Evident Monsters

for viola, French Horn, and fixed electronics

2023

Evident Monsters is about gender dysphoria, the distress a transgender person might experience due to a mismatch between their internal sense of self and their body or perceived gender. Here, I explore the gritty, complex feelings associated with dysphoria, how it makes me feel like a monster.

Dysphoria like a pendulum thrust of pain in the chest — wobbly, queasy. Dysphoria like — what if they’re right? What if I’ve talked myself into this? What if I’m just…mentally ill. We’re monsters inside, bringing monstrosity to the world as our antagonizers so often say. We are unexpected monsters, hairy monsters, monsters who shape our own bodies, remaking the Lore of the Land, remaking the Lore of how our bodies may be shaped.

According the University of Cambridge, “Monster probably derives from the Latin, monstrare, meaning ‘to demonstrate, and monere ‘to warn.’ Monsters, in essence are demonstrative. They reveal, portend, show and make evident, often uncomfortably so.”

They call us monsters because we reveal, we make evident their own discomfort with queerness, with nonnormativity, with the possibility we exude. We are monsters because we demonstrate how unpredictable a life may become. How changeable, how transformative, revealing the stasis that suffocates.