I had the worst spring EVER this year, and I think most of it was around coming out as male. I kind of ran through all the worst characteristics a guy could have in manic record time and then felt like a dickhead. Ugh. I so don’t want to have to go through this coming out process again. There are two books about transmen at the library and then that is it. Maybe I should find some tranny site for new books to read. I know Little Sisters has some transsexual erotica, that would be nice to have.

Being in a “ladies” care home is kind of bizarre too, because obviously I’m closeted there, but At Least it is only until September. Then I’m in a place of my own again.

I’m still so embarrassed I was a bad manlady this spring, so fucking terrible!!!! I don’t want to be a bad manlady ever again!!!

The name change was a no-brainer but scary as hell. Sarain is the name I would have had if I was born biologically male. He was also a man who wrote some inspirational stuff in Indian Country and basically lead a legendary life. What we know of him is that he was the son of an aboriginal man stationed in Italy, Sarain was actually his last name. He came over to the Americas and started a wave of intensely influential aboriginal artists while teaching art at a tiny Aboriginal college here in Saskatchewan. He drowned in 1975 in the gulf of Mexico while swimming. He was about 30 years old. Now here I am at 29 becoming a man, becoming Sarain, and some of the parallels with our lives shake me up a bit. I started an international video career the same year my dad was in Venice with a show about Sarain Stump, The Man. The Legend. The one who freaks me out because he painted a Kundalini awakening with Quetzalcoatl. I mean, there are other things I can’t tell you because they are too intense.

I think seeing those lights out at Cranberry Flats is tied into this fear I have around becoming Sarain, because I recently found out through an old high school friend that someone who goes to the nude beach has seen them out there too. I’m starting to think that maybe they were spirits or deities of some sort. And the fact that I’m two-spirited and that there were two of them makes me think it was about the impending fight in my own body between staying female or becoming male.

I am now virtually gender changing on Facebook and here on Blogger. To Sarain Cuthand. I already gathered 115 friends under my old name and I hope the name change on facebook, and the gender, is enough of a huge announcement to everyone about who I am now. Of course whether I am the reincarnation of the late Sarain Stump is an unanswerable question unless I start remembering things about that life. I did have a brief fascination with Venice once, but I think it was more like memory. And I have some memories of Mexico too, even though I have never been there.

You might laugh to find out that my biggest concern about transitioning is my nipples, but I’ve been cruising around Transster, a site for surgery photos for transmen, and I have to say, owie-ya!!!! I want the least amount of damage done to my chest as possible. I was hoping for the liposuction option, but apparently I have too large a chest to be able to do it. I’m getting excited about having a male chest, but the things they would have to do in order to reshape it concern me. I have seen some photos where they don’t have to do nipple grafts, but other than that they just cut them off and slap them on somewhere else, and the sensation is pretty minimal from what I hear. I don’t want to lose nipple sensation. Unfortunately a lot of people do, as with many trans surgeries for mtf’s in the bottom department.

I doubt I will get bottom surgery though, because I like the idea of all my bits just, ya know, growing on their own. I know some of my FTM friends turn into secret dicklet size queens. Maybe I’ll be one too!

Still, it’s the nipples that worry me. I’m excited about how my new body will feel, but just worried about my chest. I like my nipples, if not so much my breasts.

It’s weird to think that at 29 I am finally getting ready to transition after countless trannies starting with the Infamous David Harrison have been nudging at me since adolescence. I guess I wanted to be sure. I remember at 19 looking at my body in the full length mirror of my apartment and just going “Oh that is SO NOT ME!”

It’s a general understatement that often trannies have some awkward mental health crisis stage we go through just before going Fuck it, I’m trans. Never mind Ellen’s “Yep, I’m Gay” cover of the Advocate, I think “Fuck it, I’m trans” is a much better I statement to make. Especially if you already know you have a history of straightish girls falling for me. I mean bisexuals with a preference for dudely dudes.

My mom used to never understand why I continually dated bisexual girls, but really it was because I needed to be with someone who would stick around after I went through hormone treatments. Which is such an obvious “This person is clearly trans” statement to make.

One of the reasons I am such an Annie Lennox fan, not only because of her obvious gender fuck performances, is because she is SO FUCKING GOOD at playing with archetypes. I think, especially as a filmmaker, that any kind of artwork using the human figure necessitates understanding archetypes.

I’m currently in the process of developing a feature film love story about Vampires, something WAY sexier than anything anyone else has written yet. I want to write a love story about contemporary vampires, ones that are more interested in consensual bloodplay than attacking helpless victims. And kind of a comedy. I dunno, I have to flesh it out a bit. Maybe a wetigo could be mixed up in there. A wetigo is an aboriginal cannibal character. It’s funny that as writers, or artists of any type really, there is always pressure to be really clear about what you think is right or just when usually the most interesting stories are about when things go wrong. The narrative structure itself is built for conflict, not harmony, even a Brakhage film has some unease to it, even if it’s just “Dear god, when will it end?”

The vampire archetype fascinates me still, I think because there is something erotically charged about just the very act of exposing one’s neck to another being, especially a supernatural being. Getting bitten on the neck is probably my very top favorite thing in this world, as long as they know what they are doing. Once someone bit me on the neck in a not nice way, I mean, it was clearly for them to be an asshole, which really sucked. No no no, no assholes allowed.

That being said I’m still embarrassed I was an asshole this spring. I couldn’t really help it, which is maybe the reason why it sucked ass the most.

I just got word that “Through the Looking Glass” will be screening this August in Santa Fe! If only I could go, Santa Fe is one of those magical cities. When I was a kid and sat on the edge of the Grand Canyon we also went to Santa Fe and ate dinner at the Famous La Fonda.

I think one of the things I love best about Santa Fe is the color of the land there. There is something to be said for bright red dirt.

Today I saw my community mental health nurse. I’m telling you, I’m all set in this town now. I also apparently have the best psychiatrist in town, which is really good because clearly I’ve had issues with psychiatry in general, and with my last psychiatrist specifically who didn’t know what transphobia meant and was going to diagnose me schizophrenic based on my film career which he also assumed was non-existent. Which is obviously not the case. The Native Cinema Showcase I will be showing in is put on by The Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian and the Center for Contemporary Arts, Santa Fe. Not too shabby for a mental health consumer.

Seeing a community mental health nurse is like, well I don’t know because I’ve never had one before. But she wanted to know all about me in 45 minutes. It was kind of funny giving a run down on my life. Depressed as a kid, anxiety ridden, academically competitive, etc etc. I just found out recently that one of my Actel friends now has a PhD in Chemistry! Good gravy! Then again, I’m finally showing in an event put on by the Smithsonian, so in many ways I guess I’m still on Actel timing.

Actel was an accelerated learning environment for gifted children in Elementary school here in Saskatoon. It was probably one of my favorite education environments because finally I was in school with other people who wanted to win! As in, get A+ report cards. Britta, the one with the PhD, was my most fierce competitor, and aggressively called me all through high school to compare who got the best marks. Once I got a 93 in science and she got a 91 and she actually screamed like a banshee over it, it was really funny. And anyway, I was the artsy writer so I wasn’t that much fun to compete with.

It’s funny after this big blow up this spring with my mania that I ended up just clutching my screenplay in the hospital saying “No really, this is all I have left, and it’s real, I really wrote this screenplay! I really am making a movie!” Good thing my new psychiatrist knows about artists.

Well, as you may have surmised if you are a regular reader of my old blog and my alan smithee’d psychosis blog and this one, I had a rough spring. Mostly it was because I got off meds due to a scare about the Rash, which I did get and survived and there are no scars, just a very broken heart and a VERY righteously angry ex-whatever. I don’t think we ever actually stated our relationship perameters so ex-whatever might make the most sense, especially since hir gender, while obviously bio-female and ultra femmey, has some definite boy characteristics to it. Anyway, the ORIGINAL issue was mainly that I had decided to transition and suddenly had to come to terms with it. Yeah, I don’t recommend trying to come to terms with gender reassignment while being in a mental health crisis with bad meds.

Anyway, my shrink doesn’t think I look like a boy, which if you saw my boobs you would have to agree with. But I am a guy, and so this summer I’m trying to come to terms with that, more specifically with learning how to be a nice guy and not an ASSHOLE!!! Ugh, oh man, I was so not into becoming an asshole. Anyway, the psych ward I was in didn’t really know where to place me in their system, so I ended up bunking with post menopausal women, who were kind of annoyed at me. And then the nursing staff got more annoyed when on my way out the door they finally got to see what I really think of contemporary psychiatric care in my new film. But overall it was a more pleasant experience than Montreal, which was just a snake pit.

Anyway, there IS a gender clinic in town. I went to my G.P. today and talked about it. She had a student doctor with her and said “Okay, tell us what happened to you.” (She had been visiting me regularly in the hospital, so it was mostly for the student’s benefit). I said “I had a manic episode and went into the hospital to get stabilized and now I am stabilized and I am still thinking about transitioning to male and I am thinking that I can’t see myself not doing it anymore.” And then she just asked how long I had been thinking about it and I said since I was a teenager, and she asked about my childhood and I said I had been spending most of my time with boys and then didn’t fit in with girls. And then I mentioned I had toenail fungus, which we looked at (ew, I know, but I may as well tell you how my doctor’s visit went). Anyway, it was the student doctor who knew of who in town ran the gender clinic or was involved with it anyway.

Chest Surgery is going to be the cost of like, a cheap Saturn car or something! T is about ten bucks every two weeks and it’s a pain in the ass (ha ha ha!). Mostly I am just surfing around looking for cost for everything. I want to get a packer sometime soon, for now I am just using the condom/hairgel packer, well, not even that because I am in a female only care home until september, which is kind of ridiculous, but the shrink and all the doctors were like “Woah, just, knock it off, deal with one thing first!” So the manic episode, clearly, took number one priority and rightly so. Nevermind that I was still coming out to everyone about being a tranny all the time. Well, not so much in the hospital.

I’m trying to learn a sport, basketball to be precise. I need to do something to start building muscle mass, something better than just sitting around on the internet. I’ve taken to wearing hats recently, wich given my penchant for sunstroke is probably a good idea. I’m trying to think of a new backpiece to get, first I wanted a monarch butterfly with David Suzuki’s head in it, and then I wanted a Pegasus, and anyway, not sure. The Pegasus still intrigues me. I’m considering taking fencing classes again, because I always liked the sport. Maybe I could become competitive!

As if I’m not already competitive in the film world. I am still ticked off that no one has noticed I’m up there with Miranda July. Maybe I have to make my first feature to be at her level now, Miss I Won At Cannes. Dammit! If Only I hadn’t had that manic episode. Then again, if I hadn’t had the first episode I wouldn’t have my screenplay. It’s kind of bizarre feeling like my only accomplishment is the completion of a feature film screenplay. And then again there would be some people who would be impressed by that. Maybe it is impressive and I’m just being too dammed hard on myself. Currently it’s in the hands of a producer relative who is reading it. I didn’t realize it was really about police brutality. I mean, it doesn’t really have a main antagonist, just The System, which really does come through as the antagonist to these characters, and the funny thing is that they also have to rely on it. Don’t we all?

Aside from that I applied for a program at the Banff Centre and am also applying to do Freak Show peepholes for Saskatoon that speak about gentrification in the Riversdale Area. The freaks are the upper class in my version. So we’ll see, it would be nice to get a $1000 artist fee sooner rather than later. And my dad could help me make them, hopefully.

Anyway, it’s been a weird ass spring and mostly I’m glad it’s over and mostly I’ll be glad when I get my work being made again. I have another idea for a Canada Council grant and someone suggested I do the aboriginal curatorial grant, I dunno. Maybe. It would be nice to get some video work into Saskatoon. There are little blips of shows and teeny festivals, but nothing major. A major film festival would really make a difference to the art scene in this town.

And then aside from that this summer I do psych rehab AND talk to the shrink about wanting to become a man. A tiny man. With tiny hands and feet. For a girl I have small feet even. Not too small to get toe fungus though.

Ew.

I have studied film and video at the Emily Carr Institute in Vancouver where I received my BFA. The main component of my career has involved DIY videos, often made with budgets under $200 and self produced. My career has taken me around the world, and my most controversial video, “Untouchable” is currently in the Outfest legacy collection at UCLA. More recent work has tackled the taboo subject of mental illness, in particular my own experiences with depression, which was then diagnosed bipolar disorder. My first video mentor, Maureen Bradley, has encouraged me to continue in this vein in order to disrupt the current view of persons with psychiatric disabilities as mediated in contemporary mainstream media. As a consumer of psychiatric medications, I was in particular influenced by Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto to create my latest work, “Madness in Four Actions” which is a video collage of clips from The Miracle Worker transposed with text from various leading psychiatric activists and revolutionaries including R.D. Laing and text from “Mad in America: Bad Medicine, Bad Science, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill.” During my last hospitalization I snuck my DVD copy of this video onto the ward only to be censored by the nursing staff who told me not to lend it or promise it out, even though it already premiered at the Mendel Art Gallery on January 17, 2007. My work is strongly influenced by the hope that people, even psychiatric cyborgs, should have the ability to make decisions concerning their own lives. The censorship of a film made by and for persons with psychiatric disabilities just goes to show that there are still societal taboos which must and can be shattered with media interventions.

Currently my practice has expanded to group performance art projects, “Urban NDN Interventions” is a new branch of work, which gathers First Nations artists and our allies to engage the public in peaceful confrontations with High Class actions. The first event, The Treaty Ascot, takes place at Marquis Downs in late summer where we will be crashing the horse track in fancy hats and tuxedos

You know, Bipolar Disorder is practically the Hollywood disease. I can think of no other illness that lends itself so readily to the film industry. I mean, a 15 hr day for six weeks at your job, you practically HAVE to be manic to be able to do that. The reason no one noticed my illness in film school is that in many ways, I fit in.

Kay Redfield Jamison was one of the first psychiatrists (and also has bipolar) to do a major investigation of creativity and bipolar disorder in her book Touched With Fire, which I recommend for anyone studying the connection between madness and the arts. In fact Emily Carr was probably the best school for a person like me to go to, not only because it’s one of the top art schools in the world, but also because I just clicked with the student body.

One Word: “Natasha!”

I mean, if you are a queer filmmaker and there isn’t really much if any of a festival here. Gary Varro does the fest down in Regina and apparently that one festival was enough, NOT! Oh man. So anyway, I do most of my filmmaking career outside of Saskatchewan, obviously, even though there is so much pressure to keep people here.

Did you know we had a Pride parade and it got barely a mention in the news? I mean, we’re not Winnipeg, that’s for sure.

And yet I have gone through the awkward 1st year back, with not, well no, there was trouble. For one thing I had a racist co-worker at the job I moved back here for and when the boss wouldn’t act on it I up and quit. Then my cousin died a week later. Then I moved back in with mum. Now I’m staying in a care home temporarily and having friends outside of who my mum knows. It’s pretty nice. I’ve got a date for canoeing! And, well what else? Oh, I have a new place to live starting September 1.

It’s funny that I am nervous about where I am living based on what I know of Saskatoon,
compared to my one year in the downtown eastside. I kind of think once you’ve done the Downtown Eastside that’s a kind of razorblade type of living that is hard to shake off. I mean, the street savvy don’t look anyone in the eye kind of living. You’d be amazed at the shit I walked past and survived. Well, maybe not if you read my old blog. I think Fit Of Pique is kind of an ode to that part of Vancouver and that part of my life. It’s old stuff, scary stuff. And I made it out alive, more or less. Broken maybe. No, not really, not anymore, but it did leave a lot of anger in my mouth, and the taste of righteous disabled broke anger is not something you can just spit out.

Class is a powerful thing, more so when you feel like someone doesn’t understand you because it feels like they never understood what being lower class is like. But at the same time, I think most everyone can understand discrimination. Someone once called me middle class. It was funny because at the time I was doing pharmaceutical market research AND being fucked over by Zyprexa.

So really, in the end, I think in this world we all feel disabled and powerless, especially when we look at the news. And still I think a lot of people are Mother Joneses and Ghandi’s and so on and so forth. Who knows if I even spelled his name right.

As for myself, I am merely a 29 year old punk filmmaker who’s newest film was censored in the bin. Oh boy, did they ever not want me to show it there. All the nurses watched it apparently. They also saw HELPLESS MAIDEN MAKES AN ‘I’ Statement. Which is a funny version of a real thing that happened to me eight years after I made it.

Pat Mills asked me if my favorite film is still Troop Beverly Hills. Ha ha! Yeah man! I love Pat, this is what he agreed to sing along to on Facebook.