I was about 17 or 18 when I first started performing in public. I had a teacher when I was a freshman in college and she came up to me afterwards and said she had been crying while I had been singing, and it really shocked me.

I went to New York to be where the beautiful people were and it didn't disappoint me. It's so open. It's a great platform to do your own thing or start new things. When I got there, I started living for the first time.

I think, with music in general, people just inevitably connect with feeling. The opportunity to hear expressed feeling. And that's what has always drawn me towards music. It's something where, by connecting to someone else's voice, I feel less lonely. I feel more alive. I feel more connected to the world and to the rest of humanity. Sometimes a voice can be like a lifeline.

I feel very grateful that for some reason I was raised to believe that I had permission to explore the creative world. I'm very aware of what a privilege that is, because most people don't grant themselves that permission, and I really think that's the only thing that separates people that call themselves artists from the rest of the world. It's suspending self-judgment for long enough to do something expressive.

No matter how public your work is, it's just a relationship with yourself. And you have to create a little sacred space inside yourself to treasure that... because when you die, that's still what you have. It's what you're born with and what you leave with. It's kind of a story of the way you accompanied yourself through your life.

I am transgender, so 'he' is not appropriate and 'she' is problematic. I haven't been one to wage war with society to force people to address me a certain way. I let people make that decision for themselves. I don't identify as a man, so 'he' is silly in a way. Being called 'she' as a trans person, trans in the sense that I'm trans, is to be honoured in an aspect of yourself.

I think what everyone can do is start creating spaces and forums, talk to peers, friends and family, and start deconstructing these things we take for granted, unpack these old systems, in order to understand ourselves more deeply, to understand why we do the things we do and how our privileges affect other people's lack of privilege.