The Art of Not Knowing

 

It rained on the way to the museum, the kind of autumn rain that loosens the leaves from everything they thought they belonged to.

Inside, the walls held questions disguised as art.

A father wore authority like a paper costume. Bodies bent themselves into the shape of belonging. Faces blurred, refusing the small violence of being made recognizable.

I wandered between what I could name and what would not let me.
And wondered how many things we have mistaken for truth simply because we've seen them that way for so long.

Perhaps the queerest thing was not the art at all,
but the space between looking and knowing.

That brief, unruly moment before the mind reaches for a category, a conclusion, a place to put things.

Outside, the rain had changed nothing and everything.
The trees stood half-undressed. The leaves lay scattered, no longer obliged to resemble themselves.

And I walked home thinking how beautiful it might be
to let the world remain unresolved.

 Transformation

Swimming Through Prejudice

 The relationship between queerness and sport has always been important to me. I used to be a swimmer, arguably the sport where trans inclusion is debated most fiercely. I wasn’t out as trans in sports until my freshman year in high school, but everyone knew I wasn’t the ‘normal’ athlete. I was often ostracized by my peers; they were uncomfortable changing around me because they believed I was a lesbian who were going to prey on them. This got even worse when I came out as transgender. Honestly, I understood part of their discomfort, if I were a woman, I wouldn’t want to change next to someone who identified as a man, cis or trans. Since I’m from Wyoming obviously, I wasn’t allowed to be in the male’s changing room (not that I really wanted that anyway due to the harassment I already received from them) and I wasn’t allowed to be in male events. That last season I swam was probably one of the darkest periods of my life. I had lost a community because of my identity. No one would talk to me I was excluded from the group. Bus rides to and from events were a nightmare I would watch all these people I grew up playing games and sharing dinner while I would sit in the back by myself. We don’t hear a lot of stories of trans man athletes and kind of forget we’re part of the conversation as well. I believe that if I wasn’t so alienated I would have continued participating in a sport I loved.

↑ above is a collage of new articles about trans rights and statistics with a picture of me from high school before my event. The time I had the most struggle with identity and community. 

Colored Museum Design Work

Colored Museum Design Work

 This is some design work I’ve done for another class. The play colored museum is about a metaphorical museum, each exhibit tackles different aspects of black identity and culture. This play aims to make audiences uncomfortable by confronting Black issues and ideas, treating them as relics that the cultures must both embrace and outgrow. Gospel According to Miss Roj features a drag queen who talks the audience through themes of survival, pain, and empowerment as a queer person. Attached is my design work for what her costume, makeup, and set would look like along with some inspiration photos.

↓ Below is the scene this design is based on ↓

If you can find the rest of the script I really recommend reading it!

What the Floor Remembers

The ball floor knows bodies by weight.

Some arrive already belonging.
Others learn the choreography of survival.

Under the lights: beauty, gender, joy, grief.
A boy in a blue shirt, thirteen or fourteen, already learning which bodies are safe.

Decades later, queer kids are still learning versions of the same lesson.

Some can move closer to normal.
Some can assimilate.
Race cannot be taken off at the door.

The floor holds all of it at once:
race, gender, class, sexuality, belonging.

And it remembers this most:

some people leave the room and disappear into the world.

Others have to keep dancing to be seen as fully human.

For the Ones Who Were Never the Problem

What would you say if I stopped being normal?

If I stopped making myself understandable.
If I stopped shrinking the strange parts, the soft parts, the changing parts.
If I let my body age without apology.
If I let love be complicated.
If I let my child become who they are without asking them to make it easier for the world.
If I stopped calling exhaustion responsibility and silence kindness.

Would you think I had lost something?

Or would you notice how much of me had been spent trying to be recognizable?

Maybe normal was never who I was.
Maybe it was just the price of belonging.

And maybe queering the norm is this:

choosing, finally, to belong to oneself.

Queer in Art - Rainbow

This is an art piece I made for my color theory class. It is a collection of items I own that cary significance to me. I took a series of pictures that all contained colors of the rainbow. 

 

Queering the Norm - Rainbows

 Lea Rainbow Lea Rainbow

my mom called and called 

a voice a melody of love

rainbow walls and laughter 

sowing the threads of life 

5, 

10, 

15,

I am older 

the threads keep weaving

can you guess what color they are

Normalish. . .

 The trouble with normal is,

there is no normal

we're all our own normal

"Wait, this is normal right?"

a fair question,

a valid rumbling

But there are so many things
worth chasing

like being kind & looking
Divine ♡

Uncertain Acceptance

 

Uncertain Acceptance

I told my dad this weekend I started HRT a month ago. I mentioned something about it in July and ever since there’s been this cloud of tension every time we talk. He broke the ice when I was about to drive back to Laramie, “We need to talk about this… hormone stuff” he rubs his palms and his leg is shaking. This is new to me. My dad was in the military and was raised on a ranch in North Dakota, there was a right and wrong way of doing things with no exceptions. He’s straight to the point and doesn’t put up with bullshit which in all fairness I respect him for. But seeing him so apprehensive was unnerving. I felt more scared of this than the accustomed screaming match I grew up with. “I’m already on it. I have been for a month now,” I quickly get it out of the way. I did this on purpose, if I was already taking the testosterone he couldn’t have tried to persuade me against it. “What do you want out of this? How are you going to change?” I know no matter what answer I give him it’ll frighten him. I tell him it’s going to help me be perceived more as a man, while this partially true it was more of a point to him that I am valid. He’s criticized me before “Why do you think you’ll be viewed as a male if you wear feminine stuff and put on makeup?” and it’s kind of hard to justify your choices to a person who only sees gender and sexuality and life in binaries. He just nods. God this is terrifying. “What about… relationships… friendships… and…yeah?” I know he’s really asking, “What are my family and friends going to think about this?” I explain it’s hard socially and that it’s like coming out all over again but more permanent. I tell him with a straight face that I feel guilty for ruining our father daughter relationship and I wish I wasn’t like this. I wish I could have been like my peers, content with my body. I’ve explained this more times than I would have liked in my lifetime, so this comes off cold. His eyes well up with tears and my mouth runs dry unable to form another word. I’m unable to decipher what I’m feeling or what I should feel. Am I sick for feeling relief? That finally something I say got through to him. Should I hug him or just stare? If I give any comfort, will it be used against me? “I love you and I’m so proud of who you have become.” This might be more intimidating than his antipathy. I apprehensively stood up and approached him and we hugged. For what felt like an entirety we held each other while my father wept. Once we let go of each other, he wiped his face off and said, “Well, it’s getting late you should probably start driving back home.” I nodded and that was that. 

Museums and Queerness

    Through my Museum Studies class, I have learned that museums are much queerer than I had once thought. Museums are very political; they always have been. At first, only the rich and powerful were able to acquire and admire collections. Now, even though many museums are accessible to everyone, the government still has some power in what is and is not shown. There is also a certain story that museums try to tell with their art, and that is why it is so important to look at things through different lenses. You might initially see one story, but if you dig deeper, you can see another story unfolding. The whole reason I bring this up is because I believe art is a very versatile hobby, and I feel like art is queer. The act of making something no one else is done is usually considered outside the norm, which is literally what “queer” is. Overall, I believe that it is important to continue to support artists, and museums, because they are the ones representing queerness and telling the stories everyone else is too afraid to tell.

The Agreement

In response to Cancel Marriage: Merav Michaeli at TEDxJaffa: https://youtu.be/tTf8jKMGsGE?si=eC-UNOvQIZUt6cMU

The Agreement

In Youngstown, in Gary, in the flats along the river, where the mills went dark, my mother sewed her own wedding dress at nineteen, pins in her mouth, already yelling through gritted teeth about how life isn’t fair…but she never believed there was another way.

Nineteen ninety-one. My father's shift bell still ringing in a building with no more shifts to ring. Everyone said hold on. Everyone said this is what we have.

I hear the woman on the screen, saying love was never what the paper was for. That the paper was a way of saying who owns whom, who carries the unpaid weeks home in her body like a second job nobody clocks in for.

I knew that before I had the words; watched it in the kitchen, in the quiet that passed for peace, in how easy it was to keep saying yes, because disagreement cost something none of us in that town could afford twice.

Regret doesn't announce itself in a place like that. It sits at the table. Refills the coffee. It looks like making do. It looks like love, if you've been squinting since 1990.

I don't blame her. I don't blame any of them; the whole rusted county who signed what they were handed, because the alternative had no shape, no exits on the interstate.

But I heard that woman say the quiet part…the contract was never between two hearts, it was between two hands shaking over what the heart would be made to carry.

Easier, always, to meet the agreement. Harder, and later, and mine to ask what I would have chosen, if choosing had ever been on the table.

the trouble with normal - lea blasko

my childhood house had all different color walls

the living room red 

my basement room yellow

my brothers purple

my socks mismatched on each foot mimicking the rainbow in our home

the only difference were the bottoms of mine were brown from being worn in with freedom

my mom would talk about this freedom

she was proud of this freedom

I kissed my best friend for the first time when I was 5

playing doctor 

I was saving her life

she was saving mine 

my socks are still rainbow but my walls are white now 

Vulgar is My Moms Favorite Word

 She wears rouge lip stain, the kind that comes in a polish container. She paints her nails with it too, she does it with dirty hands. Her house is full of bookshelves. Books about bodies, art, sex, music, rebellion. She owns enough books you could build castles out of them and hide in the shapes of their stories. Her favorite perfume is Chanel number 5. She thinks it smells like an old woman but wears it as a badge of honor cause she bought it with her hard-earned money. There is a scarf draped over every lamp in the house casting the walls in kaleidoscope patterns and colors. Each lamp threatens to start a fire dancing on the dull edge of catastrophe. The floors and corners of the house littered with fur from pets she can’t afford but her heart is just that big she has the room to spare. She owns miscellaneous pairs of tights, each pair is ripped, and she won’t ever throw them away. Her closet is congested with millions of heels, she simply can’t help herself. She journals her fantasies and wears her body proud. She daydreams about museums and the daughter she will name after her father’s mother. Before bed every night she looks in the mirror, paints her lips red and gives herself a kiss goodnight. She is wholly, devoutly, absolutely in love with herself.