On collaborating with your past and future selves

You shaped your new album, Blurring Time, around your transition, recording the higher vocals in 2022, writing the new vocal arrangements once your voice dropped, and then weaving those two throughout. Do you remember when the idea first came to you to document the process through an album?

Yes and no. It was a gradual coming together. I wrote the album over the course of 2021, and the album creation process was the thing that helped me figure out who I was and what I wanted. First and foremost, I approached the songwriting process as a means to figure out who I was as a friend, as a lover, just as a person in general. I felt really lucky, by the end of the writing process—lucky and happy to have arrived at a place of understanding who I was.

I’m a relatively slow writer. I’m not the kind of person who typically can just breathe out a song or have a song appear out of thin air. Usually, when I write something and then I record it via voice memo, I do so with the intention of then having it be part of whatever record is going to be next… But obviously the subject matter is such that I’m singing about something that is happening in a very specific moment in time for me, which is figuring out that I am a transmasc person.

I thought about a lot of the coming out stories that I had watched on YouTube or heard of myself, and I realized that I hadn’t really seen any documentations of one’s coming out process, specifically a trans coming out process, where the old self accompanies the new self as they are becoming that new self. I totally understand the validity of wanting to cast the old self to the side so that the new self can shine. But my experience is one where it’s really important to me that my old self is with me even today. I tried to kind of erase that dichotomy, erase that either/or and turn it into a both/and.

I’ve always felt like voice is the most intimate instrument, like it’s pulled from this undiscovered or unnamed organ. How do you think of your own voice as an instrument, or how has your relationship with it evolved?

For a host of reasons, I never really thought of myself as a vocalist. I never thought of myself as a singer… I was talking about dichotomies, and the singer-songwriter dichotomy or identity is something that I’ve also carried with me for a really long time. But I’ve always focused very, very strongly on the songwriter aspect. I’ve always considered myself a storyteller first and foremost, and then it’s almost as though the musicology is an afterthought. I think a part of that has been imposter syndrome. I think a part of that has been gender dysphoria and feeling a certain degree of discomfort with my voice for a really long time. But of course, having my main instrument change made it so that I had to think of my voice as exactly that, an instrument, for the first time in my life.

The album is lingering so much in change, with this sense of anticipation that feels fluid and kind of open to unpredictability. My favorite lyric from “514-415” is, “The things you reach for in your life reach back when those things are right,” which carries this profound patience. Did writing these songs help you move through change more gracefully, or did you have to learn to sit with that uncertainty?

I am actually pretty uncomfortable with uncertainty and lack of control, which is ironic for someone who intentionally dove headfirst into change, of course, through the making of this album. Just the last couple of years of my life have implied so much change. So I do think that the writing of this music actually really helped me to embrace that. I don’t know off the top of my head, but I’m inclined to almost say that pretty much every single song includes the word “change.”

When I was first writing these songs, they were for me. Of course, I had the intention of recording them and releasing them, and my hope is always that people, regardless of walk of life, will see their experiences reflected in my own. But these songs, at least at the point of writing, were for me to process these very big questions that I was asking such as, “Who am I? Who am I in the context of dating someone? What does it mean to be a brother to someone who you have a bit of a fraught relationship with?”

You’ve said before that a song feels complete when you can share it with someone else. Did that still feel true with Blurring Time, or did your definition of what makes a song complete start to shift, because you had to set them down and come back to them later on?

In some ways, it did feel complete, and I do think that that sentiment still rings true. However, I think that because of the current sociopolitical climate, I would say that these songs have now taken on this sort of tone of being incomplete. Or maybe it’s not a completion as much as it is a continuation, if that makes sense.

It’s very interesting listening back to some of these songs now, having had no idea what the world would look like when I was first writing them. I think that from the point of view of a recording like an archival [tool], yes, they’re complete. But more from a topical point of view, I think that they are still finding their meaning for me and also in the world.

Your work feels very intentional, or like you have a clear vision. I know you’ve talked about working with a concept before, and that feels especially true with this album. How does having a concept shape your writing process? Does that guide you from the beginning, or is it something you can keep referring back to?

Concepts can be really freeing in their limitations. I really enjoy when I make rules for myself in my creative practice. Whether that means I’m going to try and write a song without the use of the word “I,” I like having rules in my songs. Even if I don’t follow them exactly, it’s kind of nice to have a very loose guideline. And then when I try to create that universe for myself, I at least can visualize the path that I’m trying to follow.

So at the time of writing, there was no intentional concept building within that. When I thought about how I wanted to capture it from an audio point of view, the concept started to emerge. And within that, of course, there’s creative limitation… I definitely felt freedom in my ability to let go, and understanding that my voice would drop and it would sound however it would sound. Perhaps my pre-T calculation of how low it would drop would be correct, and perhaps it wouldn’t, and that I would have to meet my past self where they were at if I wanted to go through with this project.

How are you thinking about these songs when it comes to performing them? I saw you were planning on creating both parts at some of your shows, if you want to talk about that a little bit.

There’s one show specifically, which is the album release show in Toronto, where I’ve asked two of my friends to join me and sing with me, both of whom are on the trans spectrum. One is a fellow trans guy who’s on testosterone. His name’s Lane Webber, and he’s actually someone that I have admired for a really long time. He was someone I looked to a lot in the early days of my transition and specifically around singing.

I’m almost considering it as something kind of theatrical. [Lane] is going to be playing the part of the low harmonies, and then my friend J—who is non-binary and not on testosterone; their artist name is Your Hunni—will be singing the higher parts. I have sung with other people in other musical contexts before, mostly cis women friends of mine. And it was really important to me that I asked people who had a lived experience as a trans person to be singing with me just because I wanted that honesty to come through in the vocals. My band is exclusively guys, and I also think that there’s something really beautiful about that, too, to be singing songs about what it means to be masculine and become a guy, and have the guys who have helped inform my masculinity behind me.

When you reflect on your past work, does it still feel active to you or does it kind of feel like an artifact?

I think both. I’m just thinking of your question that you asked before about the completion of a song… I do almost feel as though I am taking this box off of the top shelf and blowing off all the dust and opening it. Almost like refurbishing this old artifact that I’d placed to the side for a really long time.

In some ways, it’s been very active the last couple of years. I’ve been playing these songs at shows while not mentioning the fact that they are part of an upcoming album. I have been considering the ways in which I want to release this in ways that will feel good and authentic to the self that I was, and authentic to the self that I am now. But also, it’s just a totally different experience to open up the meaning of all of these songs and share them with the world in a very vulnerable way, again, especially as the world is looking as it is right now.

How has the act of creating shaped your sense of identity at different stages of your life?

You’re asking a lot of heavy hitters, it’s awesome. I think that whether I’ve known it or not, every song that I’ve ever written has begun with a question, and I think that the lyrics and the melody of every song are answers. I can think back to the very first songs that I was writing in high school at 15, 16, and figuring out my identity as a young queer person. What does it mean to write a love song and use exclusively “she” pronouns as someone who was identifying as “she” at the time? What does it mean to write a song where the lyrics are kind of nonsensical and whimsical and almost Magical Mystery Tour-esque in their whimsy? Is that something that I can approach as a 17-year-old songwriter? And then later, what does it mean to watch someone else process their grief and then be able to better process mine? Asking questions through creativity has provided me with answers, with regards to who I am.

How would you define what it means to be an artist, and when did you first feel that word belonged to you?

I first felt that that word belonged to me after I completed The Artist’s Way in 2021. I don’t totally know what the block was there in me identifying as an artist beforehand. I spent all my time playing guitar and writing songs, arguably more than I do now. But I felt far less comfortable identifying as a musician or an artist or a singer-songwriter than I do now, which I think is interesting. I feel like it took me reading and completing The Artist’s Way to understand the degree to which I was artistically and creatively blocked. And by extension, the degree to which my inner artist—which is an important term in the book—was wounded and very much in need of some TLC.

We’re having this conversation following the news that you had to cancel your US tour [following the US’s new rule that passports must reflect one’s sex assigned at birth, which can also affect visa applicants]. I imagine you are navigating difficult emotions with this deep undercurrent of disappointment and anger, and I just want to give you the space to talk about how you’re moving through that.

With as much grace as I can. With patience, with confidence in myself and my story. Trying to honor the art while also remembering that me having to cancel my tour is obviously devastating for my rollout and my career, while also remembering that this is so much bigger than me.

It’s funny, you’re asking me these very, very thoughtful questions about creativity and my creative practice, and I’m having a hard time answering a lot of them because I haven’t really been able to actually think of that part of my practice for a couple of weeks now. So I’m almost at a loss for words with a lot of these things that you were asking, because I’ve just been thinking about the story as it pertains to me not actually being able to do the thing.

It seems like the Canadian music community is joining together and trying to get your voice out there, and that’s such a powerful thing. And I’m thinking a lot about what we as neighbors can do to support you and other trans artists this is impacting.

Cheryl Waters at KEXP read your statement live on air. That visibility is crucial, and my hope in all of this is that it leads people straight to your voice—because to me, that’s the most sacred thing. What kind of support feels most meaningful to you right now?

It’s kind of ironic, I guess, that I will not be able to play my music in person in the States for at least the next four years, but that since announcing that I cannot, more people are listening to me in the States than I ever anticipated, or, potentially, than they would have should I have actually been able to go through with this tour. Yes, borders are real. Yes, these policies exist and are harming real people with real stories to tell. But also, music and art is borderless. Even if I can’t reach certain people in person physically, I do hope that this music will continue to speak for itself, spiritually and through sound waves.

How are you thinking about your album now, as it begins to move beyond you?

I hope the album will speak for itself. I really do. I think a lot about social media. I’m someone who had a flip phone until January. I loved my flip phone, and I was pretty sad to go back on my iPhone under the guise of having to be a good self-promoter or whatever. I think a lot about social media and the algorithm and Meta and our shortening attention spans. I also, of course, think about the shit show that the last week has been for me. And I bring those two things up because there’s a fear that with this treacherous algorithm that we are all at the mercy of, and with this “visagate” thing that I’ve just been through, that the music itself will actually get lost in the mix. So I sincerely hope that even in this age of social media that we are all living through—that feels often very trite and fleeting and superficial—that the music will have a beautiful life for itself removed of all of these things, and that it will find the people who need to hear it.

I found a note I had written to myself recently that just said, “Safety is conditional.” I don’t remember what it was that made me feel that so sharply, but I started to reflect on the role of safety and how we relate to others, or inhabit our environments or feel within our own bodies. Where do you feel the safest, or what does protecting yourself look like either personally or creatively?

In the same way that I’m learning to trust my gut and trust my instincts—trust my creative instincts—I’m also trying to protect all of those things. I am not really someone who is super well versed in having needs or knowing that I have the right to do so. So as I am fostering that process, I try to listen to my instincts and intuitions.