Olympia Music History Project

Freddie Havens

Interviewed by Mariella Luz

March 7, 2025

‍

Mariella Luz

Today is Friday, March 7th, 2025. It's 11 o'clock, and I am in Olympia, Washington. My name is Mariella Luz. Would you like to introduce yourself? 

‍

Freddie Havens

Yeah. I'm Freddie Havens, that's me. 

‍

Mariella Luz

Awesome. Thank you, Freddie, for being here today. Do you wanna start off by telling us what drew you to Olympia and encouraged you to stay? I know that you recently moved back too. Could you tell us about how that came about? 

‍

Freddie Havens

So, originally, the first time I lived in Olympia, I moved here in the summer of 1997. My youth was spent going to shows in Olympia, even though I grew up in Kirkland, Washington.

And… unfortunately, up in that area, that time span was when the teen dance ordinance was making it really hard or prohibitively expensive or just illegal to throw all ages shows- and any all-ages youth event, really- in the Seattle area. So part of our punk kid culture was just driving up and down I-5 to try to see the bands that we liked, and sometimes we had to drive to other cities to see Seattle bands. As a teenager, I think mainly I would come to the Capitol Theater or Capitol Theater backstage to see shows. In that time I lived in a punk house in Seattle from about ‘94 and ‘95. I lived there for a couple years, and we also hosted a lot of bands from out of town and had shows in our house. So there was this connection to people- I made friends in Olympia and I had people that knew people in Olympia, so Olympia bands would play in our basement. And yeah, it was specifically in 1997- I was a person looking for my queer punk community, specifically, because there were only so many of us queer punks at the time. That's how it felt. And I had made a lot of friends up and down the Northwest Vancouver, Bellingham, Olympia, Portland. But my local little version of queer community was really like three people. And so the punk scene was really my home, but I needed to build out that queer chosen family really. Another reason I would say Olympia was the place I ended up was there was a difference between the Olympia music scene and Seattle, Portland, these other cities. It's the politics of Olympia. It's not only Riot Grrrl, it's not only queer core, but I knew some people there and they were awesome. And so I moved there, and that was part of it. But this particular moment in queer punk feminism in Olympia really was- to me, the way I experienced it- much more intersectional, which is not a word that I used at the time. I really didn't start knowing intersectional feminism and what that means until later. But one of the people I knew in Olympia was Nomy Lamm. And we were not tight friends, but… the year before I moved to Olympia, a friend of mine- a really important friend of mine- had an accident and they became disabled.

They became a double leg amputee after having this accident. So the politics of disability and not only just having consciousness around gender and sexuality- but including disability in your punk politics- was very personal. Nomy had always written about that in zines. And we became better friends because my friend who had the accident also was in the zine community, in Riot Grrrl, in the queer zine feminism world. There's always been like more of a feminist consciousness around the Olympia music scene. But it was also this other layer of intersectionality and talking about things like fat phobia and disability. That's where I wanted to be with politics. My values were aligned with this scene. It felt very real, you know? 

‍

[00:04:51] 

Mariella Luz

So how long did you live in Olympia, the first time around?

‍

Freddie Havens

1997 to 2003. Six years, and a great important moment for me for sure. Because we didn't have a lot of really interesting creative queer people all in this time and place. There was always new young queer people moving to town for Evergreen. But there was also the bands like the Need and Sleater-Kinney, and some of the other local queer and female bands. They were a little beacon to people all over the country. So there would be like a new little wave of young folks moving in every year. And that was always keeping things interesting, bringing in fresh energy and creativity and really kind of gathering people around an aesthetic and politics at the same time. And I think that still kind of happens. I definitely see the new youth arriving in the fall for Evergreen. I'm not as like a part of the music community directly anymore, so I don't notice exactly how that translates to the music scene. But I think that still happens. There's new young people every year who are still tuned into Olympia and showing up.

‍

Mariella Luz

Yeah, there's always- I think annually or semi-annually- a new venue that will pop up that didn't exist before. You know, one goes away, another sort of takes its place. Which I think is a great thing about Olympia. In that time that you were here, two pretty important events happened for the queer community that were not necessarily Evergreen related. Maybe you worked on both? I know that you worked on one- the Transfused, which has its 25th anniversary this year… I mean, some of them were Greeners, but primarily [the Tranfused participants] didn't come for Evergreen. And then Homo A Go Go. Do you wanna talk about either of those?

‍

[00:06:55] Freddie Havens

Yeah, one of the most unique things I've ever done in my life was work on the Transfused, which was a DIY punk rock opera that Nomy Lamm and the Need wrote. And we did the original staging- the one and only staging- of the Transfused, in the Summer of 2000. It was a very, very fun, very big, all-hands-on-deck-community undertaking. I mean DIY is kind of a cliche, but it really was something really outside of a lot of our previous experience. We were just either people who had been making music in the punk scene or… what I was bringing to it was experience as a drag performer. And none of us had that much [of a] past with producing theater. We definitely had people involved who performed as actors and performers in musical theater, or just theater productions, locally. And I mean, that experience was vital, crucial. But producing the whole thing is a whole lot to learn. Not a small little revue, not a little cabaret, but a full length, 90 minute, singing, dancing, rock opera. And that was what we set out to do. And I love the Transfused. It's so special to me. I was friends with Nomy and I had performed with her in local drag shows that we put on. She would either be performing in the show, or we were maybe doing little numbers together. And again, up and down I-5, we were doing these very edgy all-ages drag and performance art events with our friends in Portland, Olympia, Seattle, Vancouver, BC, that had been going on for a couple years after I moved here. And I was also organizing those, and bringing the punk ethic of having all-ages be the approach, always trying to keep that distinction, since the way I experienced mainstream lesbian/gay culture is it revolved around bar culture. Coming from a punk community that was kind of locked out- I mean, we were locked out of bar culture when we were underage- I still had this allegiance to all-ages shows. And so the drag shows were gonna be all ages too. And that was important- to give queer youth space and create a little intergenerational connection as well. So yeah, the drag shows were this important place for us to get creative and also work out our gender politics. That was just brewing for a lot of us, and it was a space I basically made for myself to kind of experiment as a performer. And that was also very fun. And when Radio and Rachel started collaborating with Nomy and talking about maybe doing a rock opera, I was immediately excited. I don't remember exactly how these conversations got going, but I remember Nomy and I kicking it around because they had performed together doing some other stuff. And I can't remember exactly what they had [done together] but Nomy had sang with them doing these other things. Of course, Nomy has this killer voice and she sounds great with the kind of metal power… How do you say it really well? I don't know, but the sound of the Need and Nomy together is really special, I think. They were talking about writing this rock opera and they got started doing it, and I felt so excited to somehow be a part of it. All these parts were singing parts, almost every single part of all the characters. It's really a rock opera where almost every single line is sung, not a musical where you have a lot of speaking parts. Anyway, I was like, “I don't know how to sing. I'm really not a singer,” but I wanted to be involved. I was literally too shy to audition to see myself getting cast in the rock opera. So I was like, maybe Nomy would let me be the director- which is a wild thing to do because I've never… I was only directing and choreographing these little drag numbers for local, small drag shows. But somehow I had this determination, that I could handle it. And I remember sitting in Nomy's kitchen or bathroom or something, we were doing something together and I was like, “I'm gonna just pitch myself.” We're having a little one-on-one time and I was like, “What if I was the director of this thing you're doing?” And I got this reaction of like, huh, hmm. It wasn't like, “Oh, totally.” It was like, hmmmm. But they didn't really have anyone else yet. And eventually me and this other person were kind of in the running. Eventually I got chosen and I think it was kind of gutsy of them to choose me without the experience. The other person actually had more theater and choreography experience, but they knew me better and they had a little more faith in my aesthetic and my politics, just 'cause they knew me more. That was a really important core of the show, because… I did know Nomy, but I didn't know Radio and Rachel too well. We were acquainted for sure, but hadn't really collaborated or worked on anything. Anyway, I became the director and choreographer and I guess I would sort of say art director of all the things. And that was my whole life for a year until we staged it in the summer of 2000. And I think Homo A Go Go... So Lady Fest was happening at the same time. It was a wild year for Olympia. People were mobilized. I mean, if you weren't doing something with the Transfused, you were doing something with Lady Fest. Everything was like going off at once, really. And I think Homo A Go Go came…

‍

Mariella Luz

It was in 2002. 

‍

Freddie Havens

Yeah, yeah. After that. I didn't organize anything with Homo A Go Go. I was happy to have it here and it was really fun. And, one of the people that moved to Town for the Transfused became one of the Homo A Go Go organizers, Ed Varga. So that was a little trickle down that really was good for Olympia. 

‍

[00:14:03] 

‍

Mariella Luz

I feel like the Transfused brought a bunch of folks to Olympia that ended up sticking around, at least for a little while. Beth Stinson, who was in the production, I think moved here... Do you wanna tell us a little bit- we interviewed Nomy and Radio and Ed and Rachel already, but no one's really talked about the production part of the Transfused. I don't think I even realized that it took a year to get it all ready to be viewed. 

‍

Freddie Havens

I mean, under a year- because they started writing it at some point in the summer of 1999, and then it was on the stage early summer of 2000. So a little under a year. It started with auditions, and there were characters we had a real specific vibe in mind [for] as you do, which you should have for your show. And an important part of auditions was finding someone who could play the character who was in a wheelchair. We also were hoping to cast someone who was a wheelchair user or a disabled person. Our scope and our reach was really just not big enough, so we didn't do that. But locally, we had auditions at the Midnight Sun around… it must have been at the end of November or maybe early December. Our auditions were the week after the WTO protest in Seattle. And I knew a few of the organizers for some actions at the WTO because I kind of worked with them on other things- other direct actions, other street protests.

And my housemate also was involved. So the lead up to these auditions was also a bunch of people gathered at my house- probably like 10 people sleeping on the floor of my house the night before the WTO, and I think it was November 29th, 30th. It was several days long, that protest. Anyway, I was really nervous about conducting auditions because I had not done any formal training in dance or theater, and I'd never participated in an audition. So I winged it and we got a great cast and it worked out, but it was probably one of the scariest parts of the whole thing for me 'cause I had to really step into this leadership role and be like, “Okay, everybody, show me what you got. You all know how to do a lot more than I do, but show me,” you know? Also, I went up to the WTO protest with a group of friends from Portland, and we were up in all these spots where people were doing civil disobedience.

There were police everywhere. It was a cool, amazing protest experience that I will always treasure because we truly felt we did pull something off that was very effective. Also, the whole time I had to try not to get arrested, which was not that hard. It was pretty clear how to stay out of the way of the police, but it was a background fear that I would be arrested and not be able to get back for the auditions. I think that experience- as well as some other crossover I have with the activist community- is very present in the show because we were trying to show this group of people having a resistance struggle. So there's parts of the show that are directly kind of inspired by street protest stuff that I had participated in. The other stuff about our production- so, not being a standing theater company, we had to figure out where to stage this. Of course we wanted to do it at the Capitol Theater, and eventually that worked out. But that is a venue that you can't just use as a rehearsal space, ‘cause at the time there was a really busy slate of movies and shows all the time at the Capitol Theater. So we also had to find places to rehearse that were large enough to replicate the Capitol Theater stage, and that was tricky. We did a lot of rehearsals at The Midnight Sun, which is no longer a venue. But Midnight Sun was a really important help to us. We not only had some fundraisers there, but it was a great all ages venue during that window of time. I believe they let us use that space maybe for free or for super, super low cost to do rehearsals. So we did that for quite a few months. We also rehearsed upstairs in Dub Narcotic Studio’s recording area. And I think we even got together at Arrowspace at one point. I think we got together in my garage at one point and we would do little bits of rehearsing wherever we could find a spot. One of the challenges and one of the biggest expenses of the show was using wireless mics and finding enough of them that were available. And Ed Varga was a huge, major clutch deliverer of the sound expertise for this. We had a lot of sound stuff to figure out because we had to decide where to place the band and leave enough room for the staging. We had only a limited number of wireless mics, and we had a cast of- I haven't looked in a while, must have been at least 20 people in the cast. So there were mics that had to be traded during the show. We had this amazing stage manager, Katie [Fogg], and Jerry Lee, who helped rotate these mics amongst all the performers because we couldn't just leave one person with their mic on the whole time, which I think is probably just a terrible way to do it. It's complicated, but everybody figured out a way to do that. There were so many tricky things, and there were so many ways that I felt like I was quite over my head with parts of this show, and yet also having the best time ever. And I think the Transfused is excellent, truly musically amazing. And the strength, the best, best part of the show is the songs, which is how a musical should be, how a rock opera should be. I hope that… in this coming year we're having the 25th anniversary of the Transfused and they are talking about putting the words and music into a published form so that other people could stage the musical. I super hope that that comes together because to me, these songs are great examples of a rock opera, as good as anything that's been put out- in my opinion- on the bigger stages. The famous productions that have come out- to me, these songs are just as good. And very meaningful in this moment, actually, because they are about a minority of people trying to build resistance to some severe oppression. Anyway, I hope we actually get that done and maybe also just get this footage we have up online so that people can just watch the show. All of that is stuff we've been talking about and I think Radio and Rachel and Nomy are working on it now, so that is exciting.

But yeah, we don't have an amazing, single great-quality documentation of it. We do have something that was shot by a teacher at Evergreen. Someone in the media department there got some people together to do a shoot for one of the shows, and that is the best documentation we have. But what's online, I don't know if it's a very good rendering of that. I'm gonna be digging in my footage. I might have some performance footage, but it's been very long since I've looked for it, so we'll see. There are things I would love to say about that production, but I think maybe I would like to mention a couple other things that point out how many people got involved because it is a cool collaboration with so many different people. I had a friend who was already a part of our drag scene. Her name's Angelina Zontine, and she was our costume designer.

But there's a whole list of people that got on board to sew costumes, just as volunteers. Everyone involved basically got a stipend. We couldn't afford to pay people, so a full commitment of sewing costumes for 20 or so people and not really getting a wage for it is so amazing. And that was one of the probably biggest asks, outside of the people who were stage managers and Ed doing the sound. Angelina's work on the costumes was excellent and done basically for nothing. Nikki McClure made our sets, and some of that was working with me on what we needed and how they were to fit with the show, and her work was great. And Irina Gendelman and our friend Molly Burgdoff, they did the props. We had some very odd little props that were a big part of the show and we needed really specific little fabrications. And we had to actually build an entire loft in the backstage area of the theater to give the band a place to perform. They couldn't perform on stage, there wasn't room. And they couldn't perform in front of the stage- probably it was a sound issue, like the feedback that would've resulted or the sound quality wouldn't have worked. So there was an entire platform that was back there. I don't even know who built that. Someone volunteered to build a third staging area where the five piece band played. We had so many people pulling together and we weren't able to compensate people and it was just a labor of love for everyone, and it was really wonderful. Also, we could have not done a lot of that and made a smaller show. And at one point we talked about that, but it was too sad. I couldn't imagine it being done in a smaller, less full realization kind of way. I think there were even tears at a meeting at one point because we were having a hard time getting things pulled together. And I was like, “This is how I want it to be. It can't be small. It has to be big.” Anyway, it really took a lot. “The town is putting on a show!” There was drama behind the scenes about whether we could pull this thing off that was so ambitious. And mostly, we did. So that's a little victory. Even though I don't know what the future… the show has just kind of been sitting there as a special little secret. I hope that now we have more people able to enjoy it through these other things that are happening.

Mariella Luz
Yeah. Thinking about this time, one of the things that I consider is… Olympia has always been a little bit of a scrappy town, but the resource that many of us had at that time was time. We didn't have money, but we had energy to put into projects. I mean, of course, like people are different now, but to say “Hey, do you have 10 or 20 hours a week for the next six months to do this thing with me for free?” [They would] look at you like your bananas. “No way.” And I just appreciate that there have been times where people were willing and hopeful to enough to do that. 

‍

Freddie Havens

Yeah. And it's also probably aging and kind of having those responsibilities that you might have in your thirties and forties and fifties. At this point, I'm 50. But back then when I did that, I was 25… I still get the feeling that in Olympia, people that wanna make the bigger money don't stay in Olympia. People move. And they should, if they have opportunities. No judgment. But people stay here when they appreciate doing a smaller scale thing that can feel different and better.

I think that's still why you come here or stay here. 

‍

Mariella Luz

Earlier you said that you wanted to circle back to the role of the wheelchair user in the production.

‍

Freddie Havens

Yeah, you know, Nomy is an amputee. And my best friend at the time my friend, Ellery, became our makeup artist for the show. And [Ellery] still is my best friend, Ellery Russian. And Ellery had been doing drag with me, and Ellery sometimes uses a wheelchair. They have prosthetic legs, but they also need to use a wheelchair frequently. And we worked on the character in the wheelchair. I think it's Tova who's in the wheelchair, and she's a main character.

There was a wheelchair dance pioneer in Seattle that Ellery had heard about, and we went and took classes with her. Her name's Char [Charlene Curtis]. We were able to get a really great foundation for people in wheelchairs and people standing, dancing together, moving together, because that's what her work involved. And she was one of the first people to teach and regularly perform pieces involving wheelchairs and able-bodied people. And it was amazing that we had her available locally and we told her what we were doing. You know, she was amazing. She was really supportive. Ellery worked with her after the rock opera as a performer, just doing productions and pieces that she made. So I was working on using a wheelchair myself to be able to understand how the movement worked. And then Beth Stinson was cast in the role. And I feel lucky we were able to bring something like that into the show. It was a way of us showing that in a future when people are having a political struggle, there will be people with disabilities. There'll be people of all different abilities, and they are in the community and you don't want to write them out of your resistance stories. And what does it look like if we include a character that isn't “typical” able-bodied? So we had set pieces that had a ramp so that that character could move up and down and access a different part of the stage. And yeah, this is one of those little things that makes the show kind of unique. And now, in this time period, I see more disability representation on TV and in movies and in speculative fiction. At the time it wasn't something we ever saw. So it's felt especially important. That's all.

‍

[00:30:08] 

‍

Mariella Luz:

Yeah. You used the word intersectionality earlier and I think that disability justice is definitely something that is really just scratching the surface of it right now, but 25 years ago it was just non-existent. That was really cool, one other thing that you talked about in reference to the Transfused, but in general. Now we're in this sort of different era. How did the politics of the time impact the work and the projects that you were doing and living? 

‍

Freddie Havens

The politics of the time were a big part of why I was involved in drag to begin with. I think Clinton was president. Clinton was anti-gay. You know, it was “don't ask, don't tell.” Gay marriage wasn't legal. I think from my generation, if you weren't old enough to be an AIDS activist, you were still impacted by all the people that were lost to the AIDS epidemic. And as a teenager, I think I was impacted because the people maybe 10 or so years older than me who were queer people, L-G-B-T-Q people, were so focused on dealing with all of the things- advocating for people with HIV, advocating for the whole community, and also caretaking the people who were dying and also grieving the people who were dying. So first of all, as a teen, you were witnessing how disposable gay people were and the sadness of seeing the culture be hateful. I didn't really know I was queer until I was a good 18 years old. But still, just taking in that sort of super toxic homophobia, we really had a deep feeling of “we're on our own here. We've gotta make our own way, we've gotta make our own culture, and the dominant culture hates us.” You know, that's the way it felt. So the punk community was my blueprint for taking care of yourself and being resourceful and sort of living outside the mainstream. Especially because I grew up evangelical, I felt like I really had to separate myself really distinctly from my family culture because it was not safe, [they] couldn't accept me fully. So building out a very DIY drag scene, it was also very “survival skill” and everything, kind of modeled by indie and punk culture, networking and somewhat being outside capitalism. Because I think there was a bigger emphasis on being on an independent label versus a corporate record label. That was a whole important core value for the music scene, like independent record labels. And it's still important, but it has shifted so much that I don't think the youth culture really revolves around whether people are on a major label or not. But back then it was like “be outside of corporations” and that was how we wanted to be as queer folks- and kind of how we had to be, because we were already shut out of conventional institutions in all these different ways. So what ended up being the biggest shift that I've witnessed is social media really kicking open all of these gate-kept spaces and making it possible for all these different kinds of queer and trans people and all kinds of marginalized people. A lot of the work we felt we had to do with our queer culture back then is now just happening in social media spaces more freely. And it's probably the reason we have such a huge right wing backlash in this country right now. That's a real tangent, but yeah… the politics of the times were also a lack of visibility for anything trans. So as we in our queer community followed the breadcrumbs of the trans people that came before us, there was a huge shift in our queer community where people understood they just basically had more gender options and began identifying as trans and non-binary in a new and greater way. And that was where the drag performance spaces were really important to us, and why the Transfused characters were written the way they were- to be very visibly exuberant, diverse looking characters. There were some trans artists that I'd heard of that were an influence for me for sure, in both drag and rock opera. And another thing I haven't mentioned is the whole time we were working on that rock opera, I was also DIY video documenting a bunch of local drag performances and also conducting a lot of interviews with performers. And then we ended up also touring our video and touring some of our drag shows and interviewing people along the way, and making that into a documentary video that me and two other friends created that came out in 2001. That was something I was kinda working on in the background the whole time I was doing the Transfused. But that was very much to get a conversation about gender and performance and trans identity, and showing drag as a transformative space instead of just a pageant or entertainment.

We really wanted to highlight the power of transformation and gender empowerment that happened in a drag show- and this was before RuPaul's Drag Race was on, and before YouTube. It was before you could watch drag online. So you had to either live in a town with a gay bar and be old enough to see a drag show, or you lived in a place with a queer youth center or a campus that would host a drag show. Otherwise, you couldn't tune into the internet and just watch people be fabulous. So we were kind of in a weird little zone right before drag kind of blew up, in the way that it has now. And now it's really pissed everyone off in the whole country. So it's sort of both amazing to watch and upsetting to watch.

‍

[00:37:05] 

‍

Mariella Luz

What was the name of the documentary video that you created? 

‍

Freddie Havens

The documentary movie is called Third Antenna, a documentary about the radical nature of drag. And that is also a wonderful project that is not readily available, but we talk about making it more available and having it online and we've never gotten around to it. But we did screen it at all kinds of places all over the country. It was in a few film fests, it was screened at the Capitol Theater, it's been screened on college campuses. And really we just all burnt ourselves out working on both the movie and the rock opera at the same time. I didn't get to the final phase of distributing this thing that we really knocked ourselves out working on for a very long time. But it's still here in boxes in my house. So it could happen, and it could be a thing people can watch. It is a real time capsule, for better or for worse. But it's still, I think, pretty interesting and pretty entertaining. 

‍

Mariella Luz

I think things like that are super important to be made available. Just 'cause a lot of the things that you can say very sort of casually in 2025, you know, like all-ages drag performances.

I mean, in 1999 and 2000, that's pretty radical. You know, in 2025, it's radical. So 25 years ago, it's even more radical. I mean, there was no such thing as trans rights 25 years ago. That's not a term that we used. I mean, of course trans people have always existed, but the idea that there would be a thing called trans rights that we're fighting for now, and this sort of ability to see ourselves and others… to see how limited the resources were back then. I think it's important to show that history. 

‍

Freddie Havens

Yeah. And something else that happened in Olympia in that same window of time that I was here, another really cool moment coinciding with all these other things, was on Evergreen's campus- the transgender film fest. People came from all over the country for this film fest, and it really felt like such an underground thing, but it was bringing all this work together. That was a lot of documentary films, but a lot of creative work as well. And trans artists and speakers from all over the country came to participate. It happened several years in a row, and I'm not sure at what point it stopped happening, but that was an awesome convergence to have happening right in my town, and super unique for the time. A friend of mine worked on it, my friend Reno [Durham], and he was also the person that worked with myself and my friend Ellery on the

Third Antenna documentary. Just a great cultural incubation, all happening right here in that period of time all at once. And I don't know if this has come up in your conversations for this time period. Another thing for me that was happening was the Sex Workers’ Art Show that Tara Perkins organized, which I think was really interesting. You know, it's not exactly music culture, but it's performance culture, arts culture. And again, a really, really unique intersectional event that really wasn't a thing you would see anywhere else except for maybe New York or San Francisco. And yet tiny little Olympia is having this ultra progressive thing, bringing people from all over the country and really just throwing an event. That was the whole community. I mean, this thing was packed every year. People were hyped on seeing this work, and it felt like a kind of a big community deal every year. That's how I remember it. I would be really psyched if that were included. I don't know if that feels too far outside of music history parameters. Understandable if it is, but very, very part of the moment, I think, of that time. 

‍

Mariella Luz

Totally. And I think there's a lot of overlap of folks who participated in that for sure. My next question is, how has the story of being queer already been told or not been told? And how have you navigated telling your story versus other versions of this history?

‍

Freddie Havens: Well, I was just speaking about the documentary we made. That was definitely our biggest formal project about trying to really tell an important part of our story that we didn't see in other places. There's so much going on now with people being able to connect in this way that I'm worried is gonna disappear in our country because of the right wing censorship and all the momentum behind this rising fascism. There's really no other way to say it. I'm worried that that's gonna disappear and we're going to have to kind of revert to our older ways of maintaining queer culture and political culture and intersectional politics and solidarity. I think my generation is- I'm kind of feeling whiplash about the moment because it is so scary. And also I'm trying to tell myself, “Well, in some ways we've been here before and we figured it out.” But the world I grew up in was unkind and it was extremely hateful, and I am very impressed by all the things that we did- and that people who came before us did- to survive all of that. But thinking about the youth who are now growing up in the era of social media and internet freedom, I'm worried that my generation has sort of overpromised and under-delivered on what they can expect in their freedom to be themselves. You know, it's not our fault, but we've seen a lot of pinkwashing, we've seen a lot of corporations wrapping themselves in the rainbow flag and the trans flag and nots actually having a commitment to defend young queer and trans people, just ditching those,communities and not creating substantial change. In fact, a lot of institutions and corporations that pinkwash are also funding right wing candidates. And it's a very scary time. Even to begin to talk about it feels hard to put into words, but clearly the things that we saw manifesting for the last 25 years, which felt pretty miraculous and pretty encouraging to witness. Clearly it's both a convenient way to create division to keep people... I mean, I think some people are genuinely fearful of trans people and some people are genuinely hateful and want to eradicate trans people 'cause it doesn't fit with their religion. But the fear mongering around trans stuff- it's this wedge that people just use conveniently to keep class solidarity from happening, basically. As trans people, we've just become a political football and a wedge. It's exhausting and also super dangerous. So I don't know how the community breaks through that because it's pretty effective right now. So we kind of need to do something that is really different than we've had to deal with before, because basically, the visibility of being empowered and being free on the internet means we're just targets in a way that hasn't been before. So we need new and better solidarity and disruption of this whole thing than we've ever had to do before. I don't know what the answer is. It remains to be seen how this moment goes. I am extremely worried. That's all I can say in spring of 2025. I'm extremely worried.

‍

Mariella Luz

Yeah. I think that social media and the internet can be useful and can make things feel hopeful, but… it’s not necessarily reflective of how it is to be in the world on a daily basis. 

‍

Freddie Havens

For many people, yeah.

‍

Mariella Luz: What are some things that you're working on right now that you're excited about, or other projects either art or music related that you might wanna share with us? And actually, you never said why you moved back to Olympia. You moved back to the area, how did that come about? 

‍

Freddie Havens

Yeah, I always thought it would be maybe a nice place to do retirement age, and I don't think of myself as that age. I guess it just kinda came together because we were wanting to live on a rural property. My partner and I had been living in Seattle. Seattle is expensive and it's a difficult place to live if you're living at a working class level. I had also been living in Portland for a very long time, and yeah, we kind of were like, “Let's try doing life in a rural setting, but in a connected-to-our-city-culture kind of way.” And there was another element of family stuff going on, which involved living with my mom, taking care of her. So we came up with a few places that were outside of Seattle we were looking at. Places around Seattle are still so expensive, and we were looking at the Kitsap Peninsula also. I wasn't really thinking Olympia specifically to be in Olympia, but outside of the capitol forest, we just found our dream property- a very, very beautiful property that kind of checked all of the boxes, and close enough to Olympia and still kind of in between Seattle and Portland, where I still have a ton of friends. That's what happened. It wasn't like, “I need to be an Olympia again,” it just worked out. And now that I'm here, I'm very happy to be here. It feels like a reassuring place to be going through the perils of the second Trump administration. I'm really grateful. I think there's a feeling of community.

It's got lots of complications, but… the small town and the community connection that people value is really, really nice and reassuring to be around. Even though I'm very located outside of town, I'm working in Olympia. I feel like I'm connected to it and I still get the good of that.

‍

[00:48:21] 

‍

Mariella Luz

Awesome. Do you have any other things that you're excited about right now that you wanna share with us? 

‍

Freddie Havens

The thing creatively that is interesting to me,- it's continued to be interesting to me since the Transfused… also, I'm just this kind of sci-fi nerd. I like consuming speculative fiction and sci-fi movies and my partner really enjoys them too. And lately our conversation has been about how much dystopia we see represented, as opposed to creative imagining of… not necessarily utopia, but an empowered positive future that we would want. And so that's where my creative mind is at. And we've both noticed that we feel very blocked around being able to imagine a future that we want outside of climate disaster, outside of the rise of the right and all of the things going along with that. So I can't say anything specific about what's happening, but that's what we brainstorm about and that's what we talk about on our couch at night when we're also processing everything disturbing that we just saw happen. Coming up with spaces where there's some creative generative structured space where we actually encourage each other's visions. In some ways, those were the things I used to do with performance, and now I feel like a new version of getting people to embody what they want instead of just reacting to how terrible things are. Some version of that would be extremely helpful. I don't know what that is yet. That's what we talk about. 

‍

Mariella Luz

Well, keep me posted, 'cause I think that we're all in a similar boat. 

‍

Freddie Havens

Yeah. I mean, everyone's feeling this. We're just getting started. There's lots of things written about this. And when I can keep myself from feeling too panicked to be effective, I'm trying to figure something out. And there's things to read and there's people who've been writing on that and working with those ideas other than me. I'm also excited to talk with Nomy about this too, because even though we haven't worked together creatively in a long time, that was one of the funnest things I did… doing the Transfused with her, which was its own kind of dystopian speculation, but it was also hopeful. So, yeah.

Mariella Luz

Awesome. Do you have anything else that you'd like to share before I stop recording?

‍

Freddie Havens

No, this was great. Thanks for interviewing me. It was fun to talk about and it's been nice. 

‍