Octavia: A disabled trans artist, trying to navigate the music scene.

TW: TRAUMA, THEMES OF DEATH.

Octavia is a folk singer who channels fairy-like energy while creating her music, while having strong philosophical values. In her late twenties, she's already experienced more than the average person will in their entire lifetime. From living in central Asia as a child, to trying to break into the music industry while battling a lifetime of trauma and discrimination, I learned about how Octavia has ended up living in Manchester and is currently pursuing her dream of becoming a musician.

 I visited Octavia's home a few weeks ago, only a short bus ride from where I live. After sitting down in their living room we immediately fell into conversation. I sat on the carpet opposite them on the couch as they introduced me to their way of living.

DISABILITY AND CHILDHOOD TRAUMA

“I'm not able to work. I have CPTSD and severe mental health issues stemming from childhood trauma. The thing about it is, you turn into a bit of a detective. I don't fucking remember it, but based on flashbacks and timelines of my past, I can make guesses. 

 I think I'm someone who deserves a bit of peace. I started writing songs a couple of years ago, it's the first thing that I've ever done where I feel it presents a life that I actually want. I feel very privileged in some ways. Obviously, being disabled isn't great, and it really is a barrier. To get a foot in the door, you have to be in the community and go to shows and have people know you, and that's hard to do when you're disabled. Thanks to the really measly support that I do get, that I've had to wrench out of the system, I'm able to sit around and play guitar all day, work on my music and keep my mental health supported. And, that's a gift. But now with Labour's reforms, I found a life I want, and it's being threatened.”

The Labour government had originally planned to make massive cuts, and for it to become harder to claim, as the eligibility criteria for PIP is tightened, on an already rigid and critiqued system. Statistics also break down the impact by constituency, revealing that more deprived areas were likely to be hardest hit. Although on the 26th of June the government confirmed a U-turn on its cuts to disability benefits in a bid to avert rebellion by more than 120 Labour backbenchers. Nevertheless, Labour's instability in its decision-making, as well as its habit of scapegoating society's most vulnerable, leaves even those receiving benefits and disability payments vulnerable and afraid.

Where do your political views fall?

“This country has the political system of an elected dictatorship. We basically elect the person who has absolute power. And I think it's worse than that, because we have a very centralised media system. There are half a dozen people who all have shared interests in charge of the media in the UK. And it means that you can't have a democracy unless you have a free press. And I don't think we have a free press, I think we have a whole elaborate pretence of a free press.”

Can you explain how music provides a more accessible life for you? 

“It's multiple things, I've had people say that I'm the most stubborn person they've ever met. I think it has to do with autism, and it's called PDA, or persistent desire for autonomy. It's just nice to be able to direct myself and do what I want. It's not like I sit around smoking weed and playing video games all day. I play guitar for four or five hours a day. I do mixing, mastering and songwriting. One of the things I love about songwriting and making albums is you have to be an interdisciplinary artist, I just love that if I get bored with one thing, there's always something else I can do.” 

Octavia went on to talk about her sensory issues and how working in music takes a toll on these issues.

“For me, it's multi-layered, because I have sensory synesthesia, which is when you have crossed wires. So I will hear a sound and it presents itself in my brain as a texture, sometimes colour, sometimes like a shape, just like a motion, like a movement. It can be extra overwhelming, basically, even for like, your average autistic person. If you're in a busy room and you're having a conversation and there's people talking around you, most people's brains filter the irrelevant noise out, but if you're autistic, it's like I can hear simultaneously every conversation happening around me, and I'm having to try really hard to pick out the conversation that's happening in front of me, it's really exhausting and hard to focus”

“It's a thing of despair sometimes because I feel with my disabilities, I just need someone in my corner. I just need someone who believes in me and is willing to take risks with me. And is willing to do some of the things that I'm less able to do. I can do the music, right? I can play songs and I can sing, but I'm not good at the social aspect of it. I'm not good at politicking and getting in people's good graces.”

“As a disabled person, I'm constantly fighting for space against people who are not. Against people who have big social networks around them so they could get 20 of their friends to turn up for a show. I don't have that many friends because I'm a fucking disabled shut-in, right, you know? If you're thin, people are more likely to trust you. That's another aspect of it, being a fat musician. It's like another layer of it as well. Because, you know, in an industry that so much depends on trust and first impressions, if you're fat, those go out the window most of the time.”

What would an accessible space look like for you? 

“It would probably be somewhere with a lot of seating areas, soft lighting, and not having a bunch of really loud pre-show music. People are respectful with their levels of volume as they are talking. I'm thinking of a small church or something with lots of pillows on the floor and fairy lights and people talking softly between things, and then the acts themselves being low volume.”

It's often said that artists who have hurt the most create the best artwork. It was Robert Hayden who said, “All art is pain suffered and outlived.” Do you believe the pain you have lived through influences your artwork? 

 “I don't think that it's necessary to have been through a lot to make great art. And I don't think it's a guarantee that you'll make it if you have been through a lot. But I think that it's fuel, right?  It's the thing, you either let it destroy you, or you find a use for it. And there's not really a third option. There isn't really an option where it goes away. And I think that's what a lot of trauma survivors want, just to go away. But unfortunately, that's not how it works. 

It's kind of similar to how I feel about people who are trans, because I long for a world in which a trans person can be unremarkable. But unfortunately, in the world that we live in, if you're a trans person, there is probably something in you that is remarkable, because you've had a level of self-knowledge and determination that most people couldn't touch. To live is an extraordinary thing.”

 As a child, Octavia bounced from city to city before moving to Central Asia when they were seven. She was raised by a man from Uzbekistan that her mother met while living in Asia. 

“I briefly lived with an elderly Uzbek gangster, and then I lived on my own. Then I was kind of adopted by the high school librarian at the school I went to, who was a very lovely American lady called Susan, who loved jazz and had five cats. I lived with her for a bit, and then she came down with a rare disease, Guillain-Barré Syndrome. So I had to move back to the UK. But moving back to the UK was really weird, and it also made me realise that I was autistic. The funny thing was, a lot of people had not met enough white people, so when I was an autistic child, they just assumed this is what white people are like.”

THE MUSIC INDUSTRY

When did you first enter the music industry? 

“I started teaching myself guitar about halfway through uni, and then the transgendering happened a bit after uni, then I moved to Manchester, and I kind of was homeless and didn't know what else to do with my life. At that point, all I owned was that guitar and a suitcase full of clothes, and that's it. And I was kind of like, Why, out of all the stuff that I've had to chuck, did I keep a guitar? And that kind of made me realise, actually, I really care about this, and I realised how much I cared about it. I was like, I should take this seriously, and I should learn how to write songs, and I should put my whole pussy into trying to be good at it.”

How are you finding your way through the music scene? 

“It's such a catch 22 to get off the ground because, I'm sure, if I were put in front of audiences, they would enjoy what I do, because they have consistently. And I'm sure if I were put in front of audiences, some of them would come back and want to see me again. I could build a fan base, but no one wants to put you in front of audiences if you don't already have one. It's also, like, you say, a bit soul-destroying, because I spent the last 18 months working all day, every day on an album. I wrote about 50 songs for it. I chose the best nine. I worked on them ceaselessly until I was happy with them. Then I spent eight months again, working all day every day on things like recording and mixing. You know, every song on the album probably went through a dozen revisions. And at the end of it, six people bought my album and, like, no one's listened to it. It's really hard to be making things and then just throwing them into the void, you know? And that's kind of just, what you have to do”

Do you think there's a systemic issue with the music scene itself? 

“Because it's such an oligarchic, top-down system, the people who are making all the money are people who are in Spotify and own music platforms. And there is money in the music industry, but it's very clustered at the top. And I think for everyone else, it's a thing where if you're a venue, your margins are thin as hell.  That means that if you're not selling out the venue, you're fucked. So the venues are very risk-averse, and then it means that promoters who are hiring out the venues for the venue hire are also risk-averse, because the venue necessarily has to increase the prices to pass on their thin margin. So the promoters are very risk-averse. The promoters really, really want to sell off tickets so they can break even. And it just means that there's a systemic economic collapse. And I think that, looking at the next couple of decades, things are only going to accelerate.

Maybe I'll be in whatever remains of Britain as a travelling bard or something. But I think that our economic models are not going to last, and it's part of why I think all of our politicians are in such a panic, because there's just no solution for it. After all, everything that could be done within their ideological framework has already been done. So, like, they basically just need to insist that there's not an economic crisis. And that's basically it.” 

AGING AND DEATH

I asked Octavia what age she was, and she joked that it was rude to ask a lady's age. I half jokingly apologised before Octavia went on to talk about their views on the stigmatism of ageing in society.

“We're so sensitive about age, and it's something I feel quite passionate about. Death positivity, I think that's related to ageing positivity, and even to our relationships with disability, because everyone will become disabled. That's the truth of ageing. Everyone will eventually become disabled, and it terrifies us. I think if you are disabled, it's just happening to you sooner. And I think that's part of why some people have such a horror of disability, because in some ways, it's the spectre of death.” 

Do you believe in God or at least an afterlife? 

“I don't know about God or a certain value of God. I think consciousness is a property of matter, if you have a complex enough network of information flow, it is conscious on a particular timescale, based on how fast the information moves. Matter doesn't have an end; we could keep finding more fundamental particles, it's all curled up inside itself, infinitely, fractal. Why would we think we're the top of that fractal? The universe is an enormous conscious being, but operating at a timescale beyond us. The only language we really have to describe God is that. Dying is like the sense of individuality dissolving, like meditation, when the border starts to thin out, but forever.”

Would you say you're a spiritual person? 

“So I think that the notion of spirit is tied into dualism, which goes back to Plato but is more prominent in modern philosophy with Descartes. Descartes, a foundational Enlightenment figure, said there are two kinds of stuff: the mind and the body, and the big dilemma was how they interact. For Descartes, it was God who ensured harmony between them. But to me, that just defers the issue, how does God do it? Is God a third thing? How do all these things interact? Which is why I'm a materialist. I believe the only kind of stuff is material, and the mind and consciousness are epiphenomena of that. But material reality, to me, is fractal and recursive and contains infinities of mind and consciousness.

That’s why I’m hesitant with the word spiritual, it implies a specific metaphysical belief. I believe in the idea of immanence, from theology, where God is already part of the world, not separate. So I’d describe myself more as religious, or even as a witch. I’m a big fan of Terry Pratchett. There's a line where, for a witch, worshipping a god is like worshipping the postman. That’s how I feel. There’s no mundane versus magical, everything is both already. Magic, spirit, consciousness, they’re all different ways of describing the same thing, already present in everything. That’s why you don’t need fancy tools to do magic, a tealight and a cup of water are enough. Everything’s already there. So yes, that’s a very long way round answering a question… yes.”

Octavia was clearly very well educated, her walls lined with psychology books, and her mind full of quotes and references. Octavia sang for me before I left, and I was blown away by the creative talent that sat beside her academic knowledge. Her voice was soft and almost hypnotic. If you are interested in angelic folk music, I strongly recommend checking out Octavia's music. You can find them at @yourdelicatefriend on Instagram. Or if you'd rather jump straight into listening you can find them on Soundcloud under the name Octavia Holyoake or click the link below: 

http://oholyoake.bandcamp.com/album/octavia-holyoake