Musician Gavin Russom is often referred to by the nickname “The Wizard” in reference to her talent of designing, building, and playing synthesizers. Best known as a member of the band LCD Soundsystem, over the course of a decades-long, multi-continent-spanning musical career, she has made a name for herself in both underground and mainstream circles. In July 2017, she revealed publicly that she is a transgender woman, and she has been touring to packed houses with LCD Soundsystem since then. I caught up with her via phone from her hotel in Glasgow, Scotland. Read the interview below and preview the portraits that were originally published in our fourth print issue.
“What feels really vital to me as a newly out trans person is to see the opportunity — not to slightly change the status quo so that it’s more inclusive — but to actually dismantle the status quo entirely.”
It’s only been a short number of months since you revealed your identity publicly. What has been surprising to you about the transition process?
I think that I had an unconscious expectation that as I started to transition I would feel like a different person, but in fact my experience has been the direct opposite. My experience as I transition and come out into the world, and when I’m on stage in front of thousands of people every night, is that whatever it was that was constantly in the way — that film or kind of fog — is becoming less and less.
As a cis person who wants to be the best ally I can be, what am I probably getting wrong? What do we get all wrong?
Sometimes people ask really inappropriate questions without realizing that they’re talking to another human being and not some kind of exotic anomaly or something. My most compassionate perspective is that I think we simply live in a world that is extremely limited in terms of its perspectives and ways to talk about human experience, and I think that largely has to do with capitalism. That’s just a reality that we all live with, but it is not reality. I think transgender identity is one of the things that there just isn’t a place for in mainstream society. I think I’m borrowing from Angela Davis by saying that those institutional models of normalcy are really harmful, and not just to the people who are oppressed by them, but to everybody across the board. The opportunity is there to start to reevaluate those models.
These conversations have, I think, become more sophisticated compared to how in the 90s everyone was focused on the idea of “tolerance.”
Right. Obviously inclusion is critical, but what feels really vital to me as a newly out trans person is to see the opportunity — not to slightly change the status quo so that it’s more inclusive — but to actually dismantle the status quo entirely. I think being trans is a head fuck. I think it’s also a head trip for people who aren’t trans, and I think inasmuch as we can all be in that together and try to honor each other’s spirits through that process, I think that’s the best thing I can think of.
Everyone’s transition is very personal, and some people choose new names while other people keep their original (or dead) name. I’m wondering if that’s connected to what you said earlier about feeling more yourself than ever before — that maybe it’s almost like you’re the most Gavin you’ve ever been?
I don’t know what I’m going to do about my name. It’s a huge thing; I’ve had my name for 43 years. Also, because it was not a common name when I was growing up, it never felt gendered to me. I think it may be a thing that is more complex and challenging as a person who’s transitioning later in life, but I don’t really know. To some degree, the big shift for me is that early on I thought I should wait until I was no longer in the public eye to deal with this trans thing, but that was not an actual option.
I think the way that trans-ness is sometimes approached is almost like, “They’re not this person anymore, they’re this new person with a new name.” But you’ve always been Gavin, and you’ve always been trans, just now people know.
Yeah, especially in the process of doing some recent interviews, something flipped for me and I realized transitioning was something accessible that I could actually do. It’s just a thing that people who are transitioning don’t really want other people to see. I don’t want other people to see it, but I don’t have a choice.
That’s really brave.
I might change my name down the line, but I travel enough that I have visas advanced down the road, so it raises some legal and practical concerns.
I’ve mentioned it before, and I think it is definitely related to being trans and not having the support and tools to really deal with that, but I have an addiction history. A big part of that experience, and for many people who have that history, is constantly having these breaks where I move to a city and become a different person, or suddenly totally stop hanging out with one bunch of people and start hanging out with some other group of people. I think that’s a common experience among addicts, and I just can’t do that shit anymore. On a spiritual level I cannot deal with a hard break like that. I need time. I know what my truth is: I’ve known it since I was a kid. I’m a woman. It’s very clear to me, but of exactly what type, that’s something I’m learning. That’s a person who I’m now getting the opportunity to know on a really deep level.
In your Pitchfork interview, you mentioned that your gender has played into your music throughout your musical output throughout your life. I was curious if you wanted to elaborate on that a little?
One important moment for me was when I realized that I wanted to make feminist music. I grew up making music with my cousin who lived down the street who was a guy, and then I played in bands in Providence with guys. But by the time I was in my late teens I realized that I wanted to make music with women. I didn’t know what that even meant, the idea that there was something like women’s music or feminist music or any of that stuff. That just hadn’t occurred to me, but I liked the Kim Gordon songs way more than the Thurston Moore songs.
Don’t we all?
I love Thurston Moore. I love his new band, but that was a very clear aesthetic framework for me when I was young. [I thought] there’s something going on here that really appeals to me and feels like the kind of space that I want to be in. Then, because I was studying composition at Bard, I encountered feminist music theory, and there actually was this idea or complex set of ideas about feminist music. On an inner level, that was just how I thought about what I did from then on. I could expound on that for a long time, but more appropriately with audio examples.
I became very heavily influenced by Susan McClary, who’s a feminist music theorist who teaches at UCLA. Then I was also very highly under the influence of Meredith Monk’s work. There was always for me this idea of fluidity, of moving fluidly between things that people think of as disciplines. I think that fluidity is something that I always really strived for — not only working fluidly between different media but also, even in a given piece of music, moving fluidly from one type of sound to another. That’s why synthesizers were so compelling for me too because they seem to offer this real way to do that in a direct way.
Are there any questions that nobody’s asking you that you wish you were being asked lately?
It’s funny actually because I have been doing interviews for a long time and nobody ever asked me the questions I wanted to answer. Now everybody’s asking me the questions I want to answer. Well, I will just say, to end on a positive note and thinking about the fashion story that will accompany this interview, there is something that is so joyful about expressing myself through dress and makeup that is not connected to attracting another person, that has absolutely nothing to do with somebody else. I think this is often misunderstood because of the patriarchal nature of our culture. I would love for any person who hasn’t experienced that, who doesn’t understand that, to know that it is a real and amazing thing. It is not about changing something. It is about expressing something.
Check out a behind-the-scenes preview of our photo shoot:
For more information please visit gavinrayna.com
Editorial Credits:
Photographer: Eric T. White
Senior Photo Director: Asher Torres
Creative Director: Morgan T. Stuart
Hair: Mischa G
Makeup: Katie Page
Stylist: Gabriel Held
Stylist Assistant: Gary Freeman
Creative Direction & Stylist Assistant: Douglas Cornwall, III
Production Assistant: Kyle Stuart
Assistant Photogarpher: Kimari Hazward
Production Assistants: Kyle Stuart and George Kessel IV
Location: Knick Studios
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