leissmusic

[leissmusic]

Gillert's Big Game is here!! Our submission for #fletchfest, this visual narrative was so fun to put together! Working alongside @kraaico and @leissmusic was truly wonderful and this project would not be what it is without them. I hope you enjoy!

🐟 https://fletchmakesstuff.itch.io/gillerts-big-game 🐟

[leissmusic]

Been tinkering with a new project again! Something a little less sci-fi, little more rpg ⚔️🔮🍺

[leissmusic]

Daily experiences only women understand: trying to dress in the morning, only to discover that your favorite garment has become an arbitrary, n-dimensional fabric with a portal to hell. Had to fend off an entire horde of demons just after showering. Would not recommend, 0/10

[leissmusic]

art teacher: "let's see what you've been working on, timmy"

timmy: "i tried, but i can't get the hands right"

teacher: (looks at the hands, they're mangled masses with six fingers)

teacher: "heh. the fingers never lie. nothing personal, kid" (cocks shotgun)

timmy: "111010010—"

[leissmusic]

The extent of gender affirming coverage stops at sex. When the medical system equates "idealized sexual function" with "health", and silences/pathologizes individuals who want other solutions, it's no wonder cishets have the fucked up idea that we're sexual deviants.

It's deeply unnerving that WPATH thinks it's so easily resolved as changing something downstairs. For those who say, "this isn't what I need; the care I need is facial", the system slams the door on their face. As if to say, "fuck you, I won't help you with the thing everyone sees and makes first impressions about! i just change plumbing fixtures!"

It should not be considered vain or ludicrous to bring up the idea of the face as a vital component of transition that health care SHOULD treat. It is the first thing a person sees; the artifice of the person underneath. This is not cosmetic: it is a matter of survival for some.

The point of all this was to really just scream one small thing into the void. Some people dislike that I preach, or shitpost, and that I am not "real". 

Want something real from me? Something I'm insecure about, not just art? Okay. I will bear my soul. I will be uncomfortably real.

I hate my face. I hated it before I transitioned. And I've contemplated suicide over it.

Facial Feminization Surgery will likely never be available to me, because I'm low income. It seems perpetually out of reach.

Yes. I feel kind of hopeless.

I will still keep working for that moonshot gig - that once in a lifetime opportunity where I can make what I need so I can alter this aspect of my life, and step closer toward happiness. It doesn't even matter if it's not a perfect solution - I just want to know that I did everything I could.

I never thought I was asking for much from the universe. I wanted to be the badass who seized control of her fate by doing it without asking society to help, and using capitalism as a crowbar to get my way. But lately, I'm feeling like I am a lost cause.

I'd drown away my pain and sorrows with Porter Baltique, but the damn bastards learned to swim.

[leissmusic]

Sci-Fi: Dreams and Nightmares, an Essay

You know, I have a problem with sci-fi. That isn't to say I dislike it, I just have a problem writing it, conceptualising it, and enjoying it. I'm a historian, and a traditional medieval historian at that, and I find most of my comfort in the past. My ideas about the future are very dark, and although I explore darkness and even horror in my writing very often, it's a darkness for once I'm not comfortable with. It's a little too close to home, I think. The further into technological advancement we go as a species, the worse I feel about the future. I have a few cyberpunk ideas I came up with in high school or even middle school that I doubt I will ever finish. I can't do it anymore. I feel vaguely sad about it all, and maybe I can work on them someday, even if I just adapt the characters and situations to a genre I'm more comfortable with.

I used to love sci-fi in all incarnations. I have always adored Star Wars and Star Trek. I favoured Star Wars for a while because it smacked more of fantasy, being a space opera and completely unrelated to Earth. It was escapist, it was mystical, it was just a bit closer to my true fictional love, Lord of the Rings. Star Trek I fell in love with later on, as I came to appreciate the social and political commentary and the intricate hard sci-fi aspects (I should note, I only adored the original series, and the other Star Trek media never captured me quite the way it did). When I found Dune, it swept me away, another fantasy, another mystical technicolour dream, and I loved it. When I first saw Bladerunner I was obsessed, and when I first read Asimov's Robot Series I was fascinated.

But something happened when I was in high school. Something that has ravaged my mental health and sense of well-being, my sense of self and my faith in humanity. It's something most of us rely on now, and it's something I can't escape (unless I do finally run away to the woods and live in a cabin as though it's 1470, growing and raising my own food and hunting to have furs to keep warm in the winter etc, as I long to do). I have to be online. I have to be on social media. I have to promote my brand, my writing. I have to be here to be aware of the news (I don't watch live TV at all). And worst of all, most crippling of all, I have to find inspiration. My desire to find media that will take me away (media I don't have to make myself) is what keeps me coming back. It's one of the things that keeps me here.

But I admit, I'm getting very tired. I'm traditional in several senses, and I'm tired. I miss dearly how I used to look at sci-fi. It was a wonder. Even dystopian sci-fi had its charm, its allure, its fascinating aspects. But then whatever electric sheep dreams I had became nightmares. And waking up, I found the nightmares all around me. It's painful that something I used to love I now avoid. Something I used to turn to for fun or pleasure is something I now fear.

But I am determined to love what I can. I am determined to have hope. As someone who's suffered from great mental illness in my life, and has come to a place finally, finally of stability, I think I can now reflect on things. The truth is, whether a dusty tome-perusing historian like me wants to hear it or not, the future is not a nightmare. It's not a dream at all, but reality. And fiction is not reality. Sure, I see things in real life I thought were just nightmares from Orwell's 1984. But I also see dreams, the iPad in my hand filled with hundreds of books, the stylus gliding brilliant colour over a smooth screen, the little device at my side an Alexandrian library of writing and music the likes of which no one in previous centuries could have imagined. I can type up a few words and my friends can respond to me within seconds. Through the gleaming portals at my fingertips I can learn about the entire world. I am connected. And connection is terrifying. It's vulnerable, and I think we're all just trying to figure out how this new type of human connection works.

I do have hope for the future. And I think it's time we saw that in sci-fi. Now I do note, there is some utopian sci-fi media. Star Trek the Original Series being my favourite. But I want to know what you have to say. Writers, artists, musicians, whatever you do, I want to see some hope.

I am not exempt of course! I need to change the way I think about sci-fi too. I need to take that hope in me and make something that will give someone else hope. Or at least let them have a little fun with a book, whether it's a paperback or leatherbound copy, or an intangible but nevertheless legible file. The interesting thing about sci-fi is that it's always somewhat based in reality (in science, of course!), but it's the 'fi' of sci-fi that's the best part. It's fiction. It's the dream. And as we have seen before, the dreams of one generation can become the reality of another. So it's time to write sci-fi with hope. It's time for me to stop being afraid of the future, and start looking forward to it.

[leissmusic]

Political discourse is not telling your opponents, "if you don't like it, just move".

We should never advocate for "political gentrification/migration": it turns the voting demographic into a monoculture, and makes it difficult for homogenous regions to implement social change.

If you prey upon the vulnerable by telling them to move, then you are also telling them they have no hope of being fairly represented by their government.

At this point, you may as well be admitting the following:

Your party cannot garner a following by implementing good policy; it can only consolidate power by making life intolerable for its ideological opponents.

[leissmusic]

The Crisis of Jazz in the Public School System

Music education needs some retooling at the provincial and state level. My nephew told me he's in his school's jazz band. When I asked him what kind of repertoire the teacher has them playing, he said, "pop music. They only call it jazz band because it includes everything that the school orchestra doesn't play". I think that's really fucking sad.

I have a pretty loose definition of jazz as far as most people go. If the music ... a) has a conversational or improvised aspect, b) concerns jazz repertoire, or c) borrows aspects of bebop, swing, big band, etc. Then I think it's jazz. However, according to my nephew: 1) all students are required to play things as they are written. 2) improvisation is apparently not allowed in the band. Whatever the hell the institution thinks this is, it's pretty far off the jazz spectrum. In the best case scenario, it's a very liberal use of the word that would offend purists, but in the worst case scenario, it gives kids a half-assed music education that doesn't even scrape the surface of what jazz even is. I can tell right away that this leaves a bad impression on kids. As my nephew puts it: "The teacher wants me to play Major 7 chords on the guitar all the time. They're way too hard." This sounds conceptually strange to me, because his fingers are actually otherwise dexterous. I ask him to show me the major 7 chords he's asked to play. He gives me this:

For those who don't know, this is a major 7th chord in root position. I won't judge anyone who likes this voicing, but there are issues with this. It's very uncomfortable for an adolescent to play, and it's actually harmonically very dense. In any kind of context where other musicians are involved, triad or diadic voicings might be more appropriate. One might even eschew the root to give the bassist more room to stretch their legs.

I tilt my head and compose myself before responding. "Okay, what if you play a drop or shell voicing instead?" He doesn't know what that is. As he's a younger guitarist, it's understandable that he doesn't, so I show him a major seventh chord that has the root, third and seventh. It's much easier for his fingers, and he enjoys the sound. "That's easier," he says. "But our teacher won't let us. I have to play whatever the sheet says. She stops me if I only try to play some of it." I'm flabbergasted. "Dude ..."

I guess the point of my whole rant has been this: whatever the state of public music education is, it's fucked. School curriculums in Alberta are mandated to call it "jazz band", but it would seem that they don't have to teach jazz. Teachers can run these projects as rigidly as they would a concert band, and limit the creative vision of its students to a very narrow reading of what's on the page. They are taught not to seek more pleasant ways of engaging with the material, they are not taught any common jazz repertoire, and perhaps saddest of all, they are not encouraged to improvise or think beyond the page. I think it gives students the wrong idea of what jazz is, and makes them resent it.

[leissmusic]

when i was a kid, sometimes i would combine apple and orange juice to make something I would call "super juice". it tasted like shit

Apple juice and orange juice don’t have to be enemies. They are in love. Orple juice.

[leissmusic]

ai truly is the future

[leissmusic]

a more modest proposal

people suggest the following solution to class warfare and income disparity: "eat the rich". Careful what you wish for, as the rich will just find a way to commodify that dissent and turn that into a product, likely wrapped in plastic packaging and just as likely to be an unsatisfying, hollow experience. Instead, I say we ship the rich to a gladiatorial arena where they will fight for what they think will be the public's entertainment, higher profit margins and shareholder approval ratings. At the penultimate moment where the last man or woman stands, it will then be revealed in a sick twist that they have been performing for an audience of dogs

[leissmusic]

just a lil WIP I've been hard at work on for "Tiny Life". Have so much cool new shit I wanna show the world, but this'll have to do for now!

[leissmusic]

This nails the futility of being on the left and attempting "discourse" with the other side. There will never be an open and honest debate. There will never be understanding. There will never be compromise. Abandon all civility and the pretense of debate and compromise. Unless both sides agree to converse and listen in a formal, public setting, there can be no discussion.

I need people obsessed with discourse and identity politics to understand that bigots don't ask for your label before they discriminate against you.

They don't say, "Oh hey woman holding hands with another woman, you're actually bisexual? My bad! I was going to call you a dyke but now that I know your actually bisexual I won't treat you badly."

They don't say, "Oh you're a cisgender woman who's a butch lesbian? I thought you were a transwoman and was going to call the cops, but I won't do that now that you've verified your identity."

They don't say, "Oh you're a transman? I was going to catcall and harass you but now that I know you're a man I'll respect you and leave you alone."

Like arguing and belittling and shitting on each other because some tumblr post or tweet convinced you your own community is the enemy....it does not matter to them. They will harass us all, beat us all, call the cops on us all, it does not fucking matter what our labels are. We're all suffering and we'll continue to suffer the more we let them divide us.

[leissmusic]

a tune about being really happy 💜

it's called 'spokes' from my album, 'ventifact'!

stream it here

[leissmusic]

it's the bible cinematic universe, silly. favorite part was from new testament: endgame, where jesus solemnly says, "disciples ... assemble", and they fuse together into a voltron-like mecha before suplexing lucifer moved me to tears, absolute masterpiece

[leissmusic]

I hate that no one talks about just how distressing memory loss from adhd actually is. I always see memes that are like “haha I forgot my phone, I don’t remember where my laptop is, etc”, but no one seems to talk about how it can really fuck you up long term to just, not remember things that are completely mundane to non-adhd’ers. The memory loss is, however, so frustrating to us. I cannot physically count how many meltdowns I have had over the sheer mental frustration and torture of not being able to remember seemingly simple things

[leissmusic]

All Art is Imperfect

Humanity and perfection are diametrically opposed, as perfection does not exist within the human condition: technical craftsmanship is only a byproduct of pedagogical consensus mechanisms, and it will change over the years. And while technical ability can have aesthetic merit, it is only a means to an end -- to convey a type of message or theme.

It's possible for you to go too far in the search of technical achievement because of what a community encourages and demands, and forget to leave traces of yourself behind.

If your endgame as an artist is to make successful art with a soul, you must find things within your art that you can leave raw, and true to your experience. That is not to say that you should make half-baked attempts, as people will generally pick up on that.

Rather, it's the case that whatever your natural ability is, you should find reasonable ways in which you can let that ability breathe, unconstrained by nebulous standards no human can reach (i.e., "is this commercially desirable?"; "Has this been polished enough?").

Despite knowing this tendency, you will still be imperfect in your ability to express humanity in your work. So, I'll just close off with this following epithet.

Embrace the suck: as much as you, your fans, and clients, will allow.