I had the honour and privilege of composing an original score for this beautiful animated short doc by Anne Koizumi. The story is one that is personally tied to Anne, but the film’s themes of shame, guilt, regret, loss, and love are universally relatable and is deeply moving. To me, it reminded me of how racism and classism felt as a kid, but we don’t yet have the tools or vocabulary to understand these until later on when we’re adults. You can stream the full film on CBC Gem and YouTube.

poster by Marigold Santos and Julien Charbonneau

Transgender Day of Visibility in the era of COVID-19: Four artists in conversation with Rae Spoon

For this year’s Trans Day of Visibility I got to join fellow non-binary pals G. R. Gritt, Kimmortal, and Evelyn Charlotte Joe for this little interview with our friend and icon Rae Spoon. Here is an excerpt:

In 2019 Miriam Webster chose the non-binary pronoun “they” as the word of the year. Some people started calling 2019 the year of “they.” What was your reaction to that? 

respectfulchild 敬兒: To be honest, I didn’t really pay attention to it…I think it felt like getting validating approval from the mainstream and I don’t really care for that kind of momentary recognition. What about next year? Will we be forgotten once “they” is no longer trending? The comfort, safety, and space I have to explore and express my identity is due to the work of all the gender revolutionaries that came before me. Recognition and visibility are nice, but seeing allies celebrate these sort of milestones feels kind of shallow when what we need as a community is more education, empathy, safety, and supports. If we don’t have those things in place, then visibility can just make us a target for more danger.

You can read the full interview here

photo by Lindsey Rewuski

I was completely surprised to be presented with this award and bursary from The Derek Bachman Foundation. This was my acceptance speech on social media the next day:

“So at the Saskatchewan Music Awards presented by @saskmusic this past Thursday, I got completely surprised by receiving the Breaking Borders award and bursary from the @derekbachmanfdn. It meant the world to have it presented to me by my friend and role model @megannashmusic, who I’ve looked up to as both a touring artist and amazingly funny human being for many years. I never got to meet Derek, but I know that the work he did and belief he had for SK artists created the foundation for the opportunities artists like me have to travel and share our music abroad. Hopefully without dishonouring his memory, I’d like to expand on what it means to me to be Breaking Borders.

All borders are fake, including this rectangle we call Saskatchewan. All borders are created by the powerful and are used to control, exclude, separate, and break up communities. We also have borders around ideas, ideology, societal structures. We have borders around gender, bodies, class, and race. Borders limit our thoughts and imaginations. Borders are barriers. They’re maintained by convincing us to believe they are real and accepting them as natural. By buying into the idea of borders we enable, justify, and perpetuate the divisive violence enacted on marginalized communities and cut off our abilities to dream of how things can be different.

I need to clarify that I am Not describing some naive Colour-Blind-We-Are-One-World. We can live in all our complexities without homogenizing ourselves. Freedom of movement already exists, it’s just only available to the rich and powerful.

I’m not one for awards, but I’m definitely receiving this one in the spirit of DESTROYING ALL BORDERS. Whether they’re fake lines on a map or fake lines in our minds, we do not have to accept things as they are.”

“Sometimes I feel like my attention can be all over the place, but when I’m playing that’s the moment when I’m just focused on this very one thing, and that’s all I’m thinking about. And I am not living in the past or the present, but right in the singular moment that’s moving through each sound, and stuff like that.” My interview is at 4:04, you can watch the full documentary below:

Interview by Julie Oh

Photos by Lindsey Rewuski

Read the full issue here