BOBBY COYOTE
Photography by Stacie Buhler (@stacieabuhler)
BOBBY COYOTE ON AUTHENTICITY, TRANSFORMATION + WE FUCKING EXIST
MULTIDISCIPLINARY ARTIST / INTERVIEWED BY LAUX | AUGUST 2026
IMAGERY VIA
@bobbythecoyote
For Bobby, we pulled The Tower. The Tower is often associated with sudden change, disruption, and the collapse of something we once believed was stable. But it is also a card of revelation. Sometimes what falls apart clears the way for something more honest to be built in its place. Let’s begin here...
Can you take me to a moment in your life when something changed everything?
Probably the first time I really pulled The Tower myself. It was a few days before I had top surgery. I did a reading for what was coming up, and it was The Tower.
It was kind of the first time I really got it. I was like, okay, good change. I’m not going to be scared of it.
And then shit hit the fan really hard after surgery. Everything changed. My whole life changed. I had much more respect for The Tower after that. It’s a bittersweet relationship.
It was very Tower-like because at first it felt like catastrophe. It felt like my world was ending. But out of the ashes came something I actually ended up being really happy with. Maybe not the exact way it happened, but however it had to happen, it happened.
About five weeks after top surgery, I went through an unexpected breakup. I had been a pretty outgoing, social, party person, and afterward I isolated for about six weeks. I barely talked to anybody. I didn’t go out.
Through that, I figured out that I actually really like being alone. It was this huge shift where I realized, wait, I don’t need to constantly be out or surrounded by people to feel okay.
Getting out of that party mode gave me space to shift into a creative state. I’d always had ideas and bursts of making art, but there had been this block. Once I stopped going out all the time, I suddenly had all this focus to put toward creating.
That’s when I really started focusing on making music.
When you were a kid, what kind of imagination did you have?
Terribly rampant. Literally off the charts.
When I was about four, I wanted to be a dog. I was like, “I’m a dog.” I would shit in the backyard with the dog. I would eat dog food. I was committed to the bit. My parents basically had to potty train me twice. I loved animals. I wanted to be an animal so badly, and I would imagine all these scenarios where I was one. I was also really into sci-fi. Once I could read, I read a ton of sci-fi books, especially anything with dragons. I was convinced I was going to find a dragon egg. I still kind of hope it’ll happen.
I was very imaginative. I still am.
What’s something seemingly small someone did for you that had a huge impact on your life?
When I was little, my dad taught me not to squish bugs. It was this random little thing. I was probably four, and he was so upset by it that it really hit me. I was like, oh my God, that’s so bad. It instilled this deep respect for all life in me. To this day, I don’t like killing bugs. Everybody is just trying to get laid, get some food and do their thing. Who are we to interrupt that?
I’m struggling with some ants right now because I’m like, I don’t want to kill you, but also...
Photography by Devon Herrera (@devonherrera)
Can you tell me about a heartbreak that changed you?
The big one was the breakup I mentioned around my top surgery.
Going through top surgery made me have to ask myself, did that affect my relationship? How do I feel about that? This was something I really needed for myself, but this person needed something different for them.
Should I have withheld something I needed for myself? I’m not the kind of person to withhold my own anything.
Eventually I realized it was the right thing to happen, but it was really unexpected.
I had complications after surgery. I had a hematoma, so for about five weeks I had to go every other day to Thousand Oaks to have it drained. She would drive me an hour there and an hour back.
At my last appointment, she drove me there in silence. She wouldn’t talk to me. When we got back to my house, she gave me a breakup letter.
That was in 2022.
I actually found the letter again recently while I was moving. I’m a very sentimental person, so I keep things for a long time and sometimes don’t even remember I have them until I find them again.
Reading it after that much time, I picked up on different things than I did the first time.
But mostly I thought, I need to throw this away now.
Learning to let things go is a big thing for me. Being able to throw it away felt good. I already had a lot of closure from that relationship, but it felt like even more.
Can you remember a time when creating something helped you understand, process, or move through something in your life?
A couple years after that relationship and top surgery, I had gone through probably two years of situationships. Toward the end of that period, it all started compounding on me.
I went into a serious depressive mode and was dealing with suicidal ideation. At some point I said, okay, let’s just make a song. Sit down, make a song and stop focusing on all this external shit. I was housesitting for somebody at the time, so I wasn’t in my own space and didn’t really have much with me. I just had my iPad.
So I started making music. I got super into it and basically didn’t stop for several months. I would wake up, put my headphones on and work on music for hours. Sometimes 12 to 20 hours. It got me through. I ended up creating a pretty big body of work from it. It was all over the place, but I started putting it on SoundCloud mostly so I could make playlists and listen to it myself. Then it started getting all these listens.
I was like, what the fuck? This is just my therapy.
Photography by Ty May
When did you start teaching yourself music?
I first started around 2009, messing around with GarageBand. Then I stopped for a while. It wasn’t until around 2020 or 2021 that I got back into it more seriously.
At first I didn’t even know BPM or key. I wasn’t paying attention to any of that. I would find samples that I liked and that seemed to fit together and just make them work. I was also taking my poetry and trying to turn it into vocals. I’m not really a singer, so that was a struggle. Now I look for other people to collaborate with on that part.
My feelings are expressed through art. Poetry especially, music too. That’s how I process intimacy and emotion. I tend to work in phases. Now I’ve gotten into a rhythm where I rotate between different projects. I might spend a couple hours on music, then film, then writing. With the music itself, I don’t really have one reference point. One song might pull from R&B, another from classical, another from metal.
It’s whatever I’m feeling in that moment.
Can you remember encountering a piece of art that really stayed with you?
The first thing that comes to mind is actually a negative reaction, seeing the Mona Lisa in person.
I was like, this is what everybody is tripping about? It’s this little tiny thing, and I remember being confused by it. The art world has always kind of confused me, even being in it. When I was younger, I didn’t really like art history because I was always asking, what is it about this thing that everybody is responding to? As I’ve gotten older, I’ve been able to go back and appreciate things differently.
Photography became really important to me. Sally Mann’s work was something I learned about when I was in art school for photography. Her images were so moody, but they came out of ordinary things.
There was something strange about them that always stayed with me.
Photography by Brendan (@eyesonadeadworld)
I want to talk about your project We Fucking Exist. Can you take me back to when you first had the idea and realized you were actually going to make it?
It started with a trans friend of mine.
Her birthday was coming up, and she had posted some pictures on Instagram. I told her, if you want, we can do a shoot. I do photos. She lived out in Santa Monica, so I met up with her and we took photos and video.
When I started editing everything afterward, I thought, this feels important. This feels bigger than one person or a fun little shoot. It felt like I was capturing something that was trying to be erased.
That was the light bulb.
I created a casting call and put it on Instagram, and it blew up. More than 100 people applied. I spent about four months that summer shooting two to four times a week. I photographed around 30 people, including some couples. Trans people, nonbinary people, someone who is intersex. I did photos, video and interviews.
I got to meet all these really lovely people through the process.
What has been one of your proudest moments in building We Fucking Exist?
People’s reactions to seeing the footage of themselves.
People would be really shy during the shoot, and then they’d see it and be like, wait, this looks really cool. I feel good. It’s been an emotional roller coaster. It’s brought me to tears, hearing people’s stories.
Everybody comes from these really different backgrounds and has different stories, but there are all these similar threads. Through making the project, I started thinking that transphobia stems from a fear of authenticity.
Trans people are just living how they want to exist. I think that can be threatening to people who don’t know how to do that themselves. I’m trying to build almost like a database. Something that says these people existed and they can’t be erased just because somebody says no more meds, no more trans people.
That’s the goal.
When you imagine the future of We Fucking Exist, what do you hope it becomes?
I’d love for it to become a worldwide thing.
To be able to travel to different places, meet different people and show both the differences and the similarities.
We are literally just people like everybody else. Maybe there’s a different story, but everybody loves stories. What’s wrong with a good story?
I’m working on a coffee-table book. I want to create a short film using the interviews, and maybe something bigger from there.
I’ve had work from the project featured in a magazine in Barcelona, and a piece was featured in a Pride exhibition here.
I’d like to eventually do gallery shows. I see it becoming different volumes.
It feels like a life work kind of thing.
Photography by Stacie Buhler (@stacieabuhler)
WHAT’S GOOD
We always like to end on a good note. So before we go, here’s WHAT’S GOOD according to Bobby Coyote.
What’s a good book?
Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut.
What’s a good film?
Stalker by Andrei Tarkovsky.
It’s about this zone where people aren’t allowed to go. They leave the city and travel into the countryside toward this strange place where people disappear. But it’s really the cinematography. It’s an epic classic.
What’s a good song?
“Domenico” by Satori.
What’s something good someone told you?
“Know thyself.”
I think it ties into being authentic and transitioning, or just being open to who you are in general. There’s also this idea of a core consciousness, the watcher within. What is that? Is it the universe itself watching our experience as its own? I’ve been playing with that idea recently.
Who is someone good you think I should talk to next?
Top Freak Daddy.
They’re an epic musician, a trans dude. Kind of like a queer Kid Rock, but not in the shitty way. Just in the fucking rock-and-roll way.
XX MIXTAPE VOL. 01
Every QCH guest leaves us with one track. Bobby Coyote adds this one to the mix.
STARLINGS
NTO
Henry Saiz Remix
Photo courtesy of Bobby Coyote
CURRENT / UPCOMING
WE F*ING EXIST
Documentary project
CLOSE TO THE SUN
Currently in pre-production