Grey Zones Accentuated
~ written in August 2021 ~
Grey Zones Accentuated
When making a black and white photograph, the complexity in the grey zones are celebrated for contributing to the richness of texture and tonality in the image. But, how do you show the richness of texture and tone for something that is nebulous, unbounded and amorphous? Something that you cannot see or hold. Something that someone else can only ever experience your performance-expression of. Even then, so much exists in between. There are always parts lost in translation.
It is ill-defined to say, I exist between two worlds. Yet, for my childhood and teens there was only ever the concept of two, or the proximity to either or.
The words leave her mouth, “but why they?”
I’m on a zoom meet-up in my current bedroom-office during Naarm’s lockdown. On my screen I read a brief script. My skin prickles to the richness of image, the articulation of camera shots, the descriptions of sound, light and movement. My body tenses with empathy at the anxiety and unease. In the space of reading the one and half page script, a person left a house at night and journeyed down a laneway around a corner.
So brief was the encounter in that world. Yet the script struck a chord as an example of storytelling that I thoroughly enjoy engaging with — cathartic and cerebral. Through cinematic techniques the script became a translation. A sharing with audiences a character’s shapeshifting internal world.
After discussing the intentions behind the script, the author, an emerging filmmaker, and I (the only trans artists on the zoom) got into a passionate conversation about how transness is both multi and non linear. We shared mutual feelings of having a sense of desire and also a responsibility as trans artists to move conversations of transness away from representational politics. Towards cultivating narratives that inhabit and convey the complex psychological worlds of transness. Away from the overused narrative tropes of ‘before and after’ transitioning or an emphasis of reducing our worlds to the external gaze. I prefix to him,
“I’m tired of seeing stories and art, if you’ll allow my flippancy for a moment, that only say, look here, this body is trans/masc/femme/non-binary etc.”
I continued expanding on my perspective, sharing the influence that transness has on my approach to glitching words and language in my poetry. Noting how transness inspires the articulation of my architecture of thought. I recalled to him a line from an old poem titled ‘scribe’, non-binary, a thinking mechanism.
The conversation left me feeling a little less isolated in the challenging pursuit of translating the spaces in between the false dichotomy of girlhood and boyhood. Or even the duality of feminine and masculine.
Growing up in this colony, the dominant form of thinking taught is based in dualism. Our education and thus thinking is deep fried into viewing life as being instances of opposites. Despite the fact that many Indigenous epistemologies and modern western science have long refuted colonial and dualist thinking — which reduce gender to a binary.
After the conversation I feel my buds blooming. From the discussion I recognise that I’m amongst a generation working to convey that within inhabiting transness, our sense of selfhood shifts in this multi-linear space; as vast as oceans meeting. And consistently refracting away from the mass produced worlds of boyhood and girlhood. Towards a place that embraces the inherent multiplicity embodied in a non-dualistic way of being. An accumulation of yes - and/also.
Yet, there are times when I still catch myself, when my internal narrator still operates in the world of oppositional yes/but, either/or, yes/no. Denying the fluid multidirectional world that I have come to find a home in.
And still she asks, “but why they?”
It is a hazy late-summer night of my early twenties. One of my oldest friends and I have walked into the party at a sharehouse in Thornbury. A co-host, the bassist in one of Naarm’s queer punk bands welcomes us into the small gathering, congratulating me on my looks — handsome is the word she uses. I try to cloak the word on, feeling it as a more masculine compliment, uncomfortable, yet soothing. Affirming. I had only recently started using they/them pronouns. I had made an effort in my performance-expression, hoping it would translate. My hair freshly dyed and accidently almost black, is oiled, slicked back, and my eyes are bold — you could call them Bowie style.
Afterwards I sat with the word, handsome. Why had it been jarring? Like when you're leaving the house and the door handle catches your jacket, jolting you to remember that thing you're meant to take with you. What had I forgotten?
Yes, handsome fitted, that wasn’t the issue. I had forgotten to grieve. To grieve and accept the years of my life I had spent not feeling comfortable with how I or others read my textures and tonality. In trying to accept the compliment of handsome, I had grimaced in shame at the memories of my youthful internalised misogynistic desire of wanting to be validated as “one of the hot chicks”. Despite actually being deeply uncomfortable in ever crossing the line into ‘girly’.
During the party I was a little self-conscious at the compliments focused on my exterior. It had been over a decade since I wore my hair firmly pulled back and as for the colour, well it was meant to be the copper red of henna. The burnt-chestnut result taught me that bleach and henna don’t mix. A few years earlier I had shaved my head and now, I had ticked off another of the iconic baby queer expressions; arh, the failed home dye.
On that hazy summer night, I was reproducing what I thought a ‘they’ was. I thought it was a place between two worlds. That handsome look was thick with the residue of my naivety in thinking there was only the option to inhabit the world of girls or boys or the framing of ‘in proximity to’. I thought ‘they’ was a haven away from ill-conceived terms like tomboy. Afterall, in French tomboy translates to ‘failed boy’. I had not found the words: they, a way of being that inhabits the constant tilts of my multiplicity.
But she insists, “They is for plural.”
Across the weathered round white table they sit. Two mugs of wine, a candle and ash tray populate the surface between us. The dappled pink fluence light from the kitchen washes into the evening air, we sit at the back of the house. The table is framed on one side by grey weatherboards and on the other, overgrown ivy engulfs the poles of the back porch. Above, the clear polycarbonate sheets encase the setting intimately. Beyond the clear plastic roofing the starry night and expanding branches of the lemon tree give galactic weight to the evenings conversation. Tightly bound vulnerabilities loosened by wine I tell them, “Sometimes I get off by imagining I have a penis.”
Hard to forget those first times. The first time a phrase darts between lips — actually vocalised. Not one of the countless times it is met with silence at the gate of the mouth. These days sharing this texture and tonality from within my world has softened in its weightiness.
I begin laughing at the humorous perspective that comes to mind. I open my message app and type,
“just thought of something really funny, lmk if u wanna hear / remind me to tell you later”
A message notification buzzes,
“yesss any time, or when I see ya hahaha.”
Still laughing at the humour, I hit dial.
After brief exchanges of polite hellos, I say,
“I really hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but you know, anytime those old fears and conditioning thoughts that try to emasculate you about the size of your penis, just remember, if you’re looking at mine it’s really tiny, but we all know I have big dick energy.”
From the other end of the line, a quiet knowing laughter responds.
~
When googling ‘how many types of energies are there’ the answer differs vastly depending on the framing. Threads in the search included phrases such as “energy comes in six basic forms”, “the nine forms of energy”, or the “ten types of energy”. Without specificity of type, the word energy becomes nebulous, unbounded and amorphous. Perhaps because energy can refer to multiple forces and effects it is often used to describe the textures and tonalities of gender expression.
In describing something you cannot see; it is the plurality in the rich and vast array of different energies that I draw upon and share to accentuate the grey zones of my image. These energies are the textures and tonalities of my transness; expressed by seeking a non-dualistic way of being, carrying myself more masculinely, renaming and reclaiming body anatomy. These are the performance-expressions from within my internal world that I am gifting myself and others with. The only misunderstanding was to think I existed between two worlds.
Yes, they can be for plurals. But those pluralities are mine.