sunday primer

• Your Weekly Motivation Starts on Sundays | Torrance Memorial

I had experiences in New York in the '90s dressing femme and I often had really bad things happen to me. Once I actually came out it was a little scary,  I felt very vulnerable to go out on stage. And then there was a show in Chicago at Pitchfork Festival where I was like "F*ck it" and I just wore jeans and heels. More than anything it was relief a tremendous relief.TV sunday primer So, the story goes like this: A 23-year-old piano prodigy from Texas won the Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition in Moscow in 1958. The problem? It was during the Cold War, and obviously people weren't on the friendliest of terms. But him winning kind of changed things, and even though they weren't sure if an American should take home the grand prize, an eight-minute standing ovation made the judges realize he was the only one who deserved to get it, bringing some sort of peace between two nations that really needed it. (Don't worry, history lesson is now adjourned.) sunday primer For me, so much of that process was being confused because from the time that I was a little kid — from before I can remember I felt comfortable identifying as female. Coming from an academic family and somewhat hippie family, I think there was some tolerance of that that other people may not have experienced but there was no context for it.  It was simply a thing of "Oh that's what my kid’s like" but there was certainly not an idea of "Oh my kid’s trans." Like that wasn't there at all, I was born in 1974, it’s not my parent's fault. What my experience was mostly, was trying to navigate through life and make sense of that, of the fact that I was more comfortable identifying as female. As I got older that became more and more difficult because it’s one thing to be like "That's what my kid is like" but it was a different thing to be "Oh that’s what my 22-year-old who just graduated from college is like." I remember my mom being very confused why I was moving to New York with a suitcase full of women’s clothes and I’ve shared about it before but I have a history with addiction and it's pretty clear to me that that interacted with my denial around my trans identity. And the more help I got around that and more time I was able to put together away from that stuff, the clearer it became. sunday primer My advice for emerging trans artists would be to trust yourself and find people that are doing the things that you want to do and being the kind of person you want to be. No matter if they're celebrities or seem unreachable, try to connect with them. Keep making art and keep putting it out there. Don’t worry about doing something new because there’s never been someone exactly like you in the world.TVWhat advice would you give to your younger self?GRR: sunday primer