I’m in the airport in Victoria waiting for my flight. But I forgot my night meds last night so I barely slept. I also had a bunch of beers before bed so I kind of just lay in my AirBnb bed getting progressively more sober as I waited for the morning. I did my performance at Open Space last night and got to see some old friends and talk about my work which was nice. Also Gary and I went to the Empress Hotel after and had some drinks and oysters which was fun. Fancy ass place! They don’t put so much detail like that into buildings anymore.

Anyway I had a good trip. I miss Posey and Todd though. Posey got major dental surgery recently and lost of a bunch of teeth. So I felt bad for leaving her behind but she had a good sitter and I’d managed to get through giving her pain meds for the first five days after her surgery. So she’s okay. I miss her little face though and I can’t wait to get home later tonight and kiss her snout. I miss Todd too, but nothing is wrong with him physically, so I don’t feel worried about him in the same way. He is a brat though.

I’m tired of being frustrated with discrimination. I’m tired of feeling like an unvalued artist. Although this trip was great, Queer City Cinema really champions experimental work and that’s something I’ve always loved about it. And they do tours across Canada and I was in Helsinki with them earlier this year. And next year I am going to perform in Hanoi for them, so that’s exciting. I have never been to Vietnam. I’m trying to think of what my next performance will be but it’s not until April so I have some time to think. But yeah the unvalued artist feeling has nothing to do with Queer City Cinema and has more to do with the rest of the art world.

And yeah being trans does feel like it’s the thing that bothers people. Which is stupid. It’s a dumb reason to disregard someone’s voice. But I do know what it was like before I transitioned and my career used to be on the up and up and now it’s very much marginalized.

BUT ALSO I think my work is just very challenging for people.

POOR is not doing very well, it’s gotten into three festivals but it’s been turned down by a bunch of other festivals, some more mainstream than others. But it’s also been turned down by transgender film festivals which is also disappointing. And I’m at the point where I’m like am I just a really terrible filmmaker? Is this just a really terrible film? It ends with an offscreen youth suicide so it’s not in any way uplifting but it is about real concerns. And I did dedicate it to my two friends who died by suicide who were Indigenous people, Jasmine and Matthew. And it is about what it was like to feel like my life was too busy to catch the warning signs that both those people would die. And it is about poverty and the absolute awful feeling of being desperate to avoid eviction. So maybe people don’t really think those are fun things that should be in a film festival, I don’t know. It has mentions of sex work and to be real I have done sex work but not the type depicted in the film. Anyway I guess those are all challenging things for people to witness, and maybe the festivals just don’t want downer work, I’m not sure. I knew it would be challenging to place but I guess I’m starting to wonder if I should just be putting my films online because I don’t know how else they will be seen.

I’ve also gotten back into writing the second draft of my novel. To be quite honest I only rewrote the first two chapters as one chapter so far. I realized I needed to start at a different place or readers would just discount my book right away. So that’s at least a start. I was going to try and get a second draft done by Christmas, but between editing my documentary and beading sprites for this video game, I don’t have a huge amount of time. I am only teaching one class on one day of the week in the Winter semester, so I’m hoping I can do prep for one day (plus not a lot since I already taught this class before) and teach the next day and work on my projects the rest of the week. I think I can do it. I have high hopes. So maybe it will be more like reading week when I get my second draft of my book done and feel ok letting people read it.

I don’t know what is going to have to change in the world to be a respected artist again. I was reading that conservatives in the States fucked themselves over by assuming the engagement they were getting on X was relevant to what people wanted, when really people thought they were awful horrible people being cruel who shouldn’t be in power. And they are awful horrible cruel people. But I remember getting off X because I could see that it wasn’t in any way reflective of reality anymore. The bots were platforming Nazi ideals and for some reason I guess conservatives believed that was a real movement, and not large scale propaganda. They played themselves. But it’s like that on other social media platforms too. People believe these right wing politics of cruelty are popular when they are not. And I do think the art world bought into that too. I don’t think they’re innocent. I think they’re just as invested in not losing funding and that means not showing my work because it’s trans.

I recently saw a post on Instagram by the Ford Foundation that was something about fighting Autocracy and doing social justice work and I commented “It would be great if you would actually watch the support material by trans artists who apply to your foundation.” Because I applied to them last year for Unsettled Climate and when I checked my Vimeo stats, they did not watch my support material at all. I was thinking what was even the point of applying if they don’t even watch the work? And it does feel tied to being a trans artist, since it was such a specifically transgender project. So yeah, boooo to the Ford Foundation. Plus the support material was SO GOOD! It’s what got me my recent Canada Council grant. So yeah like how do I even feel comfortable with the art world and funders when I don’t even get a fair chance for this kind of shit? I would be ok if I didn’t get funded because they didn’t like my work. But to not even bother with watching it? Wow. Why should I bother applying to them again? Why should anyone apply to them if they already discriminate just based on identity issues?

It feels the same with things like the Sobey Award and the Governor General Awards, I don’t know that people actually bother watching my videos on those juries. I know Eiteljorg will only watch 30 seconds of a video to decide if they are going to give you their award. So that is just useless, there’s no way they are going to be able to adjudicate a video artist with 30 seconds of a 15 minute video. Like do I even get to say which 30 seconds they should watch? It’s ridiculous. I guess if I want to be a contender in any visual arts awards I need to make 2D work which can be seen in one second and judged, not a 15 minute video you have to sit with. I did make the trans piss project which is photographs. So I at least have SOMETHING. On the other hand, I don’t see an arts jury giving me an award for transphobic billionaires floating in trans piss either. Maybe my work resists awards because it’s too messy, too rude, too challenging, too uncomfortable. Where’s the award for that kind of work?

Someone recently asked me why I don’t make mainstream TV or films and it’s like, because people won’t give someone like me that kind of money. It’s not like I only ever want to make experimental documentaries. It’s just that there’s what I want to make and what I’m allowed to make. And I am allowed to make super low budget DIY work. But not tv shows. Not dramatic feature films. I’m not given the chance, it’s not because I’m bad at it (although maybe people think POOR is terrible), it’s because I’m a Mad Indigenous gay trans man and that’s not the voice people want to champion. And yeah yeah there’s the whole “I’ll make it anyway” but you can’t do that with big budget productions. I don’t have 4 million dollars sitting around. I don’t have one million. I got nothing. I’m poor as fuck for a reason, and it doesn’t have anything to do with artistic merit.

Anyway ha ha pissy feelings. But my therapist says it’s fine for me to complain so there. I’m tired of being marginalized but needing to be gracious about it. It fucking sucks. I’m highly educated and highly qualified and I think my work is important and I did finally get a Canada Council grant again. But I still feel like I’m not going to be allowed to get very far in the art world. I was in the Whitney Biennial but that was a while ago and didn’t really make much of a difference for me in Canada, and then the USA hasn’t shown my work since Trump got in (except for three places in two years) so my worth there is pretty much zero now too. It’s very frustrating. And it screams discrimination and prejudice, but knowing that doesn’t help me much.

If I was straight and cis I would be in a different tax bracket right now and that is weird for me to sit with.