Photo by Chris Wong/iStock

In 2005, I was a 15-year-old trans queerdo who had no idea who I was. Living in a sleepy suburb in Ottawa, I didn’t know any trans people and only saw them portrayed in media as caricatures of monstrosity or madness. I was depressed, anxious, and felt like I didn’t belong anywhere, though I didn’t know exactly why. I survived through music. I wrote songs on my acoustic guitar in my bedroom alone, because I felt uncomfortable singing in front of others. When I sang, I felt whole, unashamed, unburdened. Music kept my heart alive.

That same year, the CBC launched its first original podcast, CBC Radio 3 Podcast with Grant Lawrence, which I began to download onto my iPod religiously each week. I found my favourite Canadian indie bands through it: Miracle Fortress, The Darling DeMaes, Chad VanGaalen, Patrick Watson, and The New Pornographers, whose high-energy anthem “Letter From An Occupant” hooked me with its singalong lyrics and layered harmonies. I devoured their entire catalogue of indie-power pop-rock gold. From there, I got into the band members’ solo careers: the poppy guitar gems on A.C. Newman’s The Slow Wonder, the distinct theatricality of Dan Bejar’s songwriting on Destroyer’s Rubies, and Neko Case’s iconic country-twanged voice on her live album The Tigers Have Spoken. Case’s voice enamoured me the most: I loved its earthy quality, so unlike the airy pop singers I had grown up listening to who sounded delicate and feminine.

When I first heard Case’s music, it cut through the fog of my depression. I felt a sense of wonder, a connection to something larger. That link to spirit sparked life in me when I felt empty and disconnected. I wanted to be a professional musician like Case, but I didn’t pursue music seriously. Later, I realized that I felt like I didn’t deserve the things I wanted because of the shame I had internalized growing up in a transphobic world that told me transness was a mental illness. That sense of pathology seeped into my self-awareness, clouding my view of myself. I forced myself to forget my dreams of being a musician. But a lingering desire has always been with me since, a quiet voice that has slowly been getting louder over time.

Without inspiration from other musicians, that voice would not be as loud and clear as it is today. It wouldn’t be so insistent. When Case released Fox Confessor Brings the Flood in 2006, that still-quiet voice was nourished. Entering the lush world of Case’s music, a space animate with creatures led by their instincts, I heard the wolf howl in her voice, intuited that she was more animal than woman, that she was “a person who is not quite a woman, not quite a man,” as she writes her recent memoir The Harder I Fight The More I Love You. Her untamed femininity made me feel seen in my own genderqueerness, though I had no words for it at the time.

Twenty years later, I have been on testosterone for two years and am getting back into singing after many years away from it. Now when I sing, I feel powerful and whole in a different way: the rightness of my body infuses singing with a new euphoria that contains no dissonance. Last year, I signed up for a virtual class for singers on T taught by a trans musician named Eli. Living outside of Victoria, B.C. in a small rural community, I couldn’t find any options for in-person singing lessons taught by a trans singer. I felt lucky to have stumbled upon an online option. I have only a few trans friends, so being in a space with all non-binary and transmasculine singers felt so healing. It was one of the first times I didn’t feel othered. There was so much we could relate on, from awkward vocal cracks on T to the gender euphoria of singing deep notes. It’s so uncommon for me to feel like I belong somewhere. I felt just like I had listening to Case’s music as a teenager.

Case showed me a different way to embody gender I hadn’t seen anywhere else. As a trans teen, it was lifesaving. She showed me that my being was not only possible, but natural. I could be a creature of the forest just like her. The knowledge that I was as natural as Case, as natural as an animal, lit a fire in me that burned away some of the shame I carried, that kept burning as I grew up, enough to keep the shame from fully engulfing me. The power of that self-belief engendered by witnessing another’s raucous existence cannot be overstated—it kept me alive.

In an interview with NPR in 2013, Case said, “I don’t really think of myself specifically as a woman, you know? I’m kind of a critter. I’m an animal.” During an interview with PBS News Hour in 2025, she said that she has “never felt like a girl” and that “knowing who you are is a really big deal. I’m a genderfluid person.” Hearing her confirm what I had always intuited feels like a bow being tied atop a gift.

As I begin to write songs again, Case’s music is still there for me. Reading her memoir reminds me that art is an essential exchange: “Loving someone else’s art can give you a ride at least halfway to where you are trying to go. Even if you don’t know where that is yet.” Having never given myself the freedom to imagine before, I don’t know exactly where I’m going with my own music yet. But I know I’ll get far enough that I can begin to see all the possibilities I had previously denied myself.