Hope feels big and unwieldy in my hands. If it grows too quickly, it becomes too heavy to carry. In this sound piece, I came to understand hope not as grand and beautiful, but as something sculptural, chipping away slowly at my own nihilism until ambition and resolve are found.

In this piece, I explore my murky sense of hope by distorting a vocal recording in which I list nostalgic memories, present-day mundanities, and idealize the possibility of mediocrity and leisure in the future. In a divided world further severed by my trans body, I dream of combining my soft childhood in middle America with my adult life in California, and a future not defined by perfection but by the safety to fail, to no longer give it my all. In 25 years, I dream of a world where I can get in a fight with my ex at a public pool, sleep in late, and eat whatever I want, the same way cis heteronormative bodies can.

As my distorted voice searches for meaning, I find myself in conversation with queer elders like Audre Lorde. They speak clearly, demanding I survive, and so I also find hope in the work that’s been done before me.

Queer bodies navigate time differently, and these times are “unprecedented,” so the piece struggles to find synchronicity, speeding up and slowing down to find harmony. Often interrupted by my own distorted thinking.

Hope, to me, is remembering the past, surviving the present, and idealizing the future, all at once.