I revamped my resume to make it look like I was doing my own thing and deliberate about it, throwing in the education and "independent projects" and making it look like I had my own agenda and purposes for my life and "they" would be lucky if I made them part of it I just put types of work ("including x, y, and z") and had references that included friends who had their own companies, etc. I did have at least one reference from the sort of job I was looking at.

Could you maybe get a couple of part-time jobs that were not so reference-needy and then build on that in six months to a year?