Issue 02

Queer Out Here Issue 02

Queer Out Here Issue 02 cover by Eris Barnes

Join us on a reflective journey into the outdoors. Bask in spaces present, remembered and imagined; travel from mountain lakes to holy wells, from canals to backyard ponds; grapple with physical and emotional hardship; take your ears adventuring. (We’ve even got a marriage proposal thrown in for good measure!) The pieces in Queer Out Here Issue 02 include audio postcards, conversations, music, musings, field recording and poetry from queer/LGBTQIA+ folks around the world.

If you enjoy this audio zine, please share it with your friends - and let us know via Twitter, Facebook or email.

Information about Issue 02

Length: 1:09:28

Transcript: Google Docs / PDF

File size: 133.4MB

High quality audio version: Google Drive (1GB, .wav)

Cover art: Eris Barnes (Tumblr/Twitter). Eris writes, “My inspiration for the cover was pretty solely based on a tree I remember in my primary school when I was maybe 5 or 6 years old. It was the hip, happening place for making fake food out of mud and rocks, and daring your friends to eat the little purple flowers. Unfortunately, the tree was torn down during the school's renovations on the play equipment and football field, but that only motivated me more to draw my memories of it.”

Content notes: The pieces in Queer Out Here talk about many things related to being queer and the outdoors. This issue contains some swearing, mentions of physical and emotional distress, difficult family relationships and social situations, experiences of physical injury and hardship, danger from the elements and being misgendered. If you have specific anxieties or triggers, you could check the transcript for particular words or ask a trusted friend to listen and give you feedback. If we've missed something obvious, please send us an email so we can add it. Some people might wish to take note of the following:

  1. Lady’s Well, Holystone - starts at 3:22 - wind distortion in audio

  2. Failure - starts at 21:51 - emotional distress, mentions difficult family relationships

  3. Nonbinary Nomads - starts at 47:01 - mentions minor physical injuries and physical danger from the elements, hunger and thirst, uses the word “crazy”, discusses being misgendered

  4. On the Cuckoo Trail - starts at 59:16 - at one point a fly buzzes close in the right channel

Running order:

  1. Lady’s Well, Holystone - Mags

  2. Ripples in a Pond at Night - Mary Ann Thomas

  3. Beloved (Emily in Love and Ortanique) - Stone Strike’s Lost Weekend Remix

  4. Failure - Julia Freeman

  5. Snow, Tyres, Breath, Song - Nikki

  6. No Gender - Lise

  7. Solo Camping at Murray Lake - Fenrir Cerebellion

  8. Nonbinary Nomads - Max and Jaye

  9. Widewater - Dru Marland

  10. On the Cuckoo Trail - Chrissy, June and Jonathan

Show notes for Issue 02

Introduction - Jonathan and Allysse

  • 0:00:00

  • Transcript

  • Short description: Opener (45 seconds), welcome, thank yous and housekeeping.

Sweeper - Rainbow Ramblers

Lady’s Well, Holystone - Mags

  • 0:03:22

  • Transcript

  • Short description: Field recording/monologue. A walk around Lady’s Well in Holystone, Northumberland National Park.

  • Creator bio: Mags is 50 years old and has lived in the South East of England for the last 20 years. She was born in Newcastle Upon Tyne and returns to the area several times a year. Mags enjoys travel and photography.

  • Creator link: Twitter

  • Creator statement: “This recording was made in May 2018 during a visit to Northumberland National Park. Lady's Well, which is in the care of the National Trust, lies on the edge of the village of Holystone. The pool is surrounded by a grove of trees and it is rumoured that it was used to baptise early Christians. The village is supplied with its water from the spring that also feeds the pool. A stone cross was added to the pool in the Victorian era. A 15th century statue of St Paulinus lies at the east end of the pool. What were the origins of the well? Were they pagan, Roman or perhaps celtic? One can only speculate.”

Ripples in a Pond at Night - Mary Ann Thomas

  • 0:08:06

  • Transcript

  • Short description: Monologue. I watched sunset from the backyard of the house I lived in while in rural upstate NY. Mohawk land.

  • Creator bio: Mary Ann Thomas is the brown queer daughter of Indian immigrant parents, a travel nurse, bike tourist, and writer. She has bicycled over 10,000 miles in the last five years: in 2014, she bicycled solo from San Diego to Montreal; in 2017, she biked across India from the Himalayas to Kerala, the state at the tip of the subcontinent where her family is from. As a writer, she has attended the VONA Travel Writing Workshop in 2015 and 2017. Since 2015, her work has been published in numerous literary journals and travel platforms, which include Autostraddle, She Explores, Panorama: The Journal of Intelligent Travel, The Rumpus, and On She Goes. She has been featured on several podcasts, including The Dirtbag Diaries, Musafir Stories, and The Ethical Traveler. She is a presenter at the WTF Bikexplorers Summit.

  • Creator links: Instagram / Website

  • Creator statement: “Living in a rural area increased my capacity to take on responsibilities and clear my mind. This happened through the time I spent outside, watching ripples on the water, feeling the sun on my skin, and letting stress dissolve from my body. In this piece, I sit out by the pond and talk about writing, being outside, and pleasure.”

Beloved (Emily in Love and Ortanique) - Stone Strike’s Lost Weekend Remix

  • 0:17:30

  • Transcript

  • Short description: Ambient music. A remix I made of an original tune by Emily In Love & Ortanique. (Used with permission.)

  • Creator bio: Stone Strike grew up in the foothills of the Misty Mountains in North Wales before packing my spotted hanky on a stick, eventually washing up on the unforgiving concrete shores of London.

  • Creator links: Stone Strike has chosen to highlight the work of Emily in Love and Ortanique

  • Creator statement: “Getting older and being less able to "get out and about", I've turned increasingly to music for its ability to invoke a sense of time and space. The concept of hauntology has brought its own resonance - the music of Burial being a prime example. When Emily sent me her new tune, I was struck by that same sense of time and space and inspired to remix it in a way which reflected that. I took a small sample from the tune, applied some granular synthesis and a minimal amount of post-production. The result is, I hope, true to the original while highlighting that sense of urban hiraeth that I felt on first listen.”

Sweeper - Jessica

Failure - Julia Freeman

  • 0:21:51

  • Transcript

  • Short description: Monologue. Thinking about failing.

  • Creator bio: Julia is a geek, currently residing in Amsterdam, she built herself a bike, and has since been riding far and wide, training for ultra endurance bike racing.

  • Creator link: Twitter

  • Creator statement: “Monologue discussing thoughts on failure, both in an outdoors context and for LGBTQ persons.”

Snow, Tyres, Breath, Song - Nikki

  • 0:34:10

  • Transcript

  • Short description: Field recording. A field recording of movement and stillness in the snow.

  • Creator bio: Nikki is newly mobile by foot and by bike and enjoying exploring new territories close to home and further afield.

  • Creator statement: “The margins of a park in a large city. It has a reputation as a popular place for cruising and, as a woman who wanders around on her own a lot, I've been explicitly and implicitly warned to stay away from here. In the early hours of the morning, however, I have the woods to myself, free from stigma or fearmongering, and my tyres are the first marks in the freshly fallen snow. Intense concentration on the subtleties of speed, traction, balance and momentum dissolves as I come to a stop: my awareness first shifting to my laboured breathing and then outwards to the songs of the birds that are around and above me. Introspection returns as I later contemplate my evolving relationship to this location, my identity and the assumptions made by myself and others. For a while there though, all that had dropped away and it was just me, my bike, the snow and the birds.”

No Gender - Lise

  • 0:37:37

  • Transcript

  • Short description: Monologue with field recordings. Living with no gender and how the nature helps.

  • Creator bio: Lise is a graphic designer who lives in France. Since they were young, they were looking for their gender but were never happy with the boy or the girl look. After time, they find the answer: they are no gender, that's all. Just a human on Earth.

  • Creator link: Online portfolio

  • Creator statement: “In conversation about being no gender and how I live it. How the nature helps.”

Solo Camping at Murray Lake - Fenrir Cerebellion

  • 0:42:20

  • Transcript

  • Short description: Field recording/monologue. A brief description of my time at the north end of Murray lake while boiling water for tea. Nlaka'pamux territory.

  • Creator bio: Fenrir is a white, ace-aro, gendervoid, mentally ill settler living on Unceded Coast Salish Territory, in the city of Vancouver. They come from and are eager to return to the Okanagan, Nlaka’pamux Territory, in the semi-arid climate of the Rocky Mountains. They moved to the city for medical resources in their transition and forgot to leave when they finished, until their friends and community started to leave the city one by one for the mountains, the islands, or across the continent. As a writer, musician, and avid knitter, they look forward to finding some remote place to live with their dog Sisko, where their primary concern is collecting enough firewood for winter.

  • Creator links: Twitter / Website

  • Creator statement: “After accidentally climbing a mountain at a smaller campsite the previous day, my dog and I moved to a quieter campground up the Coquihalla. It was my first time solo camping since my summer bike tour two years ago. After this recording, my cassette stove had just enough gas left for a morning cup of tea the next day, just before leaving.”

Sweeper - Emily

Nonbinary Nomads - Max and Jaye

  • 0:47:01

  • Transcript

  • Short description: Conversation. Audio recording about us and our adventures.

  • Creator bio: Max and Jaye are a nonbinary couple living in Monterey, CA. They do one backpacking trip every month and have explored tons of the USA including Zion, Yosemite, Bryce Canyon (to name a few)! Their future plans include hiking the John Muir Trail (summer of 2019) and getting married (summer of 2020). For their honeymoon, they plan on hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. Their other interests include roller derby, Olympic lifting, crossfit, reading, gardening and dogs!

  • Creator links: YouTube / Instagram / Facebook

  • Creator statement: “Max and Jaye are being interviewed in a car next to Lake Mary in Mammoth Lakes, CA during their hiking trip in the Sierras.”

Widewater - Dru Marland

  • 0:56:35

  • Transcript

  • Short description: Poetry. A bit of a state-of-the-nation poem, written in the aftermath of the Brexit referendum.

  • Creator bio: Dru is a poet, illustrator and mechanic who lives and works on a canal boat in the West of England.

  • Creator link: Blog

  • Creator statement: “The canal is a long, thin village, with a very diverse community living and moving on it, threading through the heart of Deep England.”

On the Cuckoo Trail - Chrissy, June and Jonathan

  • 0:59:16

  • Transcript

  • Short description: Interview/sound art. Three people having a chat during a summer walk along the Cuckoo Trail in East Sussex.

  • Creator/participant bios: Chrissy is a journalist, specialising in radio and audio. She is also a political campaigner. June is a keen hillwalker and chorister who loves all that Hastings has to offer. Jonathan is a walker and a stickybeak. He is one of the editors of Queer Out Here. All three are members of the Hastings and Rother Rainbow Alliance.

  • Creator/participant links: Jonathan: Blog / Twitter Chrissy: Instagram / Twitter

  • Creator statement: Jonathan: “A hot summer day, a busy East Sussex rail trail, a long group walk with HRRA’s Rainbow Ramblers. I recorded a meandering conversation with Chrissy and June as we walked and talked our way through a variety of subjects including political activism, living by the sea, local community networks and how we got into walking. With the more experimental edit, I have tried to emphasise the rhythm of walking and the momentum of our footsteps. I had to cut more than half of the original conversation, and I ended up rearranging narratives, weaving them together and drawing echoes of different stories through the piece. I hope that this also gives a sense of the fragmentary nature of conversations on long group walks - how people move around and how snippets of conversation can blend together into a new kind of whole.”

Conclusion - Allysse and Jonathan

  • 1:08:05

  • Transcript

  • Short description: Concluding remarks from the editors.