WP2: “Everything Stays”
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A look at change through the lens of constants.
Welcome to a curation of my past.
I built a website to most accurately represent my experience of nostalgia and memory. I filled it with the photos and videos of my history. Many of the photos and videos are themselves linked to related memories. These photos are clickable. Not all memories link to others, and not all photos are clickable. I remember my past through these documents, but also by what music I was listening to at the time. Not all memories are linked to music, though, so not all pages have music.
Note: The website is a little finicky. If the music doesn’t autoplay, hit the play button. At some points, you’ll have to manually pause the music to hear a video. If the website is jittery, try refreshing or clicking anywhere.
Some of the links will lead you in circles. That is intentional. Time, memory and thought aren’t linear either. Many links will keep leading you back to pages you’ve already seen. There are memories, people, and places, which keep coming up, as they do on this page.
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It is often said that humans are separated from other creatures by our ability to recognize patterns. So I set out, within the records of my own life, to find the patterns. What keeps showing up? What has made me who I am?
In other words, I want to examine what changes through the lens of what stays the same.
Each page is grouped by a common denominator, and within each page, items are ordered chronologically.
Look through the website before continuing below.
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This is a curation. I couldn’t fit everything possible, and even if I could, it still wouldn’t be a one to one of the experience of memory. So I chose to curate moments of peace and joy. I choose to celebrate joy, and to use this project not to condemn but to love the power of rose colored glasses. I choose the rose-tinted past because I choose gratefulness. I choose to be grateful to celebrate joy, and renew a cycle of positivity.
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I want to let this collection speak for itself, and I want the images surrounding each other to contextualize themselves.
Here are the exceptions:
Sabers:
I’d loved Star Wars and playing with lightsabers my whole life. The first photo is my first time dressing up as a Jedi. In 2017, I joined a group called Saber Guild, which does costumed, choreographed lightsaber dueling performances, mostly for charity. Going in, I knew these group and those like it treated each other like family, but it was another thing entirely to be adopted into this family. Many of these photos are from our events and rehearsals, but some are just a moment in time when I was having fun with friends.
Frens.
Throughout high school, I had friends come and go, but looking from the first photos on this page, through to my prom, the penultimate photo, a large number of the faces stay the same. The final photo was a moment which I spent with my closest friend from home, but also with many new friends. I end with it to celebrate both the old and the new.
Boy.
This page chronicles my transition. My first time having short hair. My first time dressing masculine to a formal event. My first time wearing swim trunks. The first time I’d seen my name in writing. My first time wearing a binder. First time in a men’s suit. Coming out. Being able to express my trans pride. My first year of testosterone. Creating the representation I never had/finding the intersection between my gender and my art.
Maybe the biggest moment I never expected was being comfortable enough in myself and my own gender to help a friend in theirs. I went with them to get their first short haircut. I had no idea how rewarding that would feel.
I often like to think about what my younger self would think if he could see me now. I like to think he would have lost his tiny mind if he knew I wore a beautiful vintage tuxedo to my prom.
Six months before I had top surgery, I had an art class assignment on the subject of freedom. I painted my own personal freedom一a flat chest. So much of my life revolved around managing the dysphoria I had surrounding that part of my body.
That was June. The next video is December一a moment of pure euphoria. It was everything I had been wanting. I’d been dreaming about wearing shirts like that for years. And the dream came true.
The last photo is my most recent experience integrating my gender with art. A celebration of my divine, trans beauty. A beauty I could never have felt when those first few images were taken.
End.
Clicking on the end will take you back to the start. Starts and ends must always accompany one another.
