Woodpecker drums up
thin mist and scattered birdsong.
Sudden patch of ice.

Early March in Oslo, and here I am again longing for spring. I can feel it creaking and rumbling under the ice and lingering desperations of winter. Ceramic spring - still cold and fragile, a bit chipped in places, but with its own brittle beauty.

The magpies have started chattering and rasping about the repairs they are making to their big nest in the birch. The sun has returned with a mix of gentle warmth and brutal honesty. I feel shabby and worn, then energized and inspired, then anxious and tired - and curious about how my experience of different seasons has stayed the same over time yet is also changing subtly as I age. Life always both cyclical and spiraling.

For the past few years I have become a part of queer-centric micropublisher Mohini Books. I have had the great pleasure and frustration of trying my hand at co-editing an anthology of queer perspectives on the Covid-19 pandemic, and now "Queers In Quarantine" is finally in print and we will officially launch it on March 11th. May it find its way to everyone who needs to discover it, and may it be shared in all sorts of likely and unlikely places! I am very proud to have helped to make it happen. I have learned a lot from the process and collaboration of co-creating it, and I got to slip one of my own poems in among all the other juicy queer richness.

A big project this year is the latest project and performance with 71bodies, called "A True Story". It premiers in Bergen in June 2023. Once again we invite you to join us in exploring and celebrating trans lives and the many forms of loving, learning connections and family we are part of. Creating and performing with 71bodies is always transformative for me, and we do our best to invite and hold transformative space for our audience too.

Last and not least I am inching towards new recordings and releases of my own songs and poetry. More on that later. I give myself permission to deeply want to share my words and voice, and to often be scared, slow and distracted along the way. Oh look, the magpies have brought a new stick to add to the nest! I trust they have their own system of what goes where and how. I practice extending that trust to myself.

Now it's time to do some singing for my house plants, and hear what feedback they may have. Other than the amazingly resilient Monstera who is saying "Yes, yes, decent song, but just fucking re-pot me already!" - it will happen this weekend, you have my word!

The past two years have been a bit of everything and a lot of happening. With a global pandemic as a constant influence on all plans. I have worked a lot - with my clients in my therapy & coaching practice, with my teams and tasks at the University of Oslo, and with my artistic and activist collaborations. I am always learning. I learn from my clients and colleagues, from fellow artists and activists, from my chosen family, from being and doing. I get lost and confused and stumble back on track.

I am involved in several projects I feel lucky and proud to be part of: Promoting non-binary representation as part of Linda Bournane Engelberth's photo series Outside the binary, creating and performing with transgender inclusive dance and performance company 71Bodies, making queer space, dialogue and resistance with Book of Change and Triumf Amiria and celebrating queer voices and perspectives with Mohini books and the upcoming anthology Queers in Quarantine.

I have a big stack of unrecorded songs and poems that I want to share more of with you, at least a selection of them. I don't know how yet. In the last two years I have been exploring earth and water again, and now fire is making itself felt. There will be both letting go and letting grow, and I am both anxious and excited about that!

Performing Sheman and the Dollfaces as part of the Circus Village at Torshov has been a lot of fun - thank you everyone who came to the show (though why you keep cheering for that inflated poseur Sheman is beyond me! Hrmph!). The circus is still happening this weekend, so go and see the remaining shows while you can!

One of the best things about performing at that sort of event - apart from getting to perform at that sort of event, I mean - is that I get in to the other shows for free. A sweet deal for a circus lover on a tight rope...er...I mean, budget. Last weekend I happily grinned my way through Jeanne Mordoj's stripped down and brilliant "La Poème", and Frida Odden Brinkman's weird and wonderful "1 1/2", and of course whooped it up for the hard working fakirs of Pain Solution and their visiting guests - once again giving true meaning to the expression "painfully funny". If you are in France or New York in the near future, check Jeanne Mordoj's webpage, and GO SEE HER SHOW. Really. Do it.

You can still catch a performance of "1 1/2" and/or the sideshow in Oslo this weekend, and I highly recommend both. I will also be going to see "Footnotes and handspun" by Ilmatila tomorrow - who can resist the combo of a giant trapese and a live cello score?

In other news, it's time for an orgy of queer film, at Skeive Filmer. They've already hosted a hypnotic performance by Benjamin Dukhan at Black Box Theater (last Wednesday & Thursday), and tonight the film festival itself opens with a bang and a ball, as it were, with "I am Divine" and another performance by Dukhan's alter ego "Burger Girl" at the party at Revolver after the opening film. I will see you in the ticket line and/or on the dance floor - and then tomorrow for a juicy late lunch with Buck Angel and "Sexing the Transman"! WOOF!

One last thing for now: Next chance to hear me howl with a pack of other lovely forest creatures and engaged activists is Sept. 28th, in the café at Blitz (me, Redwood and Sangre de Muerdado) and at Maksitaksi (Ohnesorg, David Rovics). Come and be serenaded and/or sing along!