Mia Eley

Wotever Christmas Bazaar at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern on now!

Noodles!

All over the place, highs and lows thats how it goes, space, rejoins with the sighs and slowly bleeds into the forever kind of eye’s.

Lies, is all I seek, in my vain attempt to dampen the blow, go slow. You never know what the next guy will think. I sit, meditate, safe in the knowledge I know my tolerance to one too many drink.

Seeds planted, actions subverted all the guys courted and projections distorted. All my hopes Buried between the the arms of that never ever kind of guy’s contorted, smile.

Frown, new ball gown when am I going to transcend the petty games and feuds reality TV all skewed. 

Balance, balance the accounts, balance the morality. Never has profit meant so much to authority. TV screen bleeds through those forever kind of lies. Nothing new here, step away spend, stagnate, don’t animate.

Wrong in my fragility, right in my projected fantasy. Lets lead under the radar, over the edge. Where do we find the able long after the short have fled. We have to judge who controls the uplink, diseased disabled.

Put the reality under the table.

Michael was exhausted, he climbed the stairs slowly and dug in his pocket for his keys. His hangover was throbbing. The £400 Michelle had saved for a new washing machine had gone a long way to letting him forget about his troubles.

The coke had been clean, and the Guinness kept on flowing. He was paying the price now though, his body like an empty shell.

He almost enjoyed the feeling. Like his body had been put through a mangler. It made him feel alive and connected to the world.

He paused for a moment to look out the window in the stairwell. He felt broken but real, valid. As he put the key into the lock of the flat he let out a long breath.

Inside he could hear his sister in the bathroom, with all the gentle splashing it sounded like she was having a bath. He moved to the kitchen and sat down at the kitchen table. He needed some kush.

That was decided. He awkwardly fumbled in his pockets and pulled out a few scraps of paper, catching his hoodie as he did. He shook off the fabric and laid the scraps on the table.

A few bus tickets, and lots of receipts but no money. He looked around the kitchen and wondered if Michelle’s benefits had been paid. She must have some money stashed for housekeeping.

He looked through some of the drawers but found nothing but kitchen utensils. He looked around the cluttered kitchen and soon spied the biscuit tin.

He reached above the fridge and grabbed the tin. He shook it and could her something light moving around. He twisted the lid off and looked inside. Two crisp twenty pound notes sat at the bottom.

“Score” muttered Michael as he dug out the notes. He zipped up his hoodie and buried the notes in the pocket of his jeans. Tossing the tin on the kitchen table as he did so.

He grabbed his keys and headed for the door punching numbers at his dilapidated mobile phone as he walked, he could hear it begin to ring as he slammed the door.

“Mind if I drop round? The café? OK, I can do that, see you in ten.”

The John looks down at his feet. He had obviously seen her black eye and in the light of day her height and male body was more perceptible. She looked a mess.

Carrying a big canvas bag of dirty laundry Michelle walked on trying to ignore the discomfort of her one time client. She didn’t know what he was so afraid of until she saw his wife come out of the news-agents clutching a travel-card and a flake.

The john kept his eyes firmly on his wife as Michelle passed buy, heels clicking on the concrete beneath. Her life wasn’t what you would call hard. Her identical twin brother would keep a roof over her head even if he was prone to fits of violence and skimming her tips.

He wasn’t a bad pimp but kept her working the spot by Stoke Newington train station. Quiet residential streets at a right angle to the main road provided a good place to pull up and work her customers.

She had some regulars but it was common knowledge that hookers prowled around that spot and there was always fresh awkward middle aged men out for some sexual satisfaction.

Michelle dumped the canvas bag she had been carrying on to the bench by a free machine. The launderette her regular haunt after Michael refused to spring for a new washing machine.

She had saved enough money for a new one but when he had found her savings stash he took it and went on an almighty bender. He came home stinking of whiskey and skunk and an unsettling twitch in his left eye that said to her he had been snorting his fair share of coke.

He had beaten her black and blue that night. She is still unsure what she had done to deserve this. But apparently saving money was a no no. As he spat on her face her legs bent under her sprawled on the living room floor he had told her never to keep money from him again.

And she wouldn’t. At least where he could find it.

Michelle sat looking at all her underwear spinning around on a fast cycle and had a craving for a cigarette. She hadn’t smoked for two days and was trying to quit. She grimaced and immediately felt her black eye send a dull pain throughout her face.

She rooted through her handbag and pulled out a lighter and then finally a soft pack of Camels. She prided herself in being able to find all the most obscure brands of cigarettes from the most random corner shops around the borough.

She shook out a fresh cigarette and walked outside in to the bright but chilly autumn air. She lit up and leaned against the window, arms crossed with one foot out further than the other, her skirt fluttered as a breeze swung through the high road.

Michelle’s eyes were fixed on a wall across the street, it intersected with the raised railway line and in bold fresh paint she read the letters H.E.R.S. She pondered them for a moment, the Wild-style of lettering almost unreadable to the common passer by.

In the bright crisp autumn air the letters shone out high above the high road. She looked for any tags next to the burner that were obviously by the same author. A signifier of a crew or buddies that helped fill in outlines but she saw none.

“Hers” She mutters to herself as she stubbed out the camel on the runner for the shutters that grace every shop on this road. She sees the flecks of paint on the runner and wonders if there is any fresh paint on the shutters as well.

She had built up quite a picture of the crews and various falling outs and beefs between writers in her borough. The fury spelt out in letters and line outs, throw ups over burners and hate expressed in ink over toys pathetic attempts to get up.

She turned and went back into the relative warmth of the launderette, arms still crossed clutching at her overcoat. Doris the little old lady who ran the launderette was busying herself with a service wash, someone’s duvet, she folded the double duvet with speed her small figure dwarfed by the huge expanse of off white, slightly yellowed from age. It was soon reduced to a manageable size and forced into a large plastic hold all.

She looked up as she closed the dryer door but found nothing to occupy herself with. Times were tight and there weren’t many service washes these days it seemed. Just a slow dribble of the walking dead spending pennies to get their underwear in a respectable state once again.

Some stopped bothering. Doris let out a sigh and raised a smile as she noticed Michelle now sitting with her legs crossed in front of her machine.

“Getting cold…” Doris said with a strangely positive tone. If there was one thing you could guarantee with the British was talk of the weather.

“Colder than a witches tit” offered Michelle with a raised eyebrow. Too much? Doris seemed to suddenly freeze for a moment, obviously catching a glimpse of Michelle’s black eye. That or she took particular offense to the phrase, the first was more likely.

Doris shuffled along with the hold all and disappeared into the back. It wasn’t easy explaining her relationship with her identical twin. So alike but so different at the same time. Although they looked identical their gender preference and mannerisms made them worlds apart.

No one seemed to mistake one for the other, but when they were out together they would invite people to make a double take.

Growing up hadn’t been easy. They were treated the same as babies even their parents finding it difficult to tell them apart. They were always made to dress the same and given the same haircuts.

But for all their similarity their parents had quickly noticed a marked difference in their personalities. Michael was always looking after Michelle, standing up to bullies and over curious kids in the playground.

Michelle had welcomed Michael’s protective wing and would spend hours watching the girls play with all the other kids. She had been forced to dress like her brother but would go to great lengths to swap treats and snacks, toys and books for pieces of clothing with the girls.

Their parents always slightly bemused when Michael would bring back girls blouses and jackets that she had swapped on the playground through a complex system of exchanges. Once she had even managed to swap a Tintin book for a dress, her parents finding it stuffed in to the bottom of her school bag.

They hadn’t approved of this behaviour and would endeavour to return the items, but Michael would get angry and demand that Michael be allowed to keep what she had acquired. Eventually they gave up arguing and a year before Michael was supposed to go to art school they were encouraged to move out.

They hadn’t been easy kids to look after, and being foster parents wasn’t supposed to have been so complex. They remember those twins to this day and even think of them fondly but now they are both eighteen and out of their hair they can’t help but be a little relieved.

It wasn’t easy growing up as she had but she always had Michael to look after her. He had been over protective as a child but that soon turned sour as they matured.

Michael had gotten into drugs and realised that controlling Michelle suited him more that constantly looking after her. He had also grown bitter about looking after his chromosome dodger of a brother.

As kids he seemed to understand but as the teenage years set in he had grown more wary of Michelle’s femininity. He saw what a slut she was and how easily she was manipulated. He wasn’t the first but felt if anyone should be running her life it should be him.

They had goten a council flat together in Banister House and he would make sure she kept the place spotless during the day and walking the streets at night.

His love had turned into hate. He despised what he saw in her. How could they be so alike yet so different?

Michelle watched her knickers spin around tangled with Michael’s boxers with a blank stare. She knew she needed more money. Michael wouldn’t bring in much with his art and she had to survive somehow.

This black eye would cost her in custom and might even invite more violence. The dryer beeped and Michael snapped out of her trance. She loaded the clothes back into the canvas bag and turned to leave. She saw the autumn leaves get picked up by a rolling gust of air.

After the long walk back to the estate and four flights of stairs she was back at the flat, she folded her lingerie away and arranged Michael’s clothes as he liked them in his chest of drawers.

The old pentium box whirred into life as she sat down, 3 unread messages were blinking in her inbox. One had a job centre address. She knew immediately what it was and she bit her bottom lip as she examined the email.

Using the encoding she had given Mark she could make out that he had managed to clone three other job-centre control cards. The ones used by the employees to access the massive social security database.

All she needed was the data. She picked up her phone and began to text Mark. “5pm Thursday my place, he should be out. Bring the skimmer and don’t forget the memory card. I can work with what you have.”

She put the phone down and wondered how much security they could really build into a magnetic strip. It wasn’t the information on the card but how it interacted with the database. It shouldn’t be much more complex than the travel-card hack.

That had netted her a fair few pounds and left transport for London searching for ghosts all over the system. None of her clients had been caught, yet. Anonymity and a free pass to go where you wanted around London had been a popular selling point to her scam, Mark was a happy customer and that’s when he had enquired about the job centre cards.

Michelle turned off the machine and moved to the bathroom to run a bath. It would be another long cold night and she needed all the warmth she could get.

Origin unknown, sense likeness alien.
Jedi council respond, solar sail, simian.
Avoid pressure, back room deal, strife,
cant talk, run it by the robotic knife

Back channel, in, impress dazzle sing.
Honesty on display emotion resonate, sway.
Score an allegiance to love, pray.

Pleasure planet, no harm nor strife.
Scale up the seed bank; tower, knife.
Photon cave analysed, deflect taste.
Track, trace pick up the thread, bass.

Cloaks shine, glitch, bend; we have this, buy! Get them on the re-send.
Bubble bounce after the play dead, ounce.

Check your inputs, honey pots, gold.
Precious metals can’t be sold.
Analyse leeches, algorithms untold,
shape, weight, shimmer bold.

Public facing open coms, shields, attitude, where’s she from?

…

Weak mind, doesn’t understand primes,
heavy feels like water, shape dense,
flatter, play dumb, escort her? Sense.

Humble, bow, offer, indulge.
Play along, snort swoon tapes of old.
Younger, brasher out to impress her.
Hook, line, get ready to dash, mess her

Moans on loop, stop-start cough up the goop.
Trading warez, bare legs private com’s stares.
You want it? Collecting digits like a hobby, fidget

Larger than life, unpack fold,
shape like origami, unbreakable crypto sold!

Public facing open coms, shields, attitude, where’s she from?

…

Private view set, wood block print to cover that debt.
Wine, spying, electro magnetic dying.
Data-cave left, right: infinite loop - flying!

Painting my nails in a vain attempt to preen.
Never going to get that glamour girl look *dream*

Evil eye twisted, lazy motor skills dissed it.
Crazy hair like a half-arsed fro, shit got to split, go…

Missed it.

Public facing open coms, shields, attitude, where’s she from?

After dolling up and heading to Notting Hill Carnival. I became curious about a piece of writing I felt compelled to write before my transition started. It concerned the music that resonated in my heart and soul but whose culture I always felt so distant from.

I heard people with a real voice talking of heart ache, struggle and the courage to be themselves. I started to think about the universal nature of struggle and rather than look for division to instead look for unity.

I am an outsider to the culture of the music I listen to, to the lives I live in my daydreams. I’m kept at arms reach from all that resonates with me. Only left with the memories of my mistakes and reminded that I am not wanted as I am by ignorant voices.

I make mistakes in all my decisions it seems, and I feel like I walk on egg shells through life. I worry about upsetting a careful balance and offending someone, but I need the space to make those mistakes so fragile is my sense of self, so repressed are my feelings and emotions, so timid is my true self.

While I search for my voice, I am left to embrace that which resonates with me. So much of my musical aesthetic appreciation comes from black music. I wonder if I can one day stop worrying about what that culture thinks of me and start to speak my mind with a voice as powerful and resonant.

- Originally written Before my transition (2010) and edited (2011)

Hip hop and reggae music resonate with me, not to mention funk and soul, blues and more modern predominantly black dance music. Often discussing the struggle in living day to day and the struggles of days gone by, I can identify, even if I may be looked on as an outsider by most and unable to relate to the pain expressed.

Growing up as transgender I had to repress my desires and latent femininity and had the norms of being a man imposed on me by society. My female self is kept well and truly locked up and kept in check out of fear. Step out of that norm and you are soon lampooned, misunderstood or subject to ridicule and even physical threat.

I live in fear of physical threat every time I walk out my door but that’s because I live in Hackney. Just listen to Professor Green’s ‘Upper Clapton Dance’ if you need to find out what life is like on the streets here.

I’ve had a gun pointed at my face a knife pulled on me and have been attacked by youths. But just imagine what life would be like walking down the high road in heels and a dress. I would surely be noticed and would likely risk death with such an adventure.

Black people growing up in segregation were told how they could act and what they could do. This segregation exists in the gender divide too but thanks to the work of the suffragettes and feminists all over the world women have been able cross this divide to some extent.

As recently as the 50’s and even 60’s people would be shocked to see women in predominantly male cloths but these days no one bats an eye. Many girls in my area rock tracksuits and hoodies but put a boy in a dress and you have something to talk about. Feminism went a long way to break down the gender divide but I feel that it only happened in one direction.

Woman have equal rights now but socially we are still unable to accept men who blur the gender divide. It’s often considered sexual “he must be gay looking like that” or considered a joke, something played for laughs, let alone being something that must be pointed out.

So what about segregation, here was a divide put up between two groups of people, the divide was arbitrary, there were few real differences in black and white people but it was imposed none the less.

The divide helped to repress black people and keep them subservient but throughout this pain black people built a culture based on their mutual suffering from blues to funk and eventually hip hop. This culture gave them an identity and a voice with which to express their pain, delight, suffering and joy.

How many transgendered people can be said to have such a voice. They live day to day as (wo)men and have the rules of society drilled into them on a daily basis. It is often the ‘men’ who are worst hit. As you walk the streets you would be hard pressed to find a man blurring the gender divide.

When men do transgress the social norms they are treated with a pinch of salt by most around them and the media. There are few honest stories about crossing the gender divide in the media. The story of two cage fighters out on the town all dolled up being attacked and then slamming their attackers with their physical prowess only made the news because it was funny.

Had two transvestites been punched in the face and they had only been able to defend themselves the same as the majority of men it would have never have made the papers. Again we come back to the comic element of cross-dressing. Only when it’s funny can it be accepted, and heaven forbid if it makes the person feel good.

So we have an artificial segregation of the genders enforced by a playground mentality. Women managed to slip the noose of repression off of their necks as a group, although many still suffer at the hands of men who think that stereotypes are there “because they are completely true.”

So, I identify with a lot of black music by both black men and women and the struggle of black people in America and the Caribbean particularly. I long for a transgendered voice to open up and be able to sing about the hate and contempt levied at them by even those who are close, often unaware of their comments personal sting.

Like colour was just a generation ago, gender is treated as a binary. And much has been done to try and open up peoples minds to the wealth of colours of skin in this world. Seldom is the same done in an honest and gritty way to express the wealth of genders in the world.

Solidarity is important but sadly the hip hop and reggae community has been slow to accept the existence of even gay and bisexuals amongst them. The expression of black suffering in music has a honesty and unquestioned bona fide truth to it. I wonder though how far its artists can see beyond their own hate. Few would like to acknowledge the link to the LGBT community.

Some reggae artists still want to kill the chi chi man and I’m sure if I turned up to a sound clash in a dress and make-up I would be rocking the boat more so than just being a white face amongst a sea of black ones. But I think solidarity is something to be cultivated.

Too often we want to express our differences but I’m all for realizing that we are just people, all of us. Some have suffered great trauma growing up and we should share our pain not try and compartmentalize it and brand it with labels.

I’m all for individuality but as humans we have so much that connects us. Pain is pain. Repression is repression. We should realize these simple facts and embrace our common pain and sing the truths we find bond us not the differences that separate us.

Maybe that is one step too far. People like to feel they are part of something and music can help do that, but expressing individuality also helps to widen the gap with others. I don’t want to loose my love of black music just because I am transgender and there is a culture of hate towards the LGBT community in some elements of the hip hop and reggae community.

All I can try to do is educate both sides through my love of music. And I hope more urban artists can begin to freely admit they are L G B or T and continue to create positive music, perhaps talking about their own struggle. I’m sure I would listen.

THE OUTSIDER 1^st September – 6^th October 2011

Core Arts Gallery

109 Homerton High Street

Hackney London

E9 6DL

Tel 020 8533 3500

Private View 6 – 10pm Thursday 1^st September

Train: Homerton (London Overground) Buses: 236/ 242/ 276/ 394/ W1 

Featuring: Jorge Barros, Billy Childish, Jane Chandler, Jay Cloth, Alex Daw, Dave Evans, Francis Disley, Mikey Georgeson, Alex Ingram, Adam James, Rudolph Lindo, Steve McCann, Gary Molloy, Berni Plastiras, James Unsworth and many, many more TBC

Core Arts is pleased to announce the opening of a new group exhibition, The Outsider. Curated by Ryan McClelland the exhibition takes its title from Albert Camus existentialist novel. Artists in the show examine different notions of the artist as an outsider and the romanticised clichés and stereotypes involved. Artworks included reflect upon society, the urban environment and their authors.

Like any one-man band the material and the instruments’ are cobbled together exploring outmoded art making techniques many of the artists work involves a “patched together” DIY aesthetic.

The Outsider surveys a wide range of Artists in age and background from the internationally renowned and established to relative unknowns. Exhibiting artists are shown without hierarchy of academic achievement or fame, their ability or disability, the selected artists have been chosen upon their uniqueness of voice and originality of perspective and it is this that makes for such a compelling exhibition.

With live music from 8pm til late

D66 - oneman blues legend, MR SOLO (aka David Devant), Sexton Ming (Medway art punk), Karl Mathews (Reggae Eastenders) DGO Ranks Number 1 (roots & beyond), poems from Frank Bangay, Johnny Rev.

A special limited edition Billy Childish woodcut to be launched by L-13 Gallery at the Private View. As well as a box set of limited edition signed and numbered artists prints made by members and staff of core arts will also be available to purchase alongside. “The Outsider” publication a ‘zine’ style publication of drawings, collages, photographs, poetry and specially commissioned essays about the exhibition.

Billy Childish will also be presenting a slideshow and artists talk with free entry at Core Arts on the 16th September at 3.00pm

Come root around for bargains and get your hair cut on the cheap! Check my blog for more details! Open till 6pm

Two of my close friends are both running ten thousand meters to raise money for a brilliant cause. I’m just a struggling artist and local loon but would like to help out in any way I can (short of breaking out in a sweat myself) so I am trying to drum up support.

My grandfather suffered from a stroke and it can ruin lives, families, dreams and aspirations. Sophie and Ivana are both raising money online for The Stroke Association and I would urge you to support one or both with a donation.

Please donate and spread the word (with a re-blog perhaps?) preferably before the race in Finsbury Park on the 14th August 2011.

• Sophie: “Anyone who even vaguely knows me generally knows that I hate running above most things.”
• Ivana: “This race is in memory of friends and family who have suffered from strokes and especially my nan who recently died of years of having strokes.”

Thanks babe! It means a lot… xoxo