This project is an ode to the tenderness and joy of queer love in pandemic times and beyond.

 

Discovering queerness, for me, has meant discovering a kind of boundlessness: in my body, in my gender, in the spaces I inhabit—natural, intimate, domestic, academic, professional.

 

Nature has always felt like the easiest place to be queer—without definition, certainty, or solidity, but rather, with a willingness to transformation. This project attempts to translate a transformative kind of intimacy that is both domestic and natural. The natural scenes are filmed in Mi'kma'ki, the unceded land of the Mi'kmaq people, a place where I am lucky to live and create. 

 

I often talk about being queer as a kind of becoming, a word I borrow from writer Maggie Nelson. The pandemic, for me, has become a kind of becoming: one that is often painful, very queer, and very vulnerable. As pride month approaches (my first as an out queer person—out to myself and others), I think of how incredibly privileged I am to take up space and come into my queerness surrounded by people that love, respect, and support me, as well as a beautiful natural landscape that I can disappear into when I need to. I think about the ways that my queerness (as a white, thin person) is perceived as normative and socially acceptable. This is an enormous privilege. 

 

In April, T. and I made a call for submissions of queer pandemic love stories—we wanted to hear how different queer folks in different places felt joy, love, solitude, anger, grief, hope or hopelessness, and tenderness throughout the pandemic. How queer love contained multitudes. People talked about love and desire and their togetherness, but they also talked about loneliness, about feeling “not queer enough,” and about seeking to belong in queer spaces or in general. In 2021, anti-trans bills are popping up all over the United States, and queer- and trans-phobic rhetoric still permeate professional, social, and intimate spaces. Social isolation and community dislocation during the pandemic have also been painful reminders of how dangerous the world can be for queer folks. 

 

This project is a snippet of queerness. Queerness as expansive, as nothing you can ever expect or anticipate. 

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With the music video, I gave over to the intimacy of a low-quality, silly, imperfect film. It is easy to make art that centres someone that you love, but it is also impossible. I want to show the way loving someone—in this queer, imperfect, vulnerable way—can change the way you look at the world. Maybe this person is yourself. Maybe it’s a friend, a lover, a partner, or anyone you consider your kin. But this love, this queer love in a dangerous time, is worth fighting for.