Making Mountains into Molehills: A Lexicon-in-Process

ABSTRACT To make a mountain out of a molehill is to wrestle with the scale and form of a feeling. It’s a loaded, gendered idiom, referring to behaviors deemed over-reactive (read: histrionic, hysterical). This lexicon lays out the most generative metaphors that have emerged from the intersections between my art making and nearly a decade of psychoanalysis. These metaphors come from both inside and outside of me—they are synonyms for how figure and ground are co-constitutive. Much like my experiences of being trans, a lexicon is always fruitfully in-process, its language both containing and slippery. This lexicon is also a list of apparitions. As soon as I grab an idea by its name or phrase, it disappears.