Schafer has also been working on channeling her own creative vision. “I feel this constant desire to put more energy into stuff behind the camera,” she tells me. “Fuck Anyone Who’s Not a Sea Blob,” the 2021 Euphoria episode that she cowrote with creator, Sam Levinson, is a strange lullaby about trans-ness, hormones, and male validation. During a therapy session, her character Jules delivers stunning monologues on dating, going on blockers, and her ambivalence about passing, and runs around in the ocean full of complicated feelings. She’s gifted a vivid interiority rarely allowed to trans women, and certainly trans children, in our current political climate.
The following year, Schafer would direct a music video for the Norwegian singer-songwriter Girl in Red, and she has recently taken an interest in the canonical trans girl activity: DJing. “A lot of my friends are in the DJ world,” Schafer says. “It’s something I play with on my own time. I do have a dream of DJing one of my wrap parties. I have to get good enough first.” Her favorite DJ at the moment is the New York–based hard techno musician Kilbourne. “I saw her live for the first time at this festival in Greece last year, and her set rocked my fucking world,” Schafer says. Lately, she’s been messaging with Kilbourne about learning to use the popular music software Ableton.
Trans women are well-represented in techno, from Juliana Huxtable, SOPHIE, and Goth Jafar to Sage Introspekt, Bored Lord, and Gag Reflex. Open SoundCloud or tune in to NTS radio, and you can hear them toying with house, industrial, and hardcore. Schafer’s own interest in the genre, however, took her by surprise.
“After experiencing techno in Germany—because I’ve filmed, like, three movies there now—I fell in love with it on this much deeper level than I had anticipated,” she says. “At some point it stops becoming about the music, and it’s about the way you’re participating. It’s less social. I’ll have moments dancing to techno where I’m working through shit in my head on the dance floor, and there’s something magical about that.” She adds, “I’m also constantly fascinated by intersections of softness and femininity, hardness and sharpness, and the way they mesh. Techno is an exciting space for that.” Wherever she goes, fans are certainly along for the ride. Schafer’s horizon is undoubtedly bright, full of oceanic feelings and new frequencies just waiting to be tapped.
