They found transexuality in their zine At What Point Does a Body Become Trash, the moral being that trash are just things that have outlasted their use, but can be used again. In their first solo show Don’t Miss Me- plastic bags became something between stained glass and a quilt, old pillows became a giant tongue to lay on, thoughts were painted on walls, time travel explored, a giant hole cut in the wall. Writing began leaking out through song in their band Saggy, in self-published zines, and more.
For their solo show in 2019 I am a threshold, a place designed for a purpose, they wrote a play, “One Day I Hope Someone Will Love Me”, performed w. all transexuals on their dead grandmother’s carpet. They come from a lineage of madness and hobbyists. Their aunt talked to books and was shocked to death, their grandfather painted as his mind slipped away, their grandmother sang with ghosts of trees. They covered the walls with automatic writing, transcriptions of what they called hallucinations in the psych ward. They began writing stories, realizing that they’d been writing sci-fi all along just by documenting their life as a disabled transexual. Their knack for observation and sensory exploration translates into their characters. Their work has developed a-linearly. If their work was a shape it would be a spiral staircase, but not ascending just collapsing in on itself, like a donut. They return back to themes, time, death, love, work, place, body, self, they learn and forget, they learn it again more deeply, hoping to remember the next time around.
They know that being a transexual is political. Some No’s: No incarceration. No borders. No presidents. No jobs. No housing insecurity. Some Yes’s: Yes to disagreement, yes to work, yes to caring for strangers, yes to struggling to communicate until we understand each other. Yes to cruising, yes to queer people holding hands in public in every part of the world, yes to risking it all.
Artists they talk to include; Ree Morton, Ursula K Le Guin, Casey Plett, Octavia Butler, Hilda Af Klimt, Yvonne Rainer, Lydia Davis, NK Jemisin, Samuel Delany, M. Tellez, Nicole Claveloux, T. Fleishman and Shirley Jackson.
Currently they are sewing, falling in love, and seeking homes for their strange writings. If you see a florid piece of trash, hear a fragment of a whispered to you from someone unseen, find that your tween has drawn on and cut up all their clothes, or become overcome by the need to kiss leaves, that is a message from Lane, you’re welcome.