my teacher has been showing me the pentatonic scale and how you can use it up and down the fretboard.

I’ve mostly been concentrating on learning to play these instruments or sing properly, but I think songwriting is sort of the eventual goal of all of this. I like doing covers but also I wanted to learn to play so that I could make my own music someday. And having a synthesizer that can play eight looped patterns feels a lot closer to being able to actually make a song I could record and release. So it should be fun. I should record it more often though because I don’t remember how to play something I improvised. Ah I should probably take keyboard lessons. Synthesizer lessons. But also I kind of like just bumbling through it.

It’s reading week so I took some time to work on my dramatic short and my documentary feature. I am trying to get POOR to a picture lock so I can access some finishing funds. I had a fun time learning to make text message overlays, and notifications etc. I have three scenes left to edit and three voice overs left to record. I am still casting for two of them (Indigenous teen girl and an adult of any gender or race who sounds authoritative). But yeah I’m close to being done. SO FUCKING CLOSE. I just have to edit the last bits and then I can make a copy of it to submit to this place. I have I think three weeks until the deadline.

I also needed to edit a fifteen minute teaser of my feature doc, so I tried to edit something together. It’s at about 21 minutes though so it’s six minutes over. There’s this really interesting clip I wanted to include that kind of makes me cry when I listen to it, so I don’t want to cut that. I also was able to get some stock footage to round it out a bit. Pyrocumulus clouds!

I’m hoping to interview someone about hurricane disaster relief for trans people, but she was unavailable this last week so it’s going to be pushed on to the future sometime. But yeah I’m pretty happy with what I have. I know it could get edited down more. And I know I need more interviewees.

But maybe I am also just relieved I was able to get so much work done this week. Soon I have to go back to doing lesson prep, but if I can get these two videos advanced enough I will be able to meet my deadlines.

I also got some notes on my feature script on Monday and made some initial changes to the script and then I am going to go through the rest of the notes and address them. The notes were really good! He found some logical inconsistencies and got me to think about how the fire powers work. So it’s been helpful. There was a lot more to it than that. But yeah I appreciate people helping my artistic visions come to life.

I also got another financial supporter for Unsettled Climate so that’s really nice. If you are interested in this documentary and want to donate towards making it please let me know! tjcuthand@gmail.com I am waiting for you, generous patron of the arts.

In my personal life, aw geez really I just do a lot of work and stay home. I was going to go to the trans night at Steamworks tonight, but it’s freezing rain outside and was winter storming all day so I don’t want to go out there. I had a couple of hookups on the weekend. But nothing this week, I’ve just wanted to stay in and nerd out editing. I got my Apretude shot yesterday too, it didn’t make me violently ill like it did the first time, I didn’t even really feel sick at all today. I do have a sore hip muscle though. Whatever this muscle is called, it’s not a glute it’s a thing beside the glute. Anyway I’m glad it’s only a sore muscle because I was thinking if I had a bad reaction to it again I would go back on Truvada. But this is like, a fraction of a percent better at keeping me HIV negative so I’m going to suck it up. Plus Indian Affairs pays this outrageous 1800+ cost every two months, so I’m going to take advantage of being covered for it.

So aside from letting work interrupt my slut activities, I’ve been good. I think I am finding my life purpose again. Teaching has been good for my soul (although I feel like the week before reading week was my worst teaching week ha ha). But! Also doing the film work I CAN do has been helping me. I know I semi-retired as a full time filmmaker (which is true because I’ve been teaching too) but I do like it and I am good at it even if I don’t get funded all the time. And the projects do have to get finished. Right now I am just concentrating on cleaning my plate, like Unsettled Climate and POOR and Evil Fire. And then I guess I will let what happens to my career happen. I do have another script I have to finish too. So it’s not all over. I feel like Unsettled Climate might get finished sooner depending on some funding I applied for and am dubious about. But you never know right?

I am still dismayed by seeing how ugly the ruling class is. We knew this! We knew these people were taking humanity and the future of the planet in the wrong direction. But now we’re seeing the evidence of what and why they were doing this and it’s crazy!

I guess knowing it’s all a rigged game is making a lot of things make more sense. It’s insane that these are the people keeping us from ending climate change! This pedophile Epstein class. It makes me so angry, they’re so evil. And there’s more of us than there are of them. I think the system needs to collapse, we can’t carry this kind of blood drinking evil.

I saw this video of Roseanne Barr saying they were full on vampires, and yeah they are holy shit! And then I wondered about my own lifelong interest in vampires. And I was interested in romantic literature vampires, not wealthy capitalist vampires who eat babies too. Like it does not sound alluring at all, it just sounds fucked up. We’re taking orders from cannibalistic vampires. When will we revolt?

Bailey Sarian made a video recently where she was like “What are we going to do?” I think that’s honestly the question most of us are having to all these revelations. What are we going to do? Because this shit is not working for anyone but a handful of evil humans.

Hey! Sean McNeely did an interview with me earlier this month for the Faculty of Arts and Science at the University of Toronto and now the article about my work is posted. If you want to go read it it is here:

https://www.artsci.utoronto.ca/news/through-film-and-video-games-theo-cuthand-explores-indigenous-identity-resistance-and-lived

I guess my last post wasn’t that long ago, but I’m in my office eating strawberries and I am done most of my class prep. I have 20 slides! Which should be enough but you never know.

I’m really struggling with how depraved the ruling class is. I mean we knew they were disgusting people for doing all they have done to this world. But they’re even worse than that. I saw someone make a point that the way they force themselves on other countries and people is parallel to the rapes they have been perpetrating for decades. A rapist ruling class. It really came out in the way they discussed Greenland, listening to American politicians talk about “acquiring” (invading/occupying/colonizing) Greenland was the exact language rapists use. Anyway it’s been a lot seeing stuff come out around it. Also how the current trans panic was designed and perpetrated by enormously wealthy pedophiles. I always thought their obsession with children’s genitals and chests was fucking creepy. Let trans kids do what they need to to feel comfortable, you should not be thinking about a minor’s chest and what they are doing with it that’s just fucking pedo behaviour.

Anyway. I guess it’s also enraging because the American ruling class is still ticking along like nothing is wrong. And the mass media is generally supporting them still and oops Trump pooped himself what a silly guy. Gross.

This world is disappointing. Especially considering I’m not getting programmed as much because I’m trans (or blacklisted or whatever) because they’re afraid of getting pushback from the pedophiles who slandered our community to cover their own pedophilia.

This world needs a reset. What a dumb timeline. And I’m sure there’s people who still support the pedophiles in charge because there are people living in this world with a major moral rot of the soul and they try to act like the rest of us are the problem.

I’m just glad the culture war is still marginally less acceptable in Canada. I mean there are people still trying it (and funded by Americans to do it). But also I think there’s a conservatism that has captured Canadians who don’t want to rock the boat, either in terms of getting their funding cut because of supporting the marginalized, or getting their funding cut for speaking out against a genocide. They’re afraid and it is not helping.

I don’t think I have any other option but to try to be brave. My Great Great Grandfather was a war chief, so it’s in my blood. I’ve been going to protests since I was a little kid. I’ve often made really political art to try and bring issues into focus. It’s not popular though when people just want us to shut up and be unobtrusive while fascism is rising. Although it’s not great financially to be speaking out, and I guess that’s what the quiet people are doing, trying to save their careers.

I decided a long time ago that I would speak out against genocide and other injustices because to do otherwise would be a betrayal of my personal morals and values. As a survivor of an ongoing genocide, I can’t just act like what is happening in Gaza is acceptable or reasonable, it is not it is evil. It’s been evil for a long time. And now international law is in tatters because no one has stopped it, none of the courts stopped it, nothing. Everyone knows it’s everyone for themselves now. Which is not a community minded way to live.

I want to live in a world where crimes against children see consequences, serious consequences. I want to live in a world where we don’t bomb each other to gain resources and land. I want to live in a world where communities work together and support the marginalized among us, so people aren’t starving because people won’t hire or fund them. I’ve lost a lot of weight over the last year because I wasn’t able to pay for groceries most of the time. I’ve had some work but it’s never enough or long enough and it’s just so fucking tiresome. And I want my projects to get funded so I don’t have to stay a semi-retired filmmaker.