3CR did a remarkable job getting their Trans Day of Audibility programming online by the next morning. You can find my contribution to it at the above link or, for convenience:
I haven't so enjoyed a creative collaboration with lovely people in a long time. This was a delight. The lovely people in question were, in order of first appearance:
- Jessie,
- Miriam,
- Dawn,
- Kate, and
- Emma (who is late to the Fediverse party because apparently she prefers to hear from me via irregular, ridiculously lengthy email infodumps).
If you've known me for at least fifteen years (only the most selflessly patient have), you may notice a stylistic similarity with the podcast Ruben and I did back then. (Why tamper with the perfect format?) However in those days, editing down a long leisurely chat had over a couple of bottles of wine into something digestible used to take me a month or more.
This time I had a week to go through nearly four hours from three recording sessions, find the gems, and string them together in a way that was narratively satisfying. I can't remember the last time I worked so hard. Worse, the session with Kate and Emma didn't yield as much usable material as it should have, so they were terribly underrepresented in the finished work. They were utterly delightful of course, but I wasn't in the right headspace and did a terrible job shepherding the conversation to keep it between the vague goalposts I'd defined. So that was a learning opportunity about being prepared and on the ball. Sorry Kate and Emma!
Despite all that, I was walking on air the whole time, and it's certainly the work I've been most proud of in years (I can provide an ample supply of uni essays for comparison).
I could have done a show about how, for many of us who otherwise enjoy white privilege, the last 12 months have been a firm wallop across the face with a big bag of intersectionality. Or I could have done a show about how the way trans people are often represented by trans people in such a way that for a given social service or event, we will often think "Oh; this is clearly not intended for me." I'm glad I didn't.
I don't know if it quite fulfilled 3CR's brief, but in my defence I was advised that a show earlier in the day would be covering the grim situation in the UK, so I should steer clear of that sort of thing. Which I took as licence to be as silly as necessary, though my collaborators were also generous with the touching profundity.
Thanks so much, ladies! I am so lucky to know you!