About me, and why I’m doing this crowdfunder

Hiya! It's me again - a deeply non-typical, classically trained, soon-to-be-former, soprano.

If you want a precis of my accolades and achievements, you can look at my bio. What I want to give you here is the backstory, how I ended up here, and what I’m planning to do.

TL:DR 

A major part of why I'm doing this is in order to have one last big event using my current voice: expect lots of singing, lots of my own stuff as well as other amazing, listenable, fun, meaningful repertoire, some of which has never been performed live before (and won't be again, at least not in its current form!). I want to celebrate this chapter closing with a bunch of beloved, talented, generous colleagues, and I want it to be enjoyed by a warm room chock full of lovely people (yes, I mean you), with nice drinks and snacks at interval, and a chance to chat to about All The Things. I also wanted (for lots of reasons, particularly disability access) to make the event accessible to people who can't make the gig in person.

The other reason boils down to this: my actual identity, rather than the mask I’ve worn for most of my life, is: musician; neurospicy; agender (pronounced: ayyyy; gender 🤦(facepalm optional)). To build a sustainable future as the first of these, I need to own both the latter; and that means change.

The net money raised (after project costs) will be used to fund breast reduction surgery (still boobs, just smaller :D). I’m also going to be donating a tithe of the first $8000 raised by this campaign to the Working It Out Gender Affirmation Fund. All funds raised over and above my surgery costs will also be donated to the fund - so, even if the goal’s already been reached, grab a reward and get amongst it - your contribution will go toward allowing GNC Tasmanians to live their truth, affirming their mental health and facilitating not just surviving, but thriving.

The backstory

It has taken a full half century to stand firm in who I am, but I now celebrate my neurodivergence and queerness as a valid part of the extraordinary spectrum of ways that being fully, gloriously human is expressed.  I am finished with being ashamed.

I turn out to be quite profoundly autistic. I also boast a grab bag of miscellaneous other hidden disabilities. No aspect of my lived experience is untouched, with mental health stuff, physical disability, chronic pain and dysautonomia all long-term parts of what I navigate day to day. 

Having a neurodivergent brain is complicated.  I am proud of my very odd brain.  Having it means I can do stuff a lot of people can’t do. Equally true: having this kind of brain is really, really hard - for one thing, society isn’t set up for my neurotype at all; for another, there are things that would be objectively disabling about my setup even if I were perfectly accommodated.

A near-universal pattern for high-masking, high-needs autistic people assigned female at birth (yep - it’s a mouthful!) is that we tend to hit autistic burnout in our mid 40s.  This happened to me a few years back, right on schedule. I suddenly found myself in a place of acute mental exhaustion, with hard limits on executive functioning and motor planning - seven years in, I grapple on the daily with major deficits around stuff like working out how to cook a basic meal or put clothes on. Then there’s the massive surge in sensory sensitivities - my tolerance for crowds, noise, bright lights, smells, even the texture of clothing against my skin, has taken a nosedive. There’s a bunch more, but suffice it to say - stuff that feels like it oughtn’t to be hard - and evidently isn't, for others - is often nearly impossible for me.

Trying to emerge from this place has meant interrogating every aspect of how I expend energy, in an effort to find space for enough rest to recover, as well as a sustainable way forward, so that I don’t end up back here. 

And, what do you know? It turns out that not living one’s truth is an enormous energy sink. 

Uncovering my queer identity has been a series of closer approximations to what’s really going on, masquerading as multiple "comings-out" - first as lesbian (which felt uneasy, but was the most obvious descriptor at the time for what my life looked like from the outside); later (and more accurately) as pan/bi; and most recently as gender-nonbinary. 

I have never, not for one moment, experienced myself as "girl" or (particularly) "woman". Neither do I experience myself as "man". I recognise that my experience doesn’t tally with the lived experience of the majority of people, who have a profound and REAL sense of being gendered, a sense which can’t be explained away as a mere result of acculturation (powerful as those forces may be). Still: I lack the capacity to experience myself as gendered. I always have been, and always will be, nonbinary. 

Until I was in my late thirties, there was no language which described my experience (or void in place of experience?) of gender. Thinking I was literally too weird to be real, I performed femininity furiously for most of my life. This performance also aided my more general project to mask autistic traits (see above!) in an effort to “be a normal human”.

I hesitated for a number of years before making a firm decision to embark on vocal change, because I had a “bird in the hand” problem - my voice is my primary instrument, and therefore, to some extent, my living has depended on it. But ultimately I have had to acknowledge that the hyperfeminine “La Diva” trope, inextricably intertwined as it is with being a professional, classically trained soprano, sits so badly with me that I actually can’t do it any more. The burden of gender assumptions and expectations has become too heavy for me to continue to bear, at least if I want to be well.

What does all this have to do with the Swansong campaign?

The various setbacks, discoveries and recoveries of the last years have given me the opportunity to interrogate my own limitations, identity and needs, and start to make necessary changes, including, crucially, to my way of working.  My chief project now is to figure out how I can stay in music sustainably, because I believe I still have a contribution to make; but putting my wellbeing on the line to continue as I am has to be off the table. A huge piece of that puzzle is finding a way to present more authentically: owning my queerness in full is one of the energy sinks that I can do something about.

Nonbinary medical transition is, for me, the logical and necessary next step.

When I started thinking about the kind of transition I need, two things immediately occurred to me:

1. It would be a lot of fun to have a big sendoff gig with a lot of my own material (which I won’t be able to perform in its current versions once I begin transition), a bunch of my favourite beloved colleagues, and a venue full of friends and supporters to help me celebrate and close this chapter; and
2. I would need to find money for the surgical part of my medical transition.

I am a sucker for projects with multiple outputs, and so here we are!

What we’ll be doing and who’s involved

On Sunday March 16 at 2pm, we’ll be holding a big sendoff gig at 9b Studios in beautiful New Norfolk - enormous thanks to Nathan Males and the team for venue support. The repertoire will be:

• The Birdsong cycle in a never-before-heard (and never-again-to-be-heard!) iteration incorporating violone (yes, I will be singing and playing a gigantic, obscure early music instrument at the same time - worth the price of admission for that alone, it’s seriously ridic), with my delightful and seriously virtuosic Sequenza Colleagues Matt Goddard (percussion), David Malone (classical guitar) and Brett Rutherford (viola da gamba);

• The un/breaking trilogy, three pieces for classical guitar and soprano, with the lovely David Malone reappearing on guitar;

• The world premiere of Disappearing, a piece commissioned by the Australian Music Centre and written by Maria Grenfell specifically for Sequenza;

• Some excellent hits and memories from the soprano repertoire with the inestimable Amanda Hodder on piano;

• And what soprano sendoff would be complete without a rendition of Dido’s Lament? For this piece, I’ll be joined by Sequenza, plus a cameo appearance from Van Diemen’s Band string players Natalya Bing, Rachel Meyers and Katie Yap.

Reward options:

If you’re able to get along to the gig in person, grab a ticket! There’s even a super sparkly special ticket option which will score you seats in the front rows, the better to see our shenanigans up close.

If you can’t get to the live event because of timing, distance, or other factors, the gig will also be livestreamed from my IPad, equipped with a decent mic.  The livestream will be available as a reward, both on the day and after the fact.

My dear friend and amazing videographer, sound recordist, and post production guru of epic proportions, Michael Gissing of Digital City Studios, will be making a high fidelity recording of the concert, which will also be available as a reward, either in downloadable or CD form.

If you’re keen to see the work in progress, there’s also an open rehearsal reward. Come and gain valuable insight into just how silly, I mean just how serious, professional musos can be behind the scenes 😅

Last but certainly not least: if you want to go really nuts, a contribution of $1000 or more will earn you naming rights to one of my new, streamlined EnBoobs™! (* not a real trade mark.  Capitalism can get in the bin.) First in gets to choose left or right, so get in quick.

If you would like to contribute to the project, but don’t want or can’t use any of these deliciously enticing rewards… (I mean, please grab a reward, go on, they’re amazing! But) you can also contribute to my ACF donation-only campaign, which is running in parallel with this one.  The nice thing about this option is that the contribution is tax deductible 🙂 The ACF campaign can be found here.

Or, of course, there’s the option to grab a reward on Pozible and make a donation via ACF. #PorqueNoLosDos, after all.

Here’s how things will break down: