It's our final day taking over Scottish Fiction. A big thank you to Neil for putting up with us and for asking us in the first place. For our last post, before the blog can finally resume normal service, Nye has written about starting testosterone treatment. We're super excited for Nye and super excited for the future. We hope you're super excited too!
Lots of love,
The Spook School
xxx
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| One Big Spooky Family |
Hello,
I'm not going to lie and say that it's always been my dream
to be in a band. That wouldn't be true. Being in a band was never even
plausible enough to be a dream when I was a teenager. That was for sexy magical
demi-gods like Marc Bolan and David Bowie. Not for anyone like me. But hey,
here I am. And over the years this has become my dream. Being in The Spook
School is genuinely the best part of my life. The thing that I'm most proud of.
The place where I feel that I can put all of my energy and emotions into the
care of these three other brilliant people and we can create songs that maybe
might just mean something.
It's not always been my dream to be transgender either. Got
to admit, when I figured out that it explained all the feelings that had been
milling around for years and years (sometimes surfacing through songs), I
wasn't too happy about it. And when The Spook School started up, and I
initially seemed to be 'the singer', I was terrified that this fantastic new
thing in my life was dependent on me keeping as I was. Keeping me tied to a
voice, an identity that I couldn't connect with. But that's the wrong way to
look at it. If I wasn't transgender, I would never have written 80% of the
songs I have (even my strange obsession with Buster Keaton has a lot to do with
being trans, but that's a story for another day). And they're my contribution to
the band. They are what I bring to the whole affair. And they're what I'm proud
of.
If I wasn't trans, if I was able to recognise myself as the
binary gender that was assigned to me at birth, I'd never have heard a crowd of
lovely, brilliant people yelling 'I am bigger than a hexadecimal' back at me at
the top of their lungs. If I wasn't trans, I might have been in a band, it
might even have been called The Spook School, but it wouldn't have been the
same. I wouldn't be the same. I have no idea if I'd even like the person that I
would have been had I been born a cis male (FYI: cis = not trans).
So yeah, I suppose this is a long winded way of saying that
I started testosterone a week ago. It’s my long-winded way of saying that I’m a
bit worried about losing my voice, but more excited about being recognised as
myself. This is a long winded way of saying that I love this band, and I think
that I'll only continue to be more proud of what we manage to accomplish.
I’m super excited about what the next months, and years,
have in store for me, and optimistic in a way I’ve never really been before. I
have dreams of listening to our next album and going “Hey, that’s me!” rather
than “Who’s that girl singing all my lyrics?” - and that will be the happiest
day. Also, dreams about the day when I can cover all the Lou Reed songs.
Because obviously that’s the most important thing.
Lots of love (especially to the queer kids)
Nye x
PS - Because I’m a nerd and want to see how my singing voice
changes, I’ve been singing a song a day since I started T. If you’d like to see
them, go here: https://www.youtube.com/user/heynyestunes, or
heynyestunes.tumblr.com
<3 Nye <3
ReplyDeleteHey Nye,
ReplyDeleteGood luck with your transition, I'm sure you'll find many of the people around you are very supportive :)
You should check out a Canadian Artist called Meryn Cadell. He also transitioned from female to male and continued to sing a during the initial stages of his testosterone.
There was one he posted to his Livejournal ages ago that I hope is still floating about. It was a short piece he did just as his voice was starting to change. It was rather interesting, a similar to your project too :)
Sam