I will be thankful. I will remember.

Since coming off anti-depressants I’ve basically found myself back where I was twenty years ago without any medicinal or recreational ways of moderating the thoughts and emotions that run or rather, rampage through my brain like unfettered children who have been informed that they can break everything in the bungalow. This has given rise to many thoughts and awarenesses (if I may coin a new term) some expected and some quite unexpected.

One such unexpected thought pattern I have recognised is that I have found myself considering vegetarianism. I last thought of this when I was around fifteen years old. I can’t tell you why I even thought of it, but I can tell you my consideration of it didn’t last very long. I really like the taste of meat, and I do recognise a drop in energy levels when I forgo red meat for longer than a week. Now however, I find myself considering it quite seriously. I have no doubt that this has at least in part been inspired by the (limited) reading I’ve done in recent years of work by the likes of Peter Singer and Tom Regan. I find it difficult to fault their logic for the most part, thus I like the way these guys think and present their points. So in a Singer-esque, utilitarian way I find myself asking ‘Why does a suicidal nobody like me have any right to consume a meat product at the cost of the life of a creature which has the capacity to suffer?’ 

But all life is meaningless is it not? Well yes it is (more on that in another blog sometime!). However, I’m not convinced that the meaninglessness of existence precludes the minimisation of suffering during the course of said meaningless existence.

Of course it's not just about what I put in my mouth. A utilitarian minimisation of suffering must needs the consideration of sentient wellbeing in all forms of consumption. So where does this lead me on the use of other animal products such as leather for shoes or upholstery? Good question. For some reason my mind instantly leans toward the longer term appreciation of these products giving rise to a greater legitimacy when weighed against the value of suffering. Of course this doesn't even resemble a sound argument, this is just my gut reaction. (We might say that I'm adopting a dialectic approach, rather than hard logic on this topic). Generally I consume meat in at least one meal each day. This is far more than necessary, and more to the point: it is thoughtless. It’s quite probable that within a week I will cease recalling that experience of said meat product, thus the creature and its life, the memory of its life, and the appreciation of the life it gave for my meal are all forgotten. Comparatively, with a favourite pair of leather boots, I can pause occasionally and think of the animal that they came from, I can be thankful for that and remember.

Perhaps what I am saying is that I feel an obligation to minimise suffering especially when I balance the suffering of animals for the production of goods and food, against my own suicidal state, and that by choosing not to eat meat, I am doing something to reduce the suffering of animals, and I’m also reducing the overwhelming sense of ‘undeserving’ that I battle with daily (e.g. ‘I don’t deserve the food this animal died for' or 'I am a waste of this animal’s life’).

Eventually, I must consider the old practicality argument. To be honest, in my current state, it’s a marvel that I’m thinking of the wellbeing of others at all. Perhaps adopting a vegetarian diet is a little beyond me right now, but minimising my intake of meat is possible. Insofar as something is better than nothing, I am consciously reducing my use of products which cause suffering in sentient beings. In the meantime, whilst using products which animals gave their lives for, I will be thankful and I will remember.

When is a passion not a passion?

It has become clear to me that the only way I can have things done to my car(s) properly is if I do everything myself. I’ve always liked cars, and I’ve always liked to understand how the things I find instrumental in my life work. However, I never dreamed that I would do the kind of automotive work I have done. That has come to pass simply because no one does anything properly. I would take my car to the Peugeot ‘specialists’ whom other members of my family had been faithfully taking their cars to for years, and upon its return to me I would find silly little things that had been forgotten, or wheel nuts done up so tight that without a rattle gun, a simple flat tyre becomes a tow truck affair. These small things led me to procuring a Haynes workshop manual for my car, and gradually learning to iron out the kinks left by ‘the professionals’. The more I learned about my car, the more I could see what wasn’t being done properly, and the more that I could see wasn’t being done properly, the less inclined I was to take my car back to ‘the professionals’. I gradually learnt more and more, and my car saw ‘the professionals’ less and less. Eventually I got to a point where I simply couldn’t bear the idea of paying someone to do work on my car when the standard of their work was lower than what I could do myself.

I have found it easy over the years to lose perspective and get caught up in the possibilities of what I might be able to do with cars. A pretty restoration here, an engine conversion there and some spirited driving at club events being the intended target of such projects. And particularly over the past five or so years whilst I have been on anti-depressants, I have found the work I have done on cars to be somewhat therapeutic as if staying focussed on the task at hand has kept my mind off suicide. That is where my propensity to lose perspective with cars is very helpful. Isn’t that what we call a passion? Something that we like so much that when everything else is wrong, we can still get lost in it? Well, kinda...

You see if I didn’t have music, I may well consider cars my passion. But why wouldn’t I consider cars my passion or at least a parallel passion? Because the buzz I get from them isn’t even close to what I get from music. But then, why would I consider music my passion when in the depths of the past five years on anti-depressants I couldn’t stand the idea of playing music? The truth is that passion is not always positive. Passion is a measurement of emotion not an emotion in and of itself. The mundanity of working on cars allowed me to continue this hobby whilst on the medication. However, the medication severely inhibited my ability to connect with music. I could put on music that had in the past invariably effected me deeply, and feel absolutely nothing. Practicing guitar became a mechanical act. I no longer felt one with the instrument and even if I tried to focus on the vibrations of sound and the feel of the guitar resonating against my body, it would not penetrate my skin. I could not emotionally connect with it. Perhaps a kind of analogy could be to imagine you burn your hand on a hotplate. You are aware of the physical pain, but you don’t yelp and flinch, drawing your hand away, you simply don’t care. Not in a despondent way, nor in a tough guy/hardcore way, you are simply unable to care. This inability to connect with that one thing that I had bent all my efforts to, that one thing that had always been of much greater importance to me than everything else - even love and sex, this gave rise to a passion much greater than any car could generate. ...But it was a negative passion. It was a frustrated, hopeless despair. It was an acute sense of being forsaken by the one and only thing that gave me focus, desire, drive, and any reason to live. I know that the problem was in me, but it felt like music had forsaken me. So the medication abated my darkest moments, but it also took away my only reason to live.

Imagine you are madly in love. The love is requited and the relationship is wonderful. Then you take a pill which renders you unable to move at all, but you’re all there mentally. So you are seated in a chair in the corner of your bedroom, unable to move. Over time your partner whom you still madly adore, begins to bring other people home, making love with these people right in front of you. You are still unable to move, but in your head your fists are bloody and bruised from beating against the glass barrier as you scream “Why won’t you love me anymore?! If you love me as you did, I will regain my mobility. Without you I have no purpose.” 

Translation: The partner is music, the pill is anti-depressants, and the people your partner brings home is any song, concert, conversation, news item, activity, et cetera, to do with music. You see, that person locked inside his/her head, bruised, bloody and screaming is me. That is the level of the passion I have for music. That is why I couldn’t bear to play or even listen to music whilst on anti-depressants. The very idea made me sick to my stomach.

My inability to connect with music made anything to do with music brutally painful. So you see although I was able to continue playing with cars, I still felt much less for them than I did my estranged love that is music. As such, the cars gradually absorbed the time I would have otherwise spent on music. Music gave way to more demanding, more involved, more ambitious car ideas and projects.

Now I’m off anti-depressants, I’m slowly rediscovering my relationship with music. I’m pushing through that failing glass barrier and regaining mobility. As I do so, I’m finding the car related projects I am in the midst of are (whilst quite interesting) an encumbrance. They are a barrier between me and the things I feel I am on this earth for. I’m having to recognise that just because something is interesting and I am capable of doing it, this doesn’t mean that I need to do it. If youth were eternal, then I could explore all such avenues, but given our temporal limitations, we must choose our battles. I am choosing music once more. I will continue to enjoy cars. I will continue to maintain my daily driver myself and I will continue to read technical articles about suspensions and engine design. But I must do so on my terms and in a way that doesn’t adversely affect my primary purpose. I have woken to find myself a slave to these projects. I am getting rid of all cars and parts not pertinent to the ongoing concern that is my daily driver. When you do all the work yourself and you have a life outside your interest in cars, there is enough technical interest in maintaining (and modifying) one car.

One Tracked Mind

In my last post, I mentioned going for a ride still fully attired as a woman. As I mentioned, my usual ride promised to make this an uncomfortable experience given some of the areas I usually ride through. Therefore I decided not to take my standard route and explored another bike path I’ve been meaning to try: The Merri-Creek Trail. As if the day couldn’t get any better, it turns out that this bike track is fantastic! There is more undulation, there are many fast bends and even a well shaped jump (courtesy of a tree root under the path) around the twelve or thirteen km mark. Without the gaze of motorists, the noise of vehicles, or the pauses from waiting at traffic lights, I was free to ride continuously alongside a running river to my heart’s content. I really didn’t want to stop, but my sensible brain cautioned me to leave enough energy for the ride home. I think I was also feeling extra energized by the positive experiences of my first day in public dressed as a woman, so whilst I still felt like I had plenty of energy, I had to stay mindful of how my muscles might feel the next day. Better to have a slightly shorter ride today and still be able to go for another ride tomorrow. So I turned around and headed for home. All up I covered just over 25km. Not an huge ride, but not a small one either. Eventually I’d like to be able to do much larger rides, but given that twelve months ago I was still a smoking alcoholic who was twenty kilograms heavier than I am now, I think I’m doing okay :)

So if you’re around Melbourne’s northside and you’re looking for a great ride, I strongly recommend the Merri-Creek Trail. I only passed a couple of cyclists and a few pedestrians, so it doesn’t seem too busy. There’s a few parks and riverside spots to stop if you wish, and even the odd information board telling some morsel of local history. (I like history, so I tend to read these things!). WARNING: There are a number of blind bends which one must take with caution and less speed than is my wont, as if one was to meet oncoming traffic, a substantially painful and bloody mess may result! On a lighter note, I should also warn you all that riding alongside a river or creek at dusk is a great introduction to a high protein diet. The air is quite thick with bugs at that hour. I recommend at least some eye protection ;)

Sometimes it’s too easy to stick with what you know and miss out on a whole world of cool stuff. Sometimes we just need a push. A minor comment from someone gave me the push I needed to brave the world as a woman. Being attired thus in turn, pushed me to try a different bicycle track. Therefore if I didn’t spend the day as a woman, I wouldn’t have gone on that track, and I wouldn’t be now using it as my everyday ride track, and it is even conceivable that this will long term have a positive effect on my fitness.

A Grand Day “Out”

Last Wednesday I spent the whole day dressed as a woman. My garments of choice for the hot Melbourne day were a black shoestring strap singlet, a low sitting short black and white tartan skirt, and a pair of lace-up knee high black boots. Going for a natural daytime look, I used a little black eyeliner across the top eyelid and from the outside corner to just short of the middle of the lower lid. I also used a little light brown eyebrow pencil just to define my brows. It really is amazing how some brow pencil - even without any other make-up - can really lift the whole face.

Anyway, I was meeting a friend for coffee. It was in a reasonably fashionable/open-minded area, and it was mid-morning, so I figured I might be able to get a park pretty close to our agreed meeting place. Therefore I figured that it might be a relatively safe way for me to “dip my toes” into the pool of being female in public. As an afterthought I realised it was Halloween, so I had that excuse up my figurative sleeve if any strangers took issue with my attire.

From my house to the agreed location is only a five minute drive. If I wasn’t wearing a skirt, I would have ridden my bicycle. I was astonished at how many men stared at me in that short trip. The “male gaze”. As someone who loves cars and is attracted to women, I’m well aware of the attractiveness of a girl behind the wheel of a classic car. However, to the heterosexual males out there: there’s a difference between a look, smile and/or nod of appreciation, and just solidly staring with a completely blank face, or lecherously leaning out of your car window. You should be WATCHING THE ROAD!!! It’s very intimidating. Perhaps moreso for me than for a woman because of the male propensity to switch from admiration of a woman to extreme hostility when they realise that I am not entirely female. Nevertheless, for me it’s pretty cool to “pass” so easily.

So the friend I was meeting up with is someone I’ve known for a long time, but only recently discovered we have more than pleasantries to share. As such, she has seen me perform in bands over the years and has therefore witnessed my sometimes flamboyant dress code, but was unaware that I may have any actual gender stuff going on. A big thanks to her for not saying anything at first, and just treating it as the catch-up it was. Another big thanks to her for later commenting on how good she thought I looked, which then lead into a brief discussion of transgenderism. That comment gave me a great boost and gave me the strength and the comfort to continue wearing this outfit when I later went to Uni that same day.

The walk from my car to my first destination on campus was the big hurdle in my mind. After that it would be short trips from building to building. Hardly enough time for anyone to notice anything unusual. I also visited my friend who works in the campus bookshop. A number of the people who work there exclaimed that I “pull that look off way too well.” I think they thought it was an Halloween thing, not realising that there is more to it.

After that it was home again. Just near my place there’s an hairdresser I’ve been saving up to visit. There was a park out the front so I stopped. I was feeling stronger, more comfortable, more motivated from these modest yet monumental successes of the day. I did some quick calculations to see if I could afford to strike while the iron is hot and with a guesstimate answer of “probably”, I strode inside. Apparently I’m not their first transgender client, and we had a great chat. It was especially cool that when I was asked how I have been doing my hair previously, I said that I’ve had a DeathHawk for at least ten years - “you see, I’m into old school Goth” that’s when The Damned’s ‘Grimly Fiendish’ started playing over the salon speakers. Couldn’t have timed it better! After discussing styles and ideas, I booked an appointment.

Then, back home where I didn’t care to change out of my outfit at all. I was feeling comfortable and somehow kinda ‘right’. I wanted to go for a ride, but I couldn’t ride in a skirt. So I changed into a pair of stretchy women’s exercise shorts. Then I got nervous about wearing the very feminine singlet I’d been wearing all day. You see, the standard ride I go on goes through some less than open minded areas, and the bike track follows the road. I eventually decided that I had to spend the whole day as a woman or I would be dissatisfied later when I would inevitably say to myself I spent *most* of the day as a woman. 

After a lovely 25km ride, it was back home for dinner and some T.V. whilst I mounted my car stereo speakers in the new kick panels I have fabricated. (just gotta get around to putting them in the car now!). My evening finished by curling up in bed with a copy of Fred Puhn’s “How to make your car handle” until I fell asleep.

All in all, I would have to say it was a day which offered stiff competition to Wallace and Gromit’s own “Grand Day Out.”

Revelations

I don’t owe anybody anything. The work I have done on the car has made me realise that the majority of my life is still ahead of me. I have been too focussed on what has passed and what I have missed. Since I was in my late teens or early twenties, all I have been able to see are the obstacles. Since that time, I have felt like my life is over and now I am just waiting to die. As I wrote in a song when I was about 22:

“I had hoped for higher spite but other others hit, I have missed”.

That’s me saying I’ve lost direction which has lead to a lack of inspiration and passion, it’s too late to remedy, thus my life is effectively over.

And yet as I write this, I am filled with a mounting fear. I am so defined by my bitterness, and my music is so heavily infused with spite that I fear to let go and look forward positively. I hate therefore I am. My bitterness keeps me vigilant against insipid fashion, my anger fuels my war on complacency.

I have realised that the greatest source of anxiety, the largest obstacle in my mind in regards to writing and more particularly performing my music live - without which I have had less drive to write - is the prospect of logistically organising a band again. In truth, I felt like everything that went right previously was in spite of the other members. I felt like their behaviour lay somewhere between passive inaction and willful resistance.

As such I have resolved to investigate the possibility of performing live on my own. It probably means more work on the face of it, but once dealing with the herding of cats is introduced to the equation, I think that learning some software, and preparing live shows like a stage producer actually comes out looking a LOT less stressful.

Getting back to the car thing. I have three cars, though only one is currently registered. The first “Binky” is a 1964 Peugeot 404 which I paid $1000 for, the second is a 1970 Peugeot 504 which I paid $350 for, the third is a 1985/6 Peugeot 505 which I paid $700 for. I also have a factory original 1986 Peugeot 505 petrol turbo engine and gearbox waiting to go into the 505. This *rare* little set-up cost me a whopping $1700. So all up we’re looking at just under four grand. There are many interesting cars I could have, of considerably greater value than those I do have, if I hadn’t specifically chosen basic forms of employment which would allow me the time and flexibility to pursue my musical ambitions, and if I hadn’t spent every single spare cent on musical equipment, tuition, rehearsal facilities, recording studios, and everything else that goes along with it.

After considering these facts for some time, I have come to the conclusion that the prospect of making a living out of music whilst still achievable, is perhaps best seen as a potential bonus, rather than a necessary goal. After all, I don’t have kids to feed (that ain’t gonna change on my watch), and I do have a roof over my head and food in my belly. Sure more money would make life more comfortable. Perhaps with more money I wouldn’t second guess myself every time I went to turn the heater on “am I really cold enough to justify the cost?”. But at the end of the day, I’m fed and dry. Therefore, it seems a bit stupid to try to claw back any losses by selling a cd at gigs for ten bucks, or even (once I get my head around itunes) selling my songs for 99 cents a pop online. Without becoming hugely successful, any such sales are really only going to be a token compensation for the ways in which I have chosen to spend my life and money, energy and soul hitherto. What did I want out of music anyway? Oh, that’s right, I hoped to earn enough money to keep a roof over my head and food in my belly, whilst writing and producing music that spoke to others  the way The Sisters of Mercy spoke to me. Therefore, in order to maximise the potential for exposure and reaching the most possible listeners, I would be better off to take the costs on the chin and provide everything online for free.