Wrenboi Lives

I’m developing a character, or a character is developing me. His name is Wrenboi, and he’s a he who was born a she, and he’s like David Bowie meets a Druid on acid.

He’s the one who wears a suit and a strap-on, who embraces the kinkiness of his own self-disgust.

The one who locks himself in rooms now like his parents used to do to him and alters his states until he gets real weird and kind of gross.

His ex-husband used to do it, and it horrified him, I guess because it was too close to home.

Quarantined and kept away from all my friends, I’ll stay hidden until I become a good kid again.

I used to eat my feelings until one day as I was sitting in the garden shoving things iin my face I snapped into observer mode and realized I was always going to be hungry, so I might as well stop trying, and start disappearing.

Something inside reminded me that I used to know magic, and I could change.

That ‘abracadabra, hocus pocus, now ya see me, now ya don’t’ shit.

There wasn’t much I could control but I could trans-form my shape and conscious state, I could pretend to be normal so nobody would know.

Wrenboi is the shadow, the Irish kid who starved in the great famine of stones and little kings, who kept hurting themselves and getting so drunk they threw up eerywherer and had to be carried out of places. Who always did too much bingey stuff and wasted all their time being dumb and went around the world being a nomad but really just locking themselves up in different rooms all over the world like their parents used to do to them, occasionally busting out to really overdo it with museum days and physical exertion, overeating and then locking themselves up again in shame for several days doing writing as penance.

Until they started doing parts work, and those shadow pieces finally saw their chance to make a break for it, and burst to the surface and took control and threw us from the bicycle and broke our pelvis in five places, right at the moment when I realized I had been keeping myself prisoner, and needed to get the fuck out of where I was staying—and then I couldn’t get out of bed or leave that room until spring came again, staying locked up and slowly going crazy all winter, the season when every year I briefly trans-formed into a shaman again.

But this time, something was different; something broke open when I hit the ground and snapped my bones because I’d spent 40 years so tensed up everything was just waiting for the big release. This broke me open to the astral, to the dead and subtle realms and parts of self that were clamoring for my attention. This time I realized the change was permanent, I was trans and an artist and a mystic who had been trying way too hard to perform as way too many different people for too long.

I resurrected as Riordan, the bard and poet to the kings, when I’m in my higher expression. But who is demanding to take the stage is Wrenboi, the shadow with ground-down teeth and broken bones and mushrooms sprouting from his unwashed pits because the people who live in the house won’t wheel him up to the shower and he has no way of getting himself out. The one locked up in his room wondering if you can kill yourself with ibuprofen after his parents took away every single mode of expansion and escape, hiding him from his friends and locking his books and movies up in a safe, but thank fucking Christ they never took the music, or he wouldn’t be here today.

He tried not to be, but not that hard, which is even more embarrassing, really, not even man enough to make a true attempt at suicide.

But he’s rising from the dead and having his day, he’s the master of ceremonies and the psychopomp who will change costumes and forms and lead you through the parts of self and times and places he passed through on his way to becoming something truer. He’s Wrenboi, representing the Celtic lineage his father denied him in naming: wren for the bird the Druids would murder at the Winter Solstice for its ability to prophecy, carrying it around in a little box nested with Holly, the invasive species that chokes out the other trees in the forest because it just can’t get enough to satisfy it, and only turns red when it’s feminine. Boi is a name for the Cailleach, the crone, the winter hag that scared the village children, but was really the wise old shaman witchy woman hiding in the forest, sticking brooms in vats of potions and then inserting them in places.

Like the wren, I die at wintertime only to rise from my grave and walk around in some in-between state, beckoning to souls who want to follow me into the thin places and challenge their conceptions of seeming certainties like reality and matter and space and time and gender, on a perpetual spiritual bender, never coming down or getting locked up again.

Wrenboi lives.

Summary:

• Developing the Character of Wrenboi

  - Riordan Regan discusses the creation of a character named Wrenboi, who represents his pure essence and is influenced by his psychedelic and shamanistic experiences. - He describes Wrenboi as a trans shaman who transforms into the Crone, an old woman and man, by wearing a suit and hat, symbolizing his embrace of his brokenness and otherness. - Riordan reflects on his childhood experiences of being bullied and the internalized shame, which he now reclaims and reframes through his performance. - He mentions the importance of finding medicines, such as mushrooms and cacao, that help him reconcile his feelings of self-revilement and make him want to stay alive.

• Personal Struggles and Transformation

  - Riordan shares his struggles with motivation and the desire to start over, feeling that he only feels okay when in a state of alteration. - He talks about the embarrassment of being human and having constant needs, leading him to experiment with consuming less to avoid vulnerability. - Riordan recounts a childhood memory of being made fun of by his step-grandma for eating cookies, which led him to want to disappear completely. - He emphasizes the importance of finding medicines that make him want to stay alive, despite societal judgments and concerns about his body as a trans person.

• The Role of Shamanism and Medicines

  - Riordan explains that being a learned shaman involves finding medicines and working with substances like mushrooms and cacao to reconcile his feelings. - He mentions that these medicines help him stay alive and cope with the judgments and expectations placed on him as a trans person. - Riordan highlights the importance of embracing his brokenness and otherness, and how this transformation helps him reclaim his shame and internalized disgust. - He reflects on the need to stay alive and the role of shamanism in helping him find a sense of purpose and motivation.

Action Items:

• Develop the "Wrenboi" character further, including potentially incorporating a suit, hat, and strap-on. (Assignee: Riordan Regan)

• Explore incorporating more English-speaking theater in the local area, as everything is currently in German. (Assignee: Riordan Regan)

Transcript:

I'm building a character, and I think it's for the one person show, because even though that's me, it's also a role that I'm playing the master of ceremonies, because eventually, I think that'll be the host of the play, musical, sing. So, yeah, baby, I start off as Riordan, and then I kind of like when I call in the directions, and at times I transform into the the shaman. I don't know that's a hard one, because I feel like the shaman is me, yeah, but it's also a performance of it. Anyway, regardless, I'm developing a character called Brand boy.

I think that's me and my pure essence, the psychedelic shamanistic, divine masculine connected to the ancestors, like David Bowie Leading a druidic ritual on acid they call in my allies.

They come to my side, and I transform the trans Shaman. When I put the suit and the hat on. And if you ultimately, it'll also be put on the suit, the hat and the strap on. But I don't know if that's too much for this particular installation. That might be like, I don't know down the road thing, yeah, but Breton boy, who's the Crone, the old woman, but also the man. When I bought the hat, she said they needed more people doing English speaking theater, because everything's in German here.

So call upon the ancestors, the transesters, I go into a trance. When I put the suit and the hat on, I transform. It's me embracing the brokenness, the revoltingness, otherness and disgustingness that I feel in my being. It's me reclaiming and reframing the shame of how I was raised, the shame of getting beat up that's by my quote, unquote, best friend who I had a gay crush on way back in first grade, but I was such a big dork, her whole family would gang up on me and make fun of me, and then my own dad would join in. And those became voices I internalized and gross and weird, and I'd eat too much food to try to shove down my feelings, until one day, my step grandma made fun of me for eating cookies, and then I decided I Just wanted to disappear completely, and I started experimenting with the longing that was holding.

Could I get by with less and less? Less sustenance, less vulnerability, less risk, less offering myself up to be sacrificed, better to suffice with as little as possible try to consume when nobody's looking. Keep it in the shadows.

It's so embarrassing being a human in your body having needs constantly need to be satisfied. Better to deny but keeping all that inside eventually it breaks out. Go too hard, over exert myself doing stupid stuff while not putting enough effort towards the things that actually need to get done, and I often just want to start all over. Say I screwed this one up. I can't seem to get the motivation. I can't seem to get my shit together. I only feel okay when I'm in a state of alteration. So sometimes I just want to restart the video game try it again.

But that wouldn't solve anything. If I've learned one thing from journey, and you'll come out in an even crappier level than you started in. So you got to be a learned Shaman. You gotta be a learn to shop, and you gotta learn to be a shaman. Fuck with the reality, find the medicines. It made me want to stay alive a little bit longer, and I did. I found that in working with the mushrooms, with the medicines, with cacao, it helped me reconcile these feelings of self revilement inside me. It made me want to stay alive a little bit longer.

People will pass their judgments on what you, quote, unquote, should and shouldn't do, on what they think is too much and not enough. Everyone's always so concerned with your body when you're a trans person, that's really crazy.

But if you can find the medicines that make you want to be alive, think it's better to take them. Anything that makes you want to stay here. It's worth it.