Insomnia, Trans Rights & Rock 'n' Roll...

What keeps you up at night? As I have insomnia, I got together with some musical friends to create this fun rock ‘n’ roll track! Read on to find out more about the song and about each of my bandmembers below…

Discover who’s keeping me up all night!
Download “INSOMNIA” for free and read the lyrics here.
Listen on Spotify here.
Listen on YouTube here.

Why I wrote this song

Trans people are a vulnerable group and tend to experience mistreatment in all areas of life (family/home, in public, health and work). Yet a staggeringly wealthy white t*rf uses her enormous power and influence to spread transphobia (her words have led to harmful anti-trans legislation). This is despicable behaviour.

As researcher Alok V Menon explains, transphobia and homophobia are British colonial exports. Transphobia denies and ignores colonialism and imperialism and is a systemic tool used to justify the continued oppression of marginalised people of all ages and backgrounds.

I make music to express difficult feelings and transform them into colourful fun energy.

Sound familiar?
If you think you’ve heard this somewhere before it’s because I’ve released it twice before each time with slightly different lyrics. It was originally a love song. Yep. Isn’t it ironic…

Possibly an interesting comparison as for version 1, I was not on T and for version 2, I’d been on T for about 1.5 years.

What’s different and special about this version
Apart from who the new version is about (spoiler: sarcastic “bully-ode” to a certain t*rf) I did a call-out for people to send me their voices saying “Trans rights are human rights” so we’d make a trans protest group. Since I used to attend demos but have not been able to make it to them in recent years, it felt great to be part of a crowd yelling for trans rights together!

Who made the artwork
I really enjoyed creating the artwork for this and spent quite a while working on it. The elements look quite random but they connected with the song lyrics and/or it’s meaning. For example, the lyrics begin, “She got my heart racing down the street” and in the artwork, the heart is trying to catch up with a jar of sleep. You may recognise the rabbit and the wolf (ok she’s a bit foxy here) who appeared in a recent drawing which I shared on my comics Instagram account @SquidHorseComics.

Who’s in the band?
I’ve been in 2 bands but for a while external conditions and my mental health have meant I’ve missed making music with people. So I formed an imaginary band added credits for my bandmembers, choosing their names carefully..

Kit (she/they) is the lead guitarist - a pink wolf (perhaps mistaken for a fox) named after my queer Asian grandma, Kitty Tsui who I first heard about in “canonical anthology”, “The Persistent Desire: A Femme-Butch Reader”. Kit has appeared in a slightly different body shape in a drawing I shared on my comics instagram, well after all Kitty Tsui is a bodybuilder and also I’m a lover of parallel universes (e.g. ones where tall, hot lesbians in suits are riding some unruly riff waves.

Jim (he/him) is our bassist, named because “jeem” is Cantonese for “spiky” and he’s a hedgehog. Jim is quite mysterious so we don’t know much about him yet but his bass playing is very cool. Something very mysterious is that we’re not sure if Jim is 1/4 of the height of the main vocalist OR if he’s just far away. Maybe we’ll find out some day in the not too distant future…

Smokey (they/them) pronouns is our drummer. Their kick drum can also bake rainbow cakes and dye clothes! Smokey has written a critique about the tv shows they’ve seen but is too shy to show people yet. However we can reveal that “Tuca and Bertie” (Season 1 anyway) came top of the list.

Canto Cat (any pronouns) has been learning the saxophone for 1 month in her sleep which has caused some consternation and musical constellations in the dream department! Their jacket looks a similar material to the one Kit’s suit is made of except he actually staged-dived into a beetroot salad!

SquidHorse (he/him) (not to be mistaken for Squid or Horse who are 2 different characters!) is the lead singer. He is non binary and learnt singing with cats, is a big fan of lime jaffa cakes and has a lot of legs. Shortly after he wore this t shirt, he realised it was too small and gave it to a trans young person who was allegedly pleased to receive it.

Mr. Carrot (he/him) is safe in SquidHorse’s pocket (unless he’s put in the wash by accident!!) and was amazingly crocheted by artist, @OhFeelingsMonster. Mr. Carrot first appeared on the underground zine and comics zine in 2013 and has featured in no fewer than FOUR zines by The Mollusc Dimension!


Well here are those links again… “INSOMNIA” is available to download for free here. It’s out on Spotify..

I hope you like “Insomnia”!Thank you for your support!

It’s available to listen here:
YouTube Apple Music Deezer

 
LGBTIQ, mental health, comics, DIY culture, music, performance, songwriting, transThe Mollusc Dimension