On Saturday night, I watched the MOCREP show I LIVE EVERY DAY at Steppenwolf2 and loved it. The show is closed and packed up for now, but keep your eyes peeled for future MOCREP happenings. Personally, I took home a little merch book to keep the party going and it looks like you can too.3

During the show, a family with a tween sat next to me, and I thought “pretty cool to be able to take your tween to some performance art in Chicago” and then the tween kept whispering loudly about wanting to leave and I thought “must be hard bringing your tween to performance art in Chicago and then have them whisper loudly” and then the tween left with a grown-up and I thought “boy was I wrong about this being cool, now that grown-up is gonna miss the show because of tween, which could breed serious resentment down the line and —” but then the tween and grown-up came back into the theater just as something very funny was happening onstage and the tween laughed loudly with the rest of us and kind of CLICKED-IN to the show and I thought “Ok, so actually I was right all along.”4

In closing: pretty cool.

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BEST FRIENDS

I shot and edited a web series with my friends Claire & Kim & Sarah5 and we released it this month. I don’t have what I would describe as a robust social media presence, so it was a novel experience to have something I’d helped create be watched and enjoyed by so many people! Strangers even! Strangers mostly even! Again, not to be a STAT HEAD, but the series got over 400k likes on Instagram and I found myself genuinely moved by imagining all of those thumbs hitting the little like/heart button.

Even if you don’t have Zuck’s app on your phone, I think you should be able to watch these from the comfort of your internet browser? Let me know! First episode is below:

(I have a cameo in the season finale if you want to take a quick ten to BINGE.)

A SHORT DOCUMENTARY FOR THE BBC

I directed and edited this short documentary about Interventional Oncology and now it’s out in the world! It takes a village, and this village was the BBC & my friends Drew Angle (filmed it!) and Katelyn Douglass (produced it!) over at the video agency crumbs.

HEY HAL!

My friend Hal is back in Chicago, and I’ll speak on behalf of the whole city to say we’re absolutely thrilled. To commemorate leaving Los Angeles, I helped him make a simple video for his hit new single Leaving Los Angeles.

AND NOW WHILE I STILL HAVE YOU…

I tend to snap the shot and then never blow-the-digital-dust-off, so I guess my response is rarely, but shifting ever so gently to sometimes with this newsletter.

As always, thanks for giving this a scroll, stay cool, & stay in touch!

love,

Will

2

Substack wants me to change “Steppenwolf” to “Stepparent” but, also —

BUDS (…episode 1?)

I wrapped this last week, but these buds were actually filmed a little over a year ago in spring of ‘25. Sometimes you gotta have an idea, let it flower, fade, fall, and return its nutrients to the soil for the NEXT year’s buds/projects before you can finish it.1

Also, just because it’s not on a DVD doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get some bonus features so…

Thanks to Abby for walking around the block with me, Miden for recording multiple takes over the phone and lending her handwriting for the title, and Hal for being a generous songwriting machine.

I reckon I’ll release BUDS into the wilds of social media this week, but for now this puppy is a PILLOW FORT SUBSTACK EXCLUSIVE. Thanks for watching!

two videos in one email? This one was made because my canon sure shot 60 zoom prima 35mm point & shoot crapped out and there’s no wrong way to mourn

The eagle-eyed or owl-eared reader might notice that BUDS is on YouTube while this video is on Vimeo. How come? Why am I doing the digital splits between two different video-hosting platforms? How do you grapple with the overwhelm and overload of all of these two-factor identifications and dancing captchas and click-all-the-stoplights-and-motorcycles-if-you-really-are-who-you-say-you-are? How should I live knowing that saving all of this to “the cloud” is really just downloading strings of code into miles and miles of data centers in rural Indiana or something?

Absolutely.

To be honest, Vimeo once had the gloss of a video platform for filmmakers, and it felt like an embossed “Staff Pick” laurel could change everything, but I think those days are over. Now people are watching YouTube on TVs, or YouTube is TV or some 3-dimensional venn diagram of all of the above questions.

I think if you make something and you want strangers to watch it, YouTube is probably the way to go. Like me, a stranger, watching this two hour documentary made by two charming dirtbag brothers about birding. 2

What are you watching these days and where are you watching it?

Leave a comment

In closing…

Here’s a haiku I wrote after visiting my grandma a few weeks ago:

Please take this as a sign and/or permission to logoff and go get yourself a little treat. I’ll put on some sneakers and go run around the house a couple times too — see you out there!

love,

Will

This week, I draw closer to the end of my three-month-long Untitled Performance Art Piece: Adjunct Professor1, embark on a freshly minted D&D campaign, and join the line-up of GENIUS NIGHT this very Thursday eve @ Cafe Mustache.

Also, if you can believe it, since our last inbox-unboxing, somethings have happened!

TL;DR: SOMETHINGS #1

SOMETHING COMPLETELY TRUE

In January, I directed a short documentary about Interventional Oncology for BBC Storyworks that I’ll get back to editing moments after sending this email. Brought onboard by buddy and cinematographer Drew Angle, we filmed for two days in St. Louis with some truly amazing folks.

SOMETHING MUSIC

Hot off the presses, it was my true delight to edit this music video my pal directed for the band SPARE ROOM.

SOMETHING ELSE

At the end of January, I visited DENISE SELLS HOUSE’s breakout star at work.

SNL was very fun and cool. [All opinions here are my own], but it was simply the best to see my friend 1.) doing a dream job, 2.) having fun, and 3.) being very good at it. Call me crazy, but that is absolutely my cup of tea. In fact, please invite me to any job you have where all three of these boxes are checked and I’ll bring orange slices for us all to eat at half-time/intermission/lunch.

In this moment, I’m feeling very lucky for the clarity that all the best bits of this year have been making work, art, and/or just time with friends and family. Feeling the deep DUH of that on a soul-level.

A wild thing about being alive is that you can feel that in your bones and then immediately have to start (trying) to do your taxes.

SOMETHING QUICK AND GOOD TO DO

My friend Maggie lives in Minneapolis and sent me this link to raise money for neighbors who haven’t been able leave the house for fear of the violent ICE raids. Rent is coming up, so if you have $ to spare you can Venmo Maggie directly (@Magdalen-T) or send cash to this Fundraiser to help out.

Find a way to be a good neighbor this week and I will too.

BONUS: JUST SOME BOOKS

I’ve read nine books so far this year. I forget what I’ve read QUICKLY if I don’t talk or write about it, so here are some of the shortest reviews possible with the hope that one of you will talk to me about them a little bit more.

1. Atavists: Stories (by Lydia Millet)

The first thing I underlined this year was the sentence “Revulsion was a stimulant” right there on the very first page.

2. Automatic Noodle (by Annalee Newitz)

I don’t want to watch Boston Dynamic Robo-Cops do Gangnam style, but I do want to watch a Roomba teach itself how to play the cello. This book is the second thing.

3. Trip (by Amie Barrodale)

Hands down the funniest adaptation of The Tibetan Book of the Dead I’ve ever read. Would recommend.

4. Railsea (by China Miéville)

Moby Dick but instead of boats it’s trains and instead of whales it’s a really big mole.

5. An Oral History of Atlantis: Stories (by Ed Park)

I’ll tell you what, these stories? They’re short. And there’s a whole book full of ‘em. Not trying to be harsh, again, my mind is just wet mud and the tide is coming in.

6. Neuromancer (by William Gibson)

An absolutely wild ride that clearly inspired so many cyberpunky works to follow. The entire time I was reading it I felt like Willow anytime she used a desktop computer in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

7. Heretics of Dune (by Frank Herbert)

Pros: Insanely fun world building that earnestly wrestles with big questions of history and heroism and the dangers of control

Cons: Frank Herbert thought Nixon was a better president than JFK

8. The Striker and the Clock: On Being in the Game (by Georgia Cloepfil)

Written by a friend of a friend, started from Nina’s bookshelf in NYC, finished from the library in Chicago, and thoroughly enjoyed all 90 minutes (plus overtime). Check it out!

9. Annihilation (by Jeff VanderMeer)

The film adaptation ignores the crabs with human faces. Someone call Natalie; let’s re-shoot it and do it right this time.

Uh oh, I just realized that I made a reading list in order to write a freaky little book of my own. It’s only a matter of time2 now!

~

Thanks for reading &

until next time, 3

Will

Now, this breaking news was NEW news to me but is definitely OLD news to any active astrology-heads out there. The ancient Greek astronomer Hipparchus spotted this wobble at least a hundred years before the wise men saw their star over Bethlehem1, so if I’d been paying attention at all to the celestial bodies for the last 34 years (not to mention the 2,000 years before that) this wouldn’t have come as such a surprise.

Before I go any further, you should know that I’m ok.2

I’ve never grounded my sense of self amidst the stars and I know very little about the ins and outs of the zodiac beyond the fact that (I THOUGHT) I was born beneath the man-horse-archer. In fact, I avoid all kinds of potentially illuminating categorical systems (Enneagrams, Myers-Briggs Tests, What Character From the Office Are You Quizzes, etc.) for the perhaps unfounded fear of being put into a little box by someone else. Classic Sagittarius, huh? Total Creed Bratton move.

Also, a quick surfing of the net taught me that in tropical astrology, it’s always been more seasonal and less constellation based so, again, under Western Star-Law as far as I understand it, legally, I’m still a Sagittarius and this freak out is completely unwarranted.

But! BUT! The reality is that when I was born on December 5th, 19913 in a hospital in Boone County, Missouri, the stars above my head and behind the sun couldn’t be connected into the shape of a guy with a body of a horse firing a bow and arrow. Instead? Well, instead they can be connected into the shape of a guy holding a snake or, and HERE’S WHERE THINGS GET INTERESTING…some people don’t see a guy holding a snake. Instead, they see…

A guy with snakes for legs.

i.e. -

A SERPENTAUR (!)

My first question? Pretty obvious.

Are the feet heads?

I mean, you tell me.

Fair enough, no fish heads are poking out of a mermaid and horse heads aren’t present in centaurs (unless two centaurs…who both have the recessive “horse gene”… hook up…???4), but it still feels like the phrase I read, “snakes for legs” [Not “snake (singular) for legs” plural)], implies that those feet GOTTA be heads, particularly when the evidence of Medusa (see: “snakes for hair”) is definitely rendered artistically as “each hair has a head”.

Now, I’m sure even in these divisive times we can all agree that while hair is heads, hair is definitely not legs.

If your hair has a mind of its own? That’s just a bad hair day, put on a hat, Gorgon. But if your LEGS have TWO minds of their own? You’re gonna end up walking to the Everglades to try to swallow a guinea fowl with your feet. A disaster! And, worse, if you have two snakes for your two legs and they have fundamentally different desires? The chances of you being split in twain just got exponentially higher.

Now, snakes are obviously famous for being anti-leg5, so there’s also something pretty messed up about forcing them to be the one thing that, by definition, they lack. After all, every snake is just a leg away from being a lizard, ya know? Plus, since we’ve already established that these feet are heads, these snakes don’t know the first thing about HAVING legs, let alone BEING legs.

Classic Ophiuchus line of thought here, huh? Ol’ snake-for-legs can’t make up his mind.

On an unrelated note, or one only tangentially connected via the compelling mental image of “noodle legs”, I recently slipped on some ice after getting TOO LOOSE at yoga and strained what my friend Betsy6 thinks could be my intercostal muscles. I just turned 34 and I’m already trying all kinds of new things!

ICE IN CHICAGO

And now a muscle-straining pivot to the other ICE that’s been in Chicago this year.

Words don’t feed adequate to capture the reality of having masked and armed Federal agents terrorize a city I love. The whiplash between THIS section of the newsletter and the one above is also roughly how it feels on a regular basis.

ICE and Border Patrol agents deployed tear gas in neighborhoods and outside elementary schools, entered a day care near our home with guns to remove someone who had legal documentation to work in the US, and illegally arrested multiple American citizens. The Federal government says they’re after violent criminals and the “worst of the worst” but the facts don’t lie.

Over the last few months, I helped edit some short documentary videos for a company called GO FOURTH MEDIA that was created to spread awareness of the violations that are occurring. Social media can feel like an echo chamber, and GO FOURTH is aimed outside of left-leaning-circles to create media for people who have been as yet unmoved or unconcerned about the uptick in State violence.

There’s a pattern of ICE agents targeting parents and caretakers at elementary school drop offs and pickups in our neighborhoods, so for the past few months Abby and I and our neighbors have filled out spreadsheets, picked days and corners, and stood outside with whistles and phones out to be on watch for masked agents in unmarked cars who are actively harming our community. There’s been a lull for the past few weeks, but just this morning we learned that Greg Bovino is back in town to ramp up detentions/abductions in time for the holiday season.

A silver lining has been feeling strangers shift into neighbors as the community comes together to protest, witness, and resist. It’s awakened me to the existing ecosystems of community care — networks of care and mutual aid that are arising against this unique threat and will persist long after this heightened threat recedes.

Take care out there and please consider a donation to ICIRR or your own regional organization today.

SOME(MORE)THINGS

• I re-watched director Joe Wright’s and late great writer Tom Stoppard’s ANNA KARENINA last night and loved it all over again. I think this one got middling reviews at the time, but it continues to knock my socks off. In this house, we love an intentional adaptation that plays with form to capture the spirit of the source material!

• Consider cancelling your Spotify account! They run ICE ads, pay artists fractions of a cent, and pour millions of dollars into AI military technology. NOT GREAT. Personally, spending ear-time on Deezer and Bandcamp these days instead. Deezer makes it easy to transfer your playlists from other services if you’re curious!

• Like millions of 30-something-millinials before me I’ve found a new found love for analog film. Lingering with an image instead of a mindless scroll?? What a treat! I so rarely revisit the thousands of snaps living on my phone, but lately I can’t get enough of the 36 exposures per reel that take a week or so to be developed. I can’t bring myself to post these darling little exposures to be gobbled by the social media feed yet, but here’s one that my 3 year-old nephew Arie took:

I might be biased, but I think he’s already got a great eye AND a passion for pushing a button that creates a fun flash of light!

• I wrote and illustrated a tiny book for my aforementioned nephews who just learned about ghosts. There’s currently only a single, hand drawn copy in existence that belongs to a five year-old and a three year-old, but I scanned a digital copy if you’re curious and brave.

• Finished the novel ON THE CALCULATION OF VOLUME I - Groundhog Day time loop as literary fiction. I dig it!

• Got a SteamDeck and now? Now I’m a gamer. Getting my space legs in NO MAN’S SKY and very open to any beloved indie game recs you have! Trying to figure out how to get my hands on some of Alice Bucknell’s experimental games at the moment… A co-op game inspired by black holes and quantum entanglement and love? Very much my jam.

• I love the tiny awards (a favorite this year is 10,000 Drum machines) What if we all worked together to keep the internet a little goofy?

• I’m on a real Ursula K. Le Guin kick over here; listening to Earthsea and working my way through an anthology called A Larger Reality that includes all kinds of beautiful ephemera from the daily life of a writer interspersed with essays from other writers who loved her work.

• Also slowly making my way through The Best American Essays of 2025 — a favorite so far is Christina Sharpe’s powerful “The Shapes of Grief.”

What about you? How are you winding down and recharging this year?

Leave a comment

I’m excited to shake things up and play around with cadence and content in this newsletter in the new year, so stay tuned! Perhaps even a NAME CHANGE? I’ve loved hanging out in PILLOW FORT, but sometimes you gotta just add a fresh coat of paint and/or not have the same name as a Target children’s line brand.

As always, thanks for reading and coming along for the ride.

xo,

Will

It’s been awhile! Not too long I hope, but certainly a while2. That’s one (1) while for anyone keeping track. I’ve whiled away plenty of time this summer; whiled that time straight to the bank in some cases, particularly since (I’ve been told)…time? equals? ...money?

So, someone check my math here, but if:

Is it also true that tragedy + money = comedy? Just trying to solve for “x” here and, imagining various catastrophes befalling our current cast of billionaires, it certainly ring true.

I was recently delighted by some hourglasses in Montreal that were able to put a price tag on time3. 30 seconds for $18 Canadian is only $13.08 in US dollars. That’s a little under fifty cents a second, but I’ve had some seconds that are worth waaaaaay more than that so I’m sure it all averages out in the end. All in all, not a bad deal! But don’t trust my Canadian Time Cost (CTC) to United States Time Cost (USTC) because it is also true that I incurred over $100 in tragic cellular roaming charges while looking at these hourglasses.

This was over a month ago now so:

Ok, it’s mathematically sound so, I can laugh about it. I’m not flipping over my hourglass and laughing for a exactly thirty seconds about it just to make sure I get my money’s worth…

Speaking of money, this is a thirty second mid-substack break to confirm that I paused all paid subscriptions to this newsletter a few months ago. I appreciated every penny that folks generously sent my way, but I felt like I already have too many different jobs for this to also be a job and I’d prefer to keep it open, free, and in all likelihood, slightly irregular. Don’t worry, if you’re itching to financially support art I’m cooking up, I’ll let you know what’s coming down the pike on an art-by-art basis. Okay…READ ON!

I was looking at these hourglasses in Montreal because I was at the Just for Laughs festival with my friend Claire McFadden. The pilot for a web series we’d created together was screening in the festival, and now you can watch the whole series online at your leisure! If you’re looking to binge the show, it will take about 10 minutes, so plan your evening accordingly.

DENISE SELLS HOUSES - SEASON 1

Also, I’ve found myself genuinely moved by how overwhelmingly positive, sweet, and playful the comments have been on TikTok! The series seems to have a hit genuinely cozy corner of the web, and I love it.

ABBY PAJ TRIES TO STAY ALIVE - OPENING 9/11 at THE NEO-FUTURISTS

I’m producing my partner Abby’s upcoming solo show ABBY PAJ TRIES TO STAY ALIVE at The Neo-Futurists and you can buy tickets now! We’re in the thick of rehearsals with an amazing team. They’re practicing harmonica in the other room as I type this. The show wrestles with darkness, disaster, and depression and finds the light, life, and laughter in the midst of it all. Also, just as the title promises, it is very much about staying alive.

TICKETS TO APTTSA

(p.s. I made a promotional video that I think will get yanked from #Social#Media for copyright infringement, so here’s a little sneak peak before I’m BUSTED.)

WE MADE A MOVIE IN POUGHKEEPSIE

Busy summer! I had the pleasure of working on a feature film that shot in Upstate New York this summer. I was assisting my friend and director Blythe Haaga on her directorial debut and it was a delightful, exhausting, and exhilarating 18-day shoot. MOVIES, MAN! I love ‘em. Let’s do it again real soon.

The film is currently in post-production but I’ll report back whenever it emerges from the editing-chrysalis into a fully formed film that you can catch in theaters!

POST - A COMEDY PILOT

Speaking of post-production…a few months ago, we also released a mini-episode sizzle reel (!) for a comedy pilot I co-wrote with my friend Ethan Stoller about that very process. Check it out below if you haven’t already encountered it elsewhere on the net.

I’D BE REMISS TO NOT MENTION MISC.

Thank you, as always, for reading. There are a lot of things to pay attention to out there and I don’t take your stroll/scroll through this newsletter for granted.

Anything in particular you think I should pay attention to this week? Give me a shout!

over & out & more soon,

Will

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How are you holding up?

I just got back from a quick work trip out west and highly recommend taking a few moments to sit next to a tide pool for a nice reset. You ever hold a shell in your hand and then get a pleasant surprise from the tiny snail that lives inside? Well, pleasant for me, deeply traumatizing for the snail whose entire cosmology just went up in flames. It would have been a lot to process for anyone, but, well…

On this trip I was filming an interview with a stone mason and at one point he said, “I mean, if stone masonry were easy, then everyone would do it” in the exact same tone that writers say “if I could do anything besides writing I would” and I thought, “huh, well that’s something to think about” and now you can think about it too.

As March wraps up, I hang up my adjunct professor cap for the quarter, and take a quick survey of the piles of half-finished bits and bobs covering my apartment. A stop motion project ebbs and flows behind me, a couple short films teem with edits to be applied, and the sails of potential gigs crest the horizon. This view from my particular tide pool is pretty swell whenever I remember to come up for air.

And speaking of MORE and SOON, if you’re in Chicago this weekend I’d love to see you at —

ABBY PAJ TRIES TO STAY ALIVE - a work-in-progress lab Saturday April 5th — 7pm @ The Neo-Futurist Theatre

The doomsday clock ticks 89 seconds to midnight and the world seems to already be ending each day. Some stockpile beans, some stockpile guns, and some bury themselves underground to wait for it to all blow over. Meanwhile, Abby Paj avoids the doctor, stays in bed, and writes “make a go-bag” on every to-do list for a year and a half. Join Abby as they dive into apocalypses, preparation, depression, and maybe doing a bunch of push-ups with a backpack on. Watch as they try to stay alive in any – no, every way possible.

Written & performed by Abby Pajakowski, directed by Sammy Zeisel, tech designed by Spencer Meeks, & produced by me.

PLUS TWO MORE SHOWS THIS WEEK

Cat Huck and I are making it all up as we go along and we’ll be doing it on stage twice this week. It would be oh so sweet to see you there.

Where’s there?

HERE:

1. INDUSTRY NIGHT - The Foxhole (2444 W Montrose) Monday, March 31st @ 8pm ($free)

2. SMALLPROV - Logan Square Improv — Wednesday, April 2nd @ 8pm ($5)

And what’s WHAT?

Maybe something like THIS:

~~~

And that’s that!

As always, thanks for reading and telling me what’s resonating for ya. I’ll be out in LA for a week in April so give me a shout if you’re out and about!

until the next one,

Will

In the past few weeks there has been an onslaught of dehumanizing and cruel anti-trans, anti-immigration, and anti-climate change rhetoric and action as the federal government slides giddily towards fascism. So many people are collectively losing rights, stability, and their imagined futures. There’s no time to grieve before the next news hits (which is by design) and, in the wake of all of this, moving through the day can feel like scheduling band practice while the Titanic sinks. It’s bleak! I find myself angry and scared and overwhelmed and also straight up weird about this being my introductory tone-setting paragraph.

Because I’d truly rather write about anything else! And usually I do!1

But, for now, I’d like to take a moment to consider the difference between paralysis and stillness.

A week ago, I was operating a camera for the livestream of a local Jewish congregation.

My dad got me a book about the Sabbath years ago in which Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel describes the way in which the intentional weekly rest of shabbat builds “cathedrals in time”. I think I’ve written you about this before, but repetition is the name of the game here. Every week is different, but there’s always repetition and ritual, the same prayers and songs on loop for hundreds of years building a holy space one metaphysical brick at a time. This week, the rabbi introduced a new prayer, reading the words of Bishop Mariann Budde asking Trump to show mercy to the marginalized and fearful. The prayer had been making the rounds. I bet you’ve heard it; the internet amplified it, crowding around with hot takes and bad faith shouts and threats and shares and likes and commentary, but that night the words were delivered and repeated again in the original context: a simple plea. A prayer.

I’d spent a week being reminded of how dangerous language can be; it can be a virus that spreads hate and disinformation and fear with the stroke of a pen. But hearing this prayer repeated in a room full of people felt fortifying in a small but tangible way. It was another stone in this collective cathedral of time, a space we can build and imagine together, a moment of stillness and reflection and solidarity from which action can grow.

I guess what I thought was a stone might be a seed.

There are relentless calls and requests for our attention. The oligarchs grinning over Trump’s shoulders at the inauguration have made billions by wringing it dry, but it never belonged to them and they can’t own it. They lease it, steal it, screw it and us in the fine print, and hijack it to freeze us in place. Similarly, the State doesn’t give you freedom, they can only try to take things away (or, at best, confirm the inalienable truths that were true before and will be true long after). i.e. There have always been trans people, there will always be trans people, they don’t stop existing because a bunch of bullies want control over any Body that doesn’t look and act like theirs.

I’ve found hope in the ways people are responding to this moment. Chicago is throwing rocks in the gears of the growing ICE operations, activists are challenging Executive Orders in court, people are refusing to comply, and communities are weaving together, reaching out, digging deep. Mutual aid in Los Angeles after the fires and Asheville after the floods show another way forward, grounded in the reality of neighbors helping neighbors directly, responding to the need organically and systematically when the shitstorm hits the fan.

I find hope in the stories of Octavia Butler, Ursula K Le Guin, Margaret Killjoy, adrienne maree brown and others — and lately I’ve been soaking in a whole new genre of anarchist utopias, new world’s that navigate and celebrate difference and disagreement and consensus instead of trying to force order out of uniformity and control.

In the face of a dehumanizing flood, how can we make ourselves and our neighbors feel more human? The world that is being built by the current Administration is outdated, devoid of compassion, and also, just really, really boring. I’ll challenge and dismantle it whenever I can, but we also have to tend our gardens, build our cathedrals in time, stock up, and continue to create all of the many experiments and worlds we’d rather live in.

I don’t think art will save us, but on the other hand, it’s not bad practice for collaborating with people who care to build something new, feel more fully present and human together. We can create more cathedrals in time, liberating spaces where people feel more free instead of less.

Ok! Shake it out! Trump hasn’t signed a bullshit executive order banning dancing yet, so let’s boogie.

COMEDICALLY INSPIRATIONAL

A comedy special I edited is going to air this Tuesday on the Country Music Channel at 9/8 CT! Featuring cameos from Dolly Parton, Jake Owen, and a bunch of audience members laughing, please let me know what you think if you tune in. We’ve been working on it for over a year — cutting together live shows from Nashville, Tampa, and Virginia Beach into one wild ride. Directed by the wildly talented Blythe Haaga, DP’d by Chicago’s own Michael Ognisanti, and color corrected and exported across the finish line by rockstar colorist Jeff Altman, it’s a little mini-reunion of some of my favorite folks to work with from the show WORK IN PROGRES

COLLABORATE & LISTEN

The first two episodes of web-series I edited is screening at the Cinequest film festival! Directed by my pal Mary Tilden, shot by Harrison Lott, written by Rosie Moan and Cristy von, and featuring a ton of beloved Chicago performers, Collaborate & Listen follows a little known corporate improv team building company competing against the famous goliath ‘Third Coast Theater’ to win workshops and stay afloat.

MORTIFIED

I’m reprising the role of big ol’ softie by performing a dramatic reading of some of my middle school journals this Valentine’s Day at The Athenaeum. 6th - 8th grades were some of my best unrequited crushes, so come get the inside scoop and say hello!

Tickets

QUICK GOOD THINGS!

• I’m an adjunct professor at Northwestern again this quarter and we’ve just started really cooking in class! I’ve come to love the moment when the tools start clicking and the possibilities open up — like dreaming in a different language for the first time.

• College buddy Natalie came to Chicago to do a show at Color Club and we filmed the dang thing. I continue to be in awe of my funny, kind, friends!

• Cooking up another improvised short with some of my nearest (neighbors) and dearest (friends).

• Watched a couple movies I can’t stop spinning around in my head. GODLAND, EVIL DOES NOT EXIST, and NICKEL BOYS all absolutely rocked my world.

• Cackled at buddy Vanessa’s grotesque brilliance at The Chicago Puppet Festival.

• After a decade of working there as a mechanic, my friend Leah is now the co-owner of a very cool bike shop over in Uptown. BROADWAY BIKES (formerly Uptown Bikes) are currently accepting appointments for winter tune-ups. Check them out!

• I love Caroline Rose and I love the idea behind their new YEAR OF THE SLUG tour. If they’re passing through your neck of the woods, you should check them out!

• Hal made four new suits of playing cards. Just imagine a royal flush but it’s all chairs.

• A whole HOST of fun links from Ann Friedman’s newsletter including:

  • ScanOps, a collection of Google Books screenshots that include the hands of low-paid Google data entry workers

  • Chia Amisola’s The Sound of Love, which curates evocative comments on Youtube songs.

• This whole thing by the wordsmithing wonder Hanif Abdurraqib.

Ok, that’s the stack!

I hope you’re finding moments of coziness and comedy and community and care out there. In fact…tell me about it?

I have a soft spot for February. The runt of the month saddled with the enormous responsibility of balancing our calendar every four years — I mean, the pressure! Imagine! Also, after a few weeks of rain, snow, and “misc. other” in Chicago, the Old English term Solmonath (mud month) feels right too.

Here we are! IT’S FINALLY MUD MONTH.

Happy mud.

Stay messy.

love,

will

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All strings aside, I love seeing the lists of what you read, did, saw, and thought this year. I’m a sucker for reflection and I’m proud of you! What good stuff did you find? Show me! What poisonous plants should I avoid? Thanks, I love surviving!

I took a class on the evolution of human language a decade ago and one theory that made an impression was the hypothesis that language grew from gossip; specifically language evolved when social groups of apes got too large for everyone to groom everyone else. At that point, we needed a verbal shorthand to transcend the limits of our community-hungry-hands. In some ways, New Year’s Eve feels like those pre-historic massage trains — I can’t comb your scalp for snacks, but I still want to know what’s on your mind before morning. What are you going to keep/toss/try? Need any help?

We’ve been building social webs like this for tens of thousands of years, and now that the network of everything and everyone is beneath our chatty fingers, its never been easier and harder to connect.

Next year (and tomorrow!), I’d like to retune my attention to how I’m taking in the world as much as what I’m taking in. Stepping out from beneath the waterfall of content to venture further up the trail in search of something new or very old or simply unexpected1. Of course this, like those ancient gossiping gibbons, is not a novel idea. If anything, it’s just a simple re-affirmation to create space for encounter in the new year. (Brb, lighting a candle, doing a little dance, and getting comfy.)

One such encounter came a little early. The day after Christmas I spun the new Angie McMahon album and just listened. In the past, it had been background music, dishwashing vibes, a multi-tasking underscore — but this time I read along with the liner notes as the needle traced the grooves and took it in; a delicious meal with all the other lights turned off!

Dear reader: I was moved!

I woke up and went to sleep 364 times this year, but there are countless more moments of waking up in the middle of a day to my own aliveness and agency. Music does this and so do friends and art and clouds and bumps and grief and road trips and my little dog Bean.

My hope for myself (and for you if you want it) is that 2025 is a year full of these cyclical awakenings to the world’s enmeshed beauties, injustices, and possibilities.

In my first Pillow Fort newsletter of 2024 I quoted this passage from the end of Lindy West’s Shrill:

As we loop back around the sun, chasing our own tails/tales, this idea of world building feels freshly useful. I’ll leave you with one more wise guiding quote as we venture forth into the unknown…

As a Pillow Fort aficionado, I’ll spare you a wrap-up of what I PUT OUT THERE but wanted to take a moment to express some gratitude and enthusiasm for what I TOOK IN:

Books

I read 40 books this year and there were some absolute bangers. This was the year of Empire, anarchist utopias, far-out speculative fiction, and some all-time faves. Here are ten that I read in chronological order that really SPARKED!

• This is How You Lose the Time War - Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone

• Piranesi - Susanna Clarke

• The Space Between Worlds - Micaiah Johnson

• All Fours - Miranda July

• Elf Dog and Owl Head - M.T. Anderson

• Martyr! - Kaveh Akbar

• A Country of Ghosts - Margaret Killjoy

• Inversion - Aric McBay

• Doppelgänger - Naomi Klein

• Eight Billion Genies - by Ryan Browne and Charles Soule

Movies

Didn’t watch as many flicks this year, but here are 10 that I really loved!

• Poor Things

• Dune II

• Perfect Days

• Hundreds of Beavers

• Challengers

• I Saw the TV Glow

• Ghost Light

• Tampopo

• Janet Planet

• What’s Up Doc

~~~

No COLD HARD STATS on Music and TV, but strongly recommend blasting some Petey, watching some Scavenger’s Reign, going to a Dan Deacon concert, starting your day with David Byrne’s cover of Paramore’s Hard Times, and cozying up with some classic episodes of Taskmaster or subscribing and supporting the independent goofiness of DROPOUT TV.

~~~

And now, a quick peek over the fence to ———>

~*2025*~

• NEIGHBORS, my two-prov group with Caleb Fullen has two shows right out the gate. Catch us on Wednesday (1/8) at the Real Angels LSI show or Monday (1/13) at Industry Night at the Foxhole.

• ABBY PAJ TRIES TO STAY ALIVE - I’m producing a full-length play written/performed by Abby Paj and directed by Sammy Ziesel! Truly a dream team. It’s going to be a part of the The Neo-Futurists’ 2025 season, so keep your eyes peeled for upcoming workshops and showings before we premiere in Fall 2025.

• A TBA Web-Series about a Real Estate Agent for Miniature Houses I cooked up with McFadden that is slated for SPRING 2025. HOT DOG!

• The Check-In - I edited a beautiful short written and performed by pal Becca Barish that will hopefully come to some fests and screens of all sizes in the new year.

• A Perfect Pair - in the cutting room for this gem written/directed by Hannah Rehak — stay tuned!

• Grocery shopping! More of a personal reminder here, but in early 2025 I plan to go grocery shopping…breakfast stuff in particular. Gotta start the day/year off right, ya know? See you in the aisles!

~~

And in closing, a big, heartfelt, thank you to readers new and old who have stuck around for a year of Pillow Fort.

I’m very glad you’re here.

I’m having fun and I hope you are too.

xo,

Will

p.s.

Got any guiding thoughts/words/intentions as you glide into ‘25? I’d love to hear what you’re percolating on!

p.p.s.

This was mentioned in a previous Pillow Fort, but I know my sometimes manic hyperlinks can get lost in the mix. In case you missed it, here’s PROM from the brilliant mind of Jenelle Cheyne, cooked up and served by the helping hands of Becca Barish, Caleb Fullen, Nick DiMaso, Harrison Lott, Ethan Stoller, and me!

p.p.p.s.

Ok, now I’m entering “no YOU hang-up” territory, but have you watched Napoleon Dynamite recently? I just re-watched it for the first time in maybe two decades and was truly struck by how much heart and art is packed into this much-memed-movie. Makes a strong case for revisiting some of those middle school favs! OKokokloveyoubyeeeeee

Tomorrow I turn 33. 1

If you search 33, you’ll see the phrase “Jesus Year”, then you can scroll to read about transformationchangerebirth (one word) in an infinite number of blogs; one million SEO optimized posts written by legions of freshly minted 33s. On the one hand, I don’t want to add to this digital cacophony, but on the other hand, I’m a real sucker for reflection.

In preparation for transformation, I scheduled a dentist appointment for THE FUTURE, bought three pristine notebooks, and received a 3/5 star haircut from my local Great Clips.

Birthdays or New Years or even just mornings can radiate this pressure to reinvent. Tomorrow will be different. Tomorrow I’ll be different. Time or the planets or this Buzzfeed listicle ordain it, and so it shall be. Surely, I’ll outgrow the things that are giving me grief, my bones just needed to orbit the sun one more time. Tomorrow I’ll get my act together. Self-acceptance is beautiful but I actually have a couple notes first? Can we workshop this, Self? Change is possible, probable, constant even, but I actually had an arbitrary timeline I was hoping to stick to…?

Today I’m dreaming about projects and pies in skies and processes built of immaculate routines, I’m skimming the cliff notes of The Artist’s Way, and, also, if it’s relevant, I just got one of those canvas closet organizers that hangs from the door without a clue of what I’m going to put inside…kind of a Field of Dreams meets Marie Kondo approach? The year is a blank canvas and I can imagine a full gallery of perfect paintings but I’m afraid to make the first mark.

All that to say, it was from within the eye of this manic pre-birthday hurricane that I texted my friend, Jimmy.

And now, just like that, I’m breathing a little easier. I’m less interested in popping the hood and more interested in getting behind the wheel and going somewhere. Tonight, in about an hour, I’ll go to LOGAN SQUARE IMPROV to do a show. Improv! I love improv. I’m not alone up there, and that’s true out here too. Let’s get together and make something new together, even if it doesn’t last.

Any other thoughts for the day? There’s a button for that!

A PERFECT PAIR

Hannah Rehak wrote and directed a beautiful short film a couple weeks ago that I got to Assistant Direct and am now buckling down to edit. It’s an all-star cast & crew and I hope to share it with you soon!

IT’S FINALS WEEK

Did some primordial gurgle in your stomach tip you off? It’s grading season! I taught two classes at Northwestern this quarter and today is always one of my favorite days. After weeks of learning the basics of video journalism, today the class gathers and screens all of their final story projects. It’s a home cooked meal of local reporting from a great crop of graduate students covering neighborhood haunts, protests, queer rock climbing groups, and everything in between. The room feels different on the other side and I feel lucky to be there.

UPCOMING-ings

• Tomorrow! 12/5! I plan on ending my evening rocking out to the Swearwords show at Beat Kitchen. I’d love to see you there.

• PROM, a sketch I directed/edited written by and starring Jenelle Cheyne is going to be released this Sunday over on !

  

• COLLABORATE & LISTEN, a web-series I edited about the drama of corporate improv is having a private screening on 12/13 with public screenings and offerings soon to follow!

• And then on 12/14 & 12/15 I’ll be doing some bits in a holiday show called RATS!

  

• Tis the season! I’m not a part of it this year but I’d be remiss not to mention THE ADVENT PROJECT. Fresh, bite-sized art every Sunday in December from some of my favorite artists. A character study/song from Ollie Hobson? A transcendent children’s book from Miden Wood? Upcoming offerings and collabs from Hannah Rehak and Abby Pajakowski? It’s too good to miss and every penny goes towards the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund. Do it!

Mariah Carey just started sound-checking for Christmas and beneath the fragrance of fallen leaves there’s that faint whiff of new years resolutions (if you’re into that sort of thing [which sometimes I am - a fresh start! a challenge! a little box to fill with attempts and failures and a record of dusting myself off to try again!]). The world continues to burn in new and ancient ways but now it’s live streamed through the kaleidoscope I keep in my pocket. I anxiously google how much energy a google takes: it is the same as flipping on a lightbulb for 17 seconds.

And then a lightbulb memory, my dad, half-joking, counting seconds as cents to describe the price of running the washing machine. For the dryer, he said, mid-hanging a soaked pair of clean jeans over the edge of the back deck, you count by twos.

Another flipped switch, another 17 seconds to try to find the exact stat about how much water AI uses to generate a 100 word email. I scrolled by an infographic that said it was the equivalent of pouring out a bottle of water? I don’t find the statistic. I wait for the lightbulb to turn back off. In the darkness, orange afterimage floating in my vision, I put down more words.

What does a project do?

As someone on the very cusp of finishing a whole portfolio of projects234 and antsy to build more sandboxes to play in, I think of Rabbi Abraham Heschel’s description of the Sabbath as a “cathedral in time” and filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky’s poetic understanding of filmmaking as “sculpting in time”. Both views look at process and practice as creating something real and invisible, a space formed by focused attention and duration. Deltas and canyons and the hour glass of the ocean floor keeping track of all of the little things adding up; layers, words, and time spent.

Projects are pursuit. There’s usually a product on the other side but having the project is itself an organizing and meaning-making art.

In her novel Activities of Daily Living, Lisa Hsiao Chen explores this idea by following Alice, an artist navigating her aging father’s deteriorating health while getting by as a freelance editor5 and working on an unnamed project about the performance artist Tehching Hsieh. Tehching Hsieh is famous for his performance art pieces in New York in the 70s, 80s and 90s. He spent a year in a cage, another year clocking in every hour on the hour, another year living outside, and another year tied to the artist Linda Montano.

Chen plays with the idea of projects in the first few pages of her novel.

“The word project comes from the Latin projicere, as in pro— forward — and jecere—to throw.

Alice had done this, looked up the definition of project while procrastinating on her own project. She’d also done this: read blogs by project managers who put it this way:

A project has four phases: initiate, plan, execute, and conclude.

A project must have a beginning and it must have an end.

Curiously, embedded in the layered definitions of project is its own undoing: the project is “an idle scheme; an impractical design; as in, ‘a man given to projects’” (Webster-dictionary.org).” - Activities of Daily Living (p. 12, Lisa Hsiao Chen)

I am a man given to projects and Pillow Fort is a project full of other projects!

SPEAKING OF PROJECTS

For the last month or so I’ve been tooling around with my friends Caleb and Mark on different ways to use improv in film. Hopscotching in the footsteps of Elaine May and John Cassavetes and the Duplass Brothers, we’re playing between using improvisation as a generative tool to create scenes from scratch or as a texture in written scenes or an ethos in approaching the scaffold of building out a longer project.

BLUFF (below) is the result of a two hour session where we improvised the same scene four or five times, shortening and simplifying and workshopping with each iteration. We started with a fifteen minute version and then worked our way down to three minutes by the end. The sketch below is the result of cobbling together multiple attempts, and I hope you get a kick out of it! (uh, I guess cw: profanity if you’re blasting it on your office speakers?)

WHAT’S NEW IN WILL WORLD

• After two quarters off, I’m back to teaching a video production course at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism. We’ve learned the basics, and now my students are out roaming the streets of Chicago crafting stories of their own and texting me questions about ISO on beautiful, sunny, fall days like today.

• POST, a TV pilot I co-wrote with my friend Ethan Stoller just got accepted into the Atlanta Comedy Festival, so if you’re around the Limelight Theater on November 10th swing by to say hello!

• COUPLES COSTUME, a seasonally spooky short I made last year screened as part of Scream-tini Shot: Film Festival & Costume Contest at Mainstage Chicago and snagged a third place finish! To balance out my ego here, I’ll admit that I also burned my arm by biting into a scalding mozzarella stick and getting absolutely juiced.

• I acted in a local car insurance commercial produced by the wildly talented Katie Johnston-Smith, so if you live in the Chicago-land area keep your eyes peeled for me spilling popcorn on myself at some spooky the low rates.

• Got to re-unite with RITE OF PASSAGE cinematographer Drew Angle to shoot two more tiny episodes of a tiny web series about tiny houses I’m cooking up with McFadden. Hope to share some eps by the end of the year so stay tuned for screening deets!

  

AND IN CLOSING, A POEM WRITTEN ON THE TRAIN COMING HOME

HELLO HELLO HELLO

she went on a silent retreat and it took 10 days to remember
that it’s all a wave ~~~
Hello, Hello, Hello
my nephew yells - to my dad, the slide, the world
then,
the shared smile with a train passenger who plops, not a 
full fall but graceful crash landing
Her: old enough to be worried
about a hip or twist or crack
but still able to plop
to dismount from standing
to smile in a way that winks at CLOSE ONE HUH
and 
I'VE STILL GOT IT, NEVER FEAR
Hello, Hello,
the men running for the train
door closing, ready for anger,
arms held up in the universal sign of
WHAT THE FUCK MAN,
just as the doors re-open
and grace let’s them in
interrupts the wave, the injustice, 
as across the street
graffiti reads
MISS YOU JON
CRAZY THAT ITS BEEN THREE YEARS 
on the wall for as long as I can remember
far longer than three years
and now, another echo
the train lurches and a young man
sits down hard 
the same choreography as the woman next to him who looks 
and yes, I’m typecasting,
but looks, 
and I apologize in advance, 
but looks, 
with all due respect, 
a little Episcopalian,
by which I mean, in some liturgical sense, 
weathered but open?
: a suitcase,
and a Patagonia jacket, 
and the look of someone who recites a creed and means it
and loves their queer little niblings without caveat or qualm or complication
Hello, Hello, Hello
old Chesterton washed up on a strange shore that,
upon closer observation
was home all along
that old feeling new again
which the world does every spring
and we do every time a stumble is caught
and shared with a stranger
smiling across the train
echoing out
Hello

~ ~ ~

bye for now,

Will

2

A sketch with Jenelle!

3

A short with Hal and Lauren and Hannah!

4

A play Abby wrote that we adapted for the screen!

I am a nesting-doll and six-year-old-Will-who-has-found-a-cool-looking-bug/stick/rock-and-needs-to-tell-you-about-it still has a lot to say.

Plus, beginnings have always been tricky.

On the character creation screens in video games, I would typically spend forever trying to come up with the perfect name instead of getting on with the business of playing.

After devouring The Lord of the Rings as a kid, I would dream up my own fantasy worlds1 but rarely made it past the map or the alphabet I was trying to create from scratch. (Tolkien never would have tolerated the number of umlauts, and the stack of epic prologues I abandoned might actually fill a book.)

Even now…Pillow Fort! Months in and I have second thoughts about the name, perhaps exacerbated by the discovery that Pillow Fort™️ is already a very well established kid furniture brand from Target, but still. What if I want to expand into tiny bespoke bunk beds some day? Well, I’ll just have to start from scratch.

Sometimes, it helps to take a break, jump to the end, and write the museum plaque of the thing you haven’t created yet.

“Sonheim’s playful fusion of language and aerodynamics effortlessly evokes the myth of Icarus while offering an unwavering critique of the prison industrial complex.”

Then you have point “B” and just work backwards to “A”. Easy peasy. Wings, wings…something with wings…

So, as usual, here I am, wanting to tell you everything. Today I’ll settle for an abbreviated list of some of today’s top headlines.

THE NEWS

1. BREAKING: The basil2 on the windowsill is blooming with tiny white blossoms and frankly, no offense, but this is exactly the kind of crap that makes a guy need to write poetry. I mean, give me a break! This plant’s got metaphor, simile, and alliteration3 written all over it. The last time I had herbs on the windowsill like this I accidentally ordered an entire collection of essays from Wendell Berry and then spent a week trying to figure out if I should ditch this substack (and computer entirely) and just write on yellow legal pads that my wife (TBA) would transcribe while I’m out tilling the fields of my family farm (TBA). IT’S A GATEWAY HERB.

2. Lately, I’ve also been addicted to this guy → 🫡 . What do our emojis say about us? Well, he pairs well with a 🏄‍♂️ or 🕺to make it clear that I mean business when it comes to having fun.

3. A rainbow crashed my friend’s wedding in the desert and I loved it.

   1. 

4. Once my dad butt dialed me in the middle of describing the plot of The Hobbit to my nephew and I stayed on the phone for a full two minutes just to hear how everyone was doing. (The party was good but freshly packed inside of barrels, I think?)

5. It is finally time for me to part ways with the broken forty pound typewriter I found in the alley. ANY TAKERS??? 🫡

   1. 

THE FULL HEARTACHE VISUAL ALBUM

A year ago, I collaborated with many of my favorite people to create a visual album for my friend Ollie’s album HEARTACHE. It remains one of my favorite projects and the heart, scrappiness, and collaborative spirit of the endeavor epitomizes all of the things I love about making work and life in Chicago. Each director took a different track and then shared the opening and closing frames of their piece so we could stitch them together into one fluid piece. I’ve already shared the individual videos, but now that we’ve finished our festival run (you’re looking at the New Media Festival Music Video Award Winner) we’re releasing the full version which flows from one song to the next in the way we always intended the piece to be experienced.

A COUPLE OF CLOWNS

My pal Ella Pennington was in town and she treated us to a clown-y photo shoot inspired by Buster Keaton and Jacques Tati. The one color shot here is a behind-the-scenes moment of another clown (me) just trying to tie a tie for Abby. Once you can tie a tie for someone else you graduate to landing exactly in the window of a falling house. Steep learning curve — I hope I have what it takes!!!

(p.s. Ella is an amazing photographer and you can see more of her work over at )

SOME SHOWS!

This month, I traveled to Bloomington, Indiana to do an improv workshop and performance at an art gallery, a collaboration hatched by the lovely performer and designated rental-car-driver Tim Felton. The show itself was a series of improvised scenes inspired by the photography and artistic philosophy of photographer Clarissa Bonet who joined via Zoom. Very fun! Highlights included Trader Joe’s employees that all kissed their co-workers on the mouth, a flock of pigeons rising up against their human overlords, and a good eight hours of conversation there and back.

Up next? Well, ’s very own Cat Huck and I will be doing a set this Saturday (9/21) for Logan Square Improv’s Saturday Show and then Caleb Fullen and I will be doing some more two-prov on 10/7 at Industry Night.

Plus, a PLUG for the show FIVE YEARS that Abby Pajakowski and Annie Share are putting on at Cafe Mustache on 9/23. I got a SNEAK PEAK and if you like musicals, friendships, good writing, a playful concept that’s got HEART, and Abby and Annie, then this one is a must-see.

A POTPOURRI OF LINKS

• My friend Karly is working on a wickedly cool film called BOY BAND that is written by, directed by, and featuring a full cast of artists with intellectual and developmental disabilities. It looks like an absolute blast, and if you can throw it a few extra bones (SPOOKY!) I recommend it!! (LINK: https://seedandspark.com/fund/boy-band-in-a-haunted-hotel#story)

• Miden Wood illustrated a tarot deck with accompanying guide book that looks really beautiful! If you’re interested, you can read more about it on or snag a copy at the Kickstarter link here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/friendtarot/two-bugs-tarot

• of tuned me in to the great newsletter from Ann Friedman — I love her latest post about intentionally building community! (LINK: https://mailchi.mp/ladyswagger/no-community-without-effort-1198322?e=726c4dd100)

• Holy smokes, I just finished A COUNTRY OF GHOSTS by Margaret Killjoy and absolutely loved it. Can’t recommend this epic anarchist utopia fantasy highly enough. If you read it let’s TALK! (LINK: https://www.akpress.org/countryofghosts.html) AK Press just finished a big ol’ sale and now I’ve got an embarrassingly stack of radical reading that I’ve been blazing through. Just finished LOVE AFTER THE END4 and HERMETICA…what are YOU reading?

  ~~~

  Thanks as always for reading and subscribing! And HUGE thanks to the paid subscribers who help keep the metaphorical lights on the literal coffee flowing.

  Subscribe now

I was once hired to send out provocative emails to the feral film critics of Small Regional Markets. My job entailed throwing pebbles at the windows of the San Francisco Chronicle at midnight, slipping ransom notes under the bedroom door of the Boston Globe, and orchestrating failed meet-cute-moments with The Seattle Times; loitering by the honey dews, praying our hands would graze over the same ripe melon. For this, as well as scheduling targeted social media ads, I was given a handful of ducats every two weeks and access to all-you-can-eat mixed nuts. This is 100% true if not entirely accurate.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Dear Reader, I was just trying to get their attention. 1

Shuffle the papers, clear the throat, look through the camera — See? You’re looking at the back of the lens but this will feel like eye contact to the audience on the other side. Punch with your eyes. Clear your mind. You are an eleven-year-old green belt, the screen is plywood, and eternal glory is always on the other side.

A few days ago, I was wedged into the back of a classroom with some of the best and brightest — I was not the best nor the brightest, I was filming the best & brightest to promote the program which had assembled aforementioned best and brightest into the room to attract even better and brighter in the future. Does this make sense? Life is short, don’t read it again, just keep moving!!! One of the brightest-best was reading out the Terms and Conditions of a major social media company and, as we all sat for a moment inside the sinking feeling of living trapped within a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, and worldwide agreement I realized that I hadn’t sent out a Pillow Fort in awhile.

Shame on me!2

And so, here we are, August already, at my little press conference.

There will be a time for questions at the end, but please don’t start lining up just yet.

It’s been a busy stretch! Just the other day, for example, my friend Nick told me I should move my savings (quadruple digits but we’re working on it! Bird by bird/buck by buck) into a Wealthfront Cash Account to collect 5% APY instead of the twenty annual pennies I’d been getting from the US BANK account I opened in elementary school (Go Koalas!). Growth is possible. It’s never too late for a change. I hope my financially savvy choices can serve as an inspiration for some and a warning for everyone else.

Since my last bulletin, I flew to Baltimore to film a series of YouTube videos for one of the top asphalt magazines in the United States.3 Everything is fluid but only some things are 300 degrees Fahrenheit.4 We’d get up early and fill our cameras with sweaty footage of pouring, rolling, cooling, dumping, breaking, digging, work.

Driveways and parking lots were born before our very eyes a mere stone’s throw from Civil War battlefields. One night at the end of a long day my co-worker and I both listened to the Presidential Debate on our respective phones at opposite ends of the rental house. Dread and dead tired. This was was already one month and/or a million years ago.

WE’RE DOING IT LIVE

When I got back to Chicago, I filmed my friend John Michael’s show SPANK BANK TIME MACHINE during it’s run at Steppenwolf. It’s a raunchy, absurd, heartfelt one-man show about grief, friendship, and the live-saving-time-traveling-potential of Narcan to bring back people who have just OD’d. Catch it if you can!

I’ve been filming and editing more live shows lately and it’s been a blast. I just edited and locked a comedy special my friend Blythe directed (TBA soon hopefully!) and now have a couple other live shows in the ol’ queue. Cut to the Close-Up, audience reaction, go wide, bump the laugh, pull the pause, tighten and tweak and punch up (and believe: eternal glory is still just on the other side).

TINY HOUSES BIG DREAMS

I started filming a fresh web series cooked up by the supremely talented and courageously crafty McFadden (for further reading see:), shot by good pal Chris Owsiany, and directed/edited by Pillow Fort editor me. We filmed most of two episodes and only got kicked out of one (1) cemetery. Pretty good stats all things considered!

ABBY PAJ TRIES TO TAKE A WALK

Creative & Life-Partner Abby Pajakowski is currently developing a full-length play for The Neo-Futurists called ABBY PAJ TRIES TO STAY ALIVE. The show explores disasters, apocalypses, and prepper culture in connection to Abby’s depression, anxiety, and avoidant behavior. I’m producing, Sammy Zeisel is directing, and Abby is researching/writing/performing in it! I may be biased, but local amateur scientists have already confirmed that it’s going to be absolutely sick. As part of that project, Abby and I went on a twenty-mile walk along the Lake Front Trail in Chicago and documented it for The Neo-Futurist bi-monthly Patreon show THE INFINITE WRENCH GOES VIRAL. The piece is compiled of original writing, interviews with folks who joined up along the way, and 10 hours of walking. Below is a peak behind The Neo’s paywall so, if you’re intrigued and want to follow along on the journey with artistic updates about the project from Abby every two weeks, please consider joining The Neo-Futurists’ Patreon to support the art with your attention and/or money!

Tiers start at free dollars.

A TRIP

I flew to London and back. In the time in-between those two flights; I drank beer and tea with old friends, walked around old haunts5, saw a play that I loved, stood in front of amazing art, ordered my favorite at our old neighborhood kebab spot, had two (2) spiritual moments with foxes, and sat on the upper deck of every bus I could get my butt on.

Returning somewhere after a stretch always feels dreamy. Memories keep sprouting up with each familiar smell, sight, and sound; grafting a fresh memory into the trunk of the old one. It’s a rush of all of the unforgettable things you’d forgotten. Returning to a coffee shop for a meeting I was suddenly hit with the refreshed memory of my first morning in London back in 2017…

Day one, I woke up on a park bench that no longer exists.

Back in 2017, I flew to Stansted Airport in the window between crucial public transit hours. In the spirit of frugality, I had booked a bed at a hostel for £15 and both the bed and the hostel ended up not existing (when I looked for them on a map this is what I saw). Sleeping in the airport was discouraged by soldiers patrolling with machine guns, so I groggily waited until I could catch a bus to downtown London. If NYC is the city that never sleeps, I’ve found that London is a city that loves both sleeping in and winding down early. In short, I arrived in a city lugging everything I owned with nothing opening for another three hours.

And so I ended up in Finsbury Park, on a bench, with both arms looped through the handles of all of my earthly possessions.

I’ve thought about this moment many times since, but being back in the coffee shop next to the crucial outlet added a sharpness and dimensionality to the story that had started to bleed into personal-myth. When I retell the story, I don’t necessarily feel the wave of uncertainty about the precariousness of that moment. Physically returning to that space reminded me what it felt like to be the body that had lived that in the first place. A lot of the fond memories of that neighborhood were also colored by forgotten-sense-memories of truly scraping by: remembering where the cheapest coffee was sold, the crappy corner store with the bad produce, the meal deal combos, the ocean of in-betweens I so often found myself in.

Without a doubt, the highlight of the trip were the friends. Seeing the sights was sweet, but being lucky enough to have some homemade lasagna for a movie night with pals we love and haven’t seen in five years? Simply the best.

I left feeling immensely grateful for the time then and the time now. As a final lucky break, I caught my first glimpse of some truly spectacular Greenland peaks in between my unhinged in-flight-movie choices of Contagion and The End We Start From6.

JUST TRYING TO TAKE IT ALL IN

I sponged up so much great stuff!!

I loved the film GHOSTLIGHT, I loved the book MARTYR!7, I loved the play ECHO, I loved the song I’VE GOT IT ALL FIGURED OUT by my friend Hal8 (who I also love, fwiw) — Hal & the London trip form a perfect circle because he and buddy Patrick wrote this theme song for a long-distance short-lived recap podcast ONE TREE WILL. No need to get caught up on all twelve episodes but, if you have fifty-eight seconds to spare I do encourage revisiting the theme song.

~~~

And now, once again, after putting one word in front of the other, we’ve made it to the end! Thanks for reading & watching, and another big heartfelt THANK YOU to folks who have elected to support the stack financially; your generous subscriptions have gone right back into the art and cover everything from paying designers on short films I’m finishing up to getting me a cup of coffee as I crank out another post.

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I’m going to play with increasing the frequency after my unintentional sabbatical, so please stay tuned for more sooner rather than later!

xoxo,

Will9

9

Three or four times a year I have a nightmare where I’m hosting a social gathering entirely from my bed. I’m always trying to be a good host while simultaneously trying to get back to sleep. At some point in every dream I have a moment where I think, “Huh, now’s not a great time for me to be hosting since I’m, you know, asleep.”

And then I wake up! And somehow it is May 16th and I haven’t sent out an email in a little bit. Pull up a chair! We’ve got some LINKS.

MAY: IN MEMORIAM

Editor’s Commentary:

1. :09 - The text “Before - Because - Becoming”1

2. :14 - Technically Chris “SKOACH” shot the plugs. 2

3. :22 - A workshop on Improvisational Directing produced by good pal Katelyn Douglas at Mainstage Chicago!

4. :31 - If anyone wants to play this is a real game but I’ve never made it past Stoic Level 1.1

5. 1:06 - Harrison Lott’s lovely web series HOW DOES THAT WORK, available for streaming in full at your local YouTube

FROM SCREEN TO SHINING SCREEN

CLAMBAKE - NEW YORK, NY

Clambake (a film I was lucky enough to edit) had a screening outside in Sunset Park as part of the The Art of Brooklyn Film Festival. This movie will always hold a sweet spot in my heart and I’m so glad it had an open-air-viewing. You can watch it inside or outside at the link below.

COURTYARD - LOS ANGELES, CA

Courtyard, the first music video in the HEARTACHE Visual Album I produced last year, just won Best Music Video as part of the New Media Film Festival. Congrats to Diego, Pat, Matt, Tim and Ollie for making such a beautiful vid!

Jenelle Cheyne’s Reel - Chicago, IL

Got to snip together a sweet reel for my pal, Jenelle! This one also includes a sneak peak of an upcoming sketch called PROM that will be dropping any dang day now. Please do yourself a favor and cast Jenelle in stuff.

And now? Now I’m running out the door to catch Abby Paj in The Infinite Wrench tonight at 7pm. And if you’re around Chicago for the next three weeks YOU CAN TOO.

xoxo,

Will

The film GROUNDHOG DAY, in which a weatherman is stuck living the same day over and over again, was also filmed in Woodstock.2

In general, film sets do have a certain GROUND HOG DAY quality - a déjà vu that comes from running a scene multiple times from different angles. The physical labor that underpins every shoot also has a looping rhythm, a Sisyphean cycle of perpetually setting up and tearing down the worlds you’re building. Whenever you bring a camera and some gear into a space, that space becomes a set, even if moments before it was a humble alley or a living room or a field. If you have enough money you can even pay for the world to accept that this ordinary corner is now (legally) a set - with flyers, permits, PAs blocking off sidewalks, and extras filling in the gaps so nothing is left to chance. The whole idea of being on set comes from those early days of cinema when most things were shot in large studios inside of fully fabricated spaces.

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Being able to build and control an entire world like this is usually outside of my budget. Money and control are materially connected3 but more often than not I’m trying to find spaces that are “close enough” and then accept that most elements are simply out of my control. This type of constraint-based-creation feels very at home in Chicago with institutions like The Neo-Futurists working on a scrappy budget of both resources and time (only 60 minutes? For 30 plays??) and artists like Selina Trepp who stopped acquiring new art materials in 2012 and resolved to only work with what she had. It’s also a core part of the DIY Filmmaking class I’m teaching at Lillstreet and the upcoming workshop on Improvisational Directing I’m cooking up at Mainstage!

I’ve worked on projects where I filmed my friends from the backseat of a car for zero dollars and I’ve also been a much smaller cog for productions where tens of thousands of dollars were spent to shut down a three lane highway. Having that kind of control isn’t always better; you don’t always need an ocean liner4 for a job better suited to a jet-ski.

In the electronics factory, everyone had a fixed role. They were building hundreds of different physical widgets which requires repeating the same task over and over again to create an object that can perform the same task over and over again, becoming a machine to make the machines. Filming this process also becomes mechanical, especially when we transitioned from documentary style shooting to product photography; cranking out 3-4 still images for every item the company sells, basically transforming the set into a twelve-hour game of Bop-It5.

As I started to work my way through the mountains of pictures of slightly different buttons, toggles, and circuits, I found myself finally listening to Hanif Abudurriqib’s amazing book THEY CAN’T KILL US UNTIL THEY KILL US. I strongly recommend a truly random pairing whenever you can manage it. Don’t think too hard, just smush things together until some random combination resonates. I’m late to this particular book party, but I’m so glad I’m here. I’ve been a fan of Hanif’s poetry and just general vibe on Instagram for years now, and hearing his poetic musings on music and culture totally shifted my internal landscape as I slogged my way between products. Even if my physical setting was locked into a repetitive clicking, scrolling, and sorting loop, my body was successfully transported to the hot basements of the Columbus punk scene or Prince’s half-time show or anywhere else I was lucky enough to hear Hanif describe.

I’m realizing now that, at the factory, nearly every worker wore headphones. All in their own worlds, shaping their own internal spaces even as their hands fell into a familiar groove.

Is the difference between a routine, a rut, and a ritual all a matter of perspective?

Yes and no and maybe. I reckon the truth isn’t a 1 or a 0, an OPEN or CLOSED circuit, but somewhere in between the gaps.

My brain jumps (always jumping!) to the book SAVING TIME, in which Jenny Odell makes the connection between our relationship to productivity and time and the role of work/labor in our society.

As I watched the wave of switches, toggles, and chips slide past me I also thought of Jenny quoting a time management book from the 90s that complains that "the computer chip didn't free us. It coerced us to produce at its speed."

I’m a full time freelancer these days which can sometimes feel like I’m the foreman and the worker and the product all rolled into a Rube-Goldbergian-factory of one. But of course, a factory isn’t the only model for the invisible architecture of how I’m envisioning my time and place in the world of work. I can also be a gardener or gatherer or, in many cases, just a guy who wears a lot of different hats.

Lately, when people ask me what’s new and exciting in my life, I keep talking about biking to therapy is if it’s a wild discovery! CHICAGO IN SPRING, ever heard of it??! The bike ride in question is nine miles there and a nine miles back, another time-loop that leaves me right back where I started…but, as is often the case, a little bit different.

SOME FRESH INPUTS

• This interview with Ethan Hawke about art and filmmaking and the new Flannery O’Connor film he made with his daughter

• ANOTHER excellent Defector essay about Magneto

• I’ve been thinking about the Parable of the Raft ever since my bud of fame sent this podcast about secular Buddhism my way

• My friend Cesca had a really amazing installation at Lillstreet (I CAN’T SIT STILL BUT I’M TRYING) that I’ll keep turning around in my head for awhile!

• I watched CHALLENGERS and ate a churro. Both were amazing.

• per a recommendation from my mom, I started reading the kid’s book ELF DOG AND OWL HEAD and am loving it. Makes me want to drop everything and just write weird worlds for 3rd - 5th graders!

SOME FRESH OUTPUTS

• I’m going to invent a little robot that’s sole function is giving you a little pat on the bat after you send your little emails

• A designed a t-shirt for my brother’s running club that reimagined him and his friends as goofy super heros.

• I’m running a one day directing workshop if you’re curious and in Chicago on May 30th

• I started teaching a fresh video editing class at Northwestern as part of the Research Communication Training Program

And that’s the fort! Thanks for reading and see ya at the next one.

plugging away,

Will

Well, it’s Tax Day and, if you’re a paid subscriber to Pillow Fort, I’m 90% sure you can write-off your subscription as either “Educational” or “Charitable” depending on how these posts are hitting.

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Ok, 60% sure. Maybe just flip a coin before you file? To be clear: I have an accountant and I have no idea what I am talking about.

It’s been two weeks since our last dispatch and since then, the moon blotted out the sun, Chicago had a taste of summer weather, I got my first jury summons, and I’ve had to recharge my bike light because of so many lovely night-cycles.

What’s new and what’s next?

• Cat Huck and I had a conversation that ended up on . We mention how much we’re both digging which, by tagging it here, officially completes the circle.

• This Wednesday (4/17) I’m doing some improv with Caleb Fullen at Real Angels - Logan Square Improv at 9:30pm. This is my favorite show! Come see why!

• I did a bit at Freshly Waxed where I was a stressed out Headspace intern who needed the audience’s help to re-record a guided meditation I had accidentally deleted. of (check it!) was there and can vouch in terms of whether or not this hit. Sound off in the comments, please. Last show on the books is this Saturday (4/20) at The Den if you wanna swing by! I have a single comp but many codes so please, and I can’t stress this enough, hit me up.

• We released the Heartache Visual Album a couple months ago and are starting to hear back from Film Festivals who have selected some music videos from the project. Very cool! Screenings in NYC and Los Angeles are both on the books for this summer with more deets coming soon! If you simply can’t wait, you can always check those out on the Color for Colors YouTube page.

• We’re screening a short episode of POST at The Davis this Tuesday night for the cast & crew. I have a handful of extra seats now that we’ve gotten our RSVPs back, so if you’re a Pillow Fort-er, shoot me a message and I’ll save you a seat while supplies last! The evening will include a sizzle reel we produced for our TV show alongside a tasty selection of Chicago shorts to wrap up the night.

Ok, that’s what’s going OUT and here’s what I’ve been taking IN:

THREE MOVIES

Abby and I watched the Wim Wenders film PERFECT DAYS on a perfect day a couple of weeks ago. We’d attempted to catch it at the theater, but it was sold out so we watched a different Wenders flick about the painter and sculptor Anselm Kiefer (in 3D?!) instead.1

In some ways these films couldn’t be more different. ANSELM grapples with heavy themes of war and art and memory against this massive backdrop of an abandoned industrial warehouse (turned artist’s workshop), while PERFECT DAYS follows the day-to-day routine of an older man (Hirayama) cleaning public toilets in Tokyo.

I’m particularly grateful to PERFECT DAYS for giving me the Japanese word komorebi, which describes the shimmering of light and shadows created by leaves swaying in the wind. If you’re a komorebi-head like me, I think you’d love PERFECT DAYS. The word helps me to hold on to something that exists only for a moment...although maybe hold on to is the exact wrong way of thinking about it. As Hiryama says in the film, “Now is now. Next time is next time.”

My feeds were overflowing with komorebi on the day of the eclipse as we all paused, looked up, borrowed glasses, and let our jaws collectively drop for a breath.

The eclipse washed over me in Graceland Cemetery, the final resting place of some of Chicago’s famous architects, and there was something really resonant about experiencing an intrinsically fleeting moment amidst the graves of people who spent their lives working with steel and stone. The stones are also slowly wearing away, so I guess it’s all a matter of perspective and timescale. My favorite thing about Graceland is that it is the home of a coyote who, without fail, makes me feel like this whenever I see him:

Speaking of wild animals…

I simply cannot recommend the film HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS highly enough.

I went with a group of pals to a sold-out screening with 700+ other people and it was hands down one of the best movie going experiences of my 32 years. So smart, so dumb, exquisite slapstick, entirely original, and an absolute delight.

Also, gotta drop in the brag that childhood pal Bobb Barito (who features prominently in this satirical retrospective I made about my oeuvre five years ago) sound designed it and it blew my socks off. See it in a theater if you can (or buy the flick on Apple TV or Prime and have yourself a good old fashioned movie night with as many friends as can fit in your movie-room of choice.

Do not, under any circumstance, invite any woodland critters.

PILES AND PILES OF BOOKS

Sulzer Library is dangerously close and now I’m surrounded by STACKS. I’ve really been enjoying hardcore literary grazing and cross pollinating lately2 — creating my own little spongey algorithm by following an improvisational syllabus that keeps changing. For example, I try to keep my brain on its toes (?) by waking up and reading twenty pages of DESTINY DISRUPTED: A HISTORY OF THE WORLD THROUGH ISLAMIC EYES, another chapter of EVIL EYES SEA, hop over to BUILDING A SECOND BRAIN to clean up my digital clutter/anxiety, and then garnish it all with a handful of poems from SURVIVAL IS A STYLE (a book by Christian Wiman that my mom brought me a week ago).

DESTINY DISRUPTED is the most flavor-forward of my samplings at the moment. I just got to the Ottoman Empire (no spoilers!) and I’m loving it. My exposure to hundreds of years of Islamic history growing up was virtually non-existent in the classroom and only really showed up in a game called STRONGHOLD CRUSADER that I bought for $10 from a Wal-Mart bargain bin as an Arkansan teen.

Currently, I’m getting some interesting resonance between historical empire building (GLOBAL) and all the current self-impove-y /productivity fads that push for a different kind of order and control (PERSONAL). The spark of a connection, but I’ll let it steep a little longer and see how it tastes in another few weeks.

Whatcha reading? Anything I should add to my brain soup?

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And a Little Bit of The Internet

I’ve been a big fan of Bianca Giaever since encountering her short THE SCARED IS SCARED like a decade ago. She’s doing a month long project in NYC so, if you’re in NYC and need help, you should give her a call.

And that’s the fort!

until next time,

party on,

Will

BREATHING IN

I’ve been spongeing up some sweet new stuff the last couple of weeks, so without further ado, here’s some of the creative soup I’ve been slurping on.2

• A GRAPHIC NOVEL: My friend Özge Samancı had a book release party for her new graphic novel Evil Eyes Sea and it was a blast! If a queer, mixed-media, Turkish murder mystery set during a scuba dive through the liminal space between two continents sounds intriguing you should stop reading this and go pre-order that STAT. Özge’s about to head out on tour, so if you live in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, LA, San Francisco, or Toronto you can experience the book LIVE. Check out her website for a decade of comics and the rad interactive art she’s cooked up over the years.3

• A GAME: Lately, I’ve been kicking back with a 10 year-old phone-game called Papers, Please. In the game, you play a border agent in a fictional Communist Block nation inspecting the papers of everyone trying to get in — so kind of like Candy Crush if Candy Crush was exploring the murky morality and impossible games of empire, bureaucracy and corruption. Fun! I am bad at it. Abby keeps asking me how it’s going and I’ll be like, “Not great, my family keeps freezing to death because I’m not hitting my quota or taking bribes.”4 Sometimes you just can’t do anything right, you know?

• A BOOK: I finished CHILDREN OF DUNE and loved spending more time on Arrakis after having a blast at Dune: Part Deux(n) in theaters. Truly a wild worm ride, friends. I love a good adaptation so maybe my next step is venturing out into the unknown wastelands of this early 00’s mini-series staring a young James McAvoy. I’ve been on a big sci-fi kick lately and am now tempering it with some fresh non-fiction in the form of Judith Butler’s latest book GENDER TROUBLE, ZONA by Geoff Dyer, and a kind of how-to book on smarter note-taking using something called the Zettlekasten Method. Thank goodness for libraries! Speaking of libraries…

• A RESOURCE: Do you know about the Chicago Tool Library? It’s dope and is exactly what it sounds like. The mission of the organization is “to provide equitable access to tools, equipment, and information to allow all Chicagoans to learn, share, and create”. I can often combat feelings of anxiety with a sense that I need to have everything under control or figured out — a sort of individualistic emotional-bunker-building which brings a temporary feeling of security but also isolation. As I think about uncertain times ahead, more and more I find true comfort in examples of community and mutual aid like The Chicago Tool Library instead of in the idea that I could ever truly “be prepared for anything5”. My friends Drew and Katelyn just made a lovely series of mini-docs about the library that you can check out on Instagram.

• A PODCAST: I’ve been loving the podcast Gender Playground from ! Creators of Material Girls (also a banger!) and produced by dear friend Hannah Rehak, this puppy comes out every two weeks with each episode exploring the joys of gender-affirming care for kids. While a lot of the episodes are framed around parenting, I think it’s a great resource for thinking and exploring anyone’s relation to (or questions about) gender in all kinds of contexts. Big fan!

• A FISH DOORBELL: This is a doorbell for fish.

BREATHING OUT

• I animated a video essay my friend Hannah wrote about having a crush in the midst of a crumbling world - it was released in this week’s edition of . You can watch and read that at the link below!

  The Honeypot

  Honey No. 16

  Ever since the pandemic, I have become a person who weeps at public performances. The hum of a crowd, the heat of the lights, the incomparable energy of experiencing something en masse- all things that now bowl me over in their power and fragility. Music, in particular, has a habit of opening these flood gates. Not all shows do this to me- I made it thr…

  Read more

  2 years ago · 7 likes · Olivia West Nielsen

• FRESHLY WAXED - Two shows in the books and two more left (4/13 & 4/20), Saturday night’s at The Den Theatre. This past Saturday night I did a bit where I was a dressage rider competing without his horse (R.I.P.), so if that sounds like your cup of tea, I’ll be performing something completely different on 4/13 and 4/20 and it would be great to see ya! I have a comp and some codes so give me a shout if you’re intrigued.

• I’m teaching a workshop at Mainstage Chicago next month (more soon!) as well as another DIY FILMMAKING ON A SHOESTRING BUDGET at Lillstreet on Friday’s. I’m also about to jump back into a class where I teach video-editing to STEM graduate and PHd students at Northwestern.6

• STRESS FRACTURE, a short I edited that was written and directed by my friend Jessie Robkin, had a private screening for cast & crew & friends this past week. I like watching movies in rooms full of people! If you hear of any opportunities like this hit me up and I will come watch a movie in a room full of people with you. STRESS FRACTURE will hopefully be coming to some festivals near you this year so stay tuned.

• I directed some unhinged sketches from the twisted and talented mind of Nick DiMaso for his sketch pilot ALL KINDS OF CRAZY. This one is about healthy communication skills (CONTENT WARNING: potty humor) and this one is about just wanting to do a good job (CONTENT WARNING: bosses). I guess both of these are NSFW but maybe it depends where you work?

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I don’t have a plan for the upcoming total solar eclipse but am dreaming of a drive to Carbondale, Illinois for a moment of totality. Have you read the Annie Dillard piece about eclipses? Holy smokes. Are you going to see it? Any tips? My childhood hometown of Arkadelphia, Arkansas is smack-dab in the middle of totality but, unfortunately, I moved away fourteen years ago. But I guess cosmically? In the grand scheme of things? …I really did just miss it.

miss you too & until next time,

Will

It’s really an excellent read but this is neither the time nor the place for that conversation.2

So, no excuses and all questions aside, two days ago my glasses broke. Or, perhaps more accurately, they gently disassembled themselves. I was helping Abby choreograph a cool move for THE INFINITE WRENCH3 that involved me taking my shirt off (brag) but I took my shirt off wrong (un-brag) and, dear reader, my glasses simply fell apart.

I’m no engineer, but I believe all I need to fix them is one (1) tiny screw. Unfortunately, I am not someone who has tiny screws floating around the house, and if I do I wouldn’t be able to see them (see: tiny screw & broken glasses above). And although I strive to move through the world with a healthy-blossoming-growth-mindset instead of a single-speed-fixed-mindset, sometimes you just have to come to terms with the fact that you might never be the type of person who has tiny screws. Humbling!

While my brain gracefully spirals like this it is only a matter of time before I imagine myself trying to survive some Mad Max-y post-apocalyptic scenario. Water wars raging and I’ve got a flat head but no Phillip’s as the Death Cult Motorcycle Freaks or the Cedar Rapids Cannibals or the Knife Triplets (!) or whoever are closing in. On top of all of this, my bunker? The one that is full of DVDs? It doesn’t have the right HDMI adaptor.

Screwed again.

So, as a result, I’m currently Substacking in my backup glasses which look exactly the same as my first-string pair but are like three clicks in the “worse” direction of the ophthalmologist’s better-or-worse eye chart scale.

All that to say, it’s good to be back and I’m sorry to have kept you waiting if you felt like you were waiting. I now feel the urge to tell you everything but will pace myself to 2 or 3 things instead. Let’s get into it.

Upcoming Live Shows

If you’re in Chicago, I have a couple shows on the BOOKS that are coming up and it would be great to see you there!

The poster says it all, but in summary, the show is called FRESHLY WAXED and it is popping off on select Saturday’s at 9pm at The Den. The cast is simply stacked with talented, funny, folks and it will be a hoot I promise.

Snag a ticket at the link!4

Find Tickets

POST

Speaking of fun shows with very talented people, we just wrapped post-production on a sizzle reel for a TV show about post-production that I co-created with my pal.

Behind every great film, TV show, and local hot dog commerical are the unsung heroes of post-production. Pulling all-nighters to get you the content you crave, they’ve remained behind the scenes, below the line, and credited long after that “watch next episode” button...until now.

POST is a workplace comedy that follows a scrappy post-production team tackling the day-to-day grind and creative challenges of finishing the damn thing.

And we did! Finish the damn thing I mean. We’re planning a screening in Chicago in early April and, while I can’t publicly post a link on the WEB just yet, if you’re curious about watching it drop me a line and I’d be happy to send it to you!

Here’s a RAW and UNCUT behind-the-scenes clip of me directing Emily Marso and Odinaka Ezeokoli “editing” as a little treat:

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BRINGING IT HOME

A week ago, I was back in my childhood hometown of Arkadelphia, Arkansas for less than 24 hours.

The house I grew up in isn’t home anymore, but between a perfect homemade lentil soup, a lovely wedding, big laughs around a table, and good night’s sleep at an old friend’s house, Arkadelphia remains a great place to call home.

Until the next one & thanks for reading,

Will

I spend a good deal of my work & play on screens (see: business Zoom above) so I thought I’d give my eyes a break with some physical crafting…only to realize in the middle of my first class that now I’m spending three hours a week threading needles under fluorescent lights. A nice reminder that humans have been finding ways to strain their eyes for thousands of years — I am squinting on the shoulders of giants!

The class is on Sashiko and boro mending practices - two textile sewing techniques from Japan that focus on extending the life of well-worn garments. The visible stitches become a part of the design and patches slowly bloom across the fabric. If only I’d known about this a few months ago, I might even have been able to save my last graphic-t from high school…

The word “boro” comes from the Japanese boroboro, meaning something that is tattered or repaired. I’ve always loved this kind of scrap-based-creating, which is why, when a beloved bowl shattered, I bought krazy glue and gold acrylic paint to take a stab at some DIY kinsugi. Unfortunately, the glue/paint combo means this bowl is technically “poison” and shouldn’t be used for food anymore, so now I use it to keep the office-incense I burn from filling the room with sweet dusty drifts.

This past weekend I was in Denver for my paternal grandparents’ memorial. My dad spoke beautifully about the task of remembering. An English professor for decades, he couldn’t help playing with the word remember as the the opposite of dismember — remembering our purpose in gathering, bringing together, making something broken more whole. We all took turns sharing stories and left with a fuller story of who we were mourning - a quilt stitched together with stories from children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, co-workers, and friends. Instead of a single eulogy from one person, we spread it out among anyone who wanted to share. It wasn’t a carefully maintained stained glass window, it was a constantly shifting kaleidoscope, changing and alive in front of your eyes even if the people who created the light in the first place were gone. That’s how stars work too — the fact that the light reaching you could be from a long-dead star doesn’t change the fact that it’s beautiful and you’re still alive to receive it.

This process of remembering started on Saturday and I imagine it will continue as long as we keep up the practice.1

On the way home, we passed the contrails of another plane that was either coming or going. Sometimes it’s hard to know.

The day before I had left for Denver, four large three-ring binders had arrived at my door.

I’d been looking for a particular photo2 for the memorial and my previous organizational system of “totes and folders wedged into a dusty broken suitcase” had done little to assuage the anxiety.

So I’d ordered the binders and 450 (!) clear, laminate sleeves, and today I started sifting. Letters, photos, and scraps — more remembering, bringing together. The disorder and chaos brought moments of delight and discovery — a mundane thank you note suddenly miraculously bringing back people who aren’t around any more, another letter from ten years ago giving me the advice that I was finally ready to hear. As I simultaneously tidied up the digital corner of my life, I also found this old audio recording from my maternal grandfather (who we affectionately called Papa Joe).

I did a bit of performance art to this recorded phone conversation back in 2015, so part of the artifact is the song in the background and my voice being removed completely, a vapor trail already faded. If I remember (am remembering), I’d called and asked Papa Joe if he’d ever seen improv comedy, what he imagined it was like, and if he had any advice for how I should be spending my time. As a heads up, the phone call gets cut off at the end when I lose reception which feels dramatic but, at the time, was just a lost connection. I called him back but stopped recording the call so we could just talk.

We can’t hold on to everything (or maybe…anything?) but what a joy to discover a bit of old flotsam or jetsam from another chapter as we paddle along.

[Music performed by my grandma, Nancy Brown]

10 Steps To Stop the Scroll

I’ve had a couple of real doom-scroll-y days lately, so I thought I’d leave you with a helpful 10 Step Technique that can help break the cycle.

1. Become awake to the fact that you’ve been scrolling on your phone or computer for longer than you’d care to admit. If you’ve watched multiple videos of a wife giving her color blind husband those special glasses that let you see color or veterans surprising their Labrador Retrievers/kids/moms or a guy posting a video of himself trying to punch a tree until it falls, this could mean it’s time to take a break. 

2. Take a deep breath and raise both hands over your head. Wiggle your fingers and then bring both hands into two fists like you’re the conductor of an orchestra signaling silence. If you’re having fun conducting you can also ask for “a little more” from the imaginary woodwinds or give the percussion section a kind of “not-my-tempo-JK-Simmons-Whiplash” look. Have some fun with it.

3. Next, one by one, close all of the extra tabs in your brain. How do you close a “brain tab” you might ask? Easy. Just click on the little “x” in the top right corner. 

4. Take the device you were using and wrap it in saran wrap. (This will keep it fresh for the next time you need it.)

5. Close your eyes and remember in as much detail as possible a post you scrolled by. It doesn’t matter what this is. It could be a two-headed turtle befriending a kitten or a recipe for something that is just different combinations of meat and cheese and crumbs or a guy who paints portraits of Marvel Characters using only condiments. It doesn’t matter. Just remember it. Picture it in your mind’s eye. 

6. Open your eyes and quietly whisper, “I am the search bar.” If you’re around other people and they say “you’re the what?” just say it again until they give you some space to really focus on the technique.

7. Re-create the post with whatever tools you have around you. Fill a page describing it. Paint it using the old crusty acrylic set your ex got you. Sculpt it. Record a five minute podcast of you interviewing yourself about the post. For the next few minutes, it’s all about this one dumb thing. Give it the attention it so desperately craves.

8. Now, take a single step back from your piece of art with your right foot. Now take another step with your left. 

9. Ok, Right foot again. Left foot again. Are you…? Criss cross! You are! Criss cross! Now clap your hands! 

10. You’re no longer scrolling, you’re now doing the Cha Cha Slide and the curse of the endless scroll has been lifted. Cha Cha real smooth to celebrate and move on with your life.

    It’s time to get funky.

~~~

As always, thank you for reading! To the merry band of paid supporters, your generosity astounds, delights, and pays the bills. Speaking of scrap-based-creativity, I currently have ten different scrappy jobs (if we tally up teaching, freelance editing, and miscellaneous film projects) and your support helps me write these posts with a big ol’ sigh of relief and a grin. I am lucky and thankful!

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xoxo,

Will

2

A favorite: New Year’s Day, 2012 - Post polar bear plunge in an icy pond - Arvada, CO

I love this movie.

It tickles the same part of my brain as skate videos1 that show twenty knee-skinning-flops before the immaculate landing or the blooper reels at the end of every Jackie Chan movie. It’s not FAIL content, it’s the repetition before the twist; all these failures viscerally deepening what landing it means. I think, in practice, This is what writing is too — reiterating the same sentence, trying small changes, revisiting, tweaking, trying to say the same thing slightly better or more clearly or with better or fewer words until the accumulation of all of those attempts builds into something that works, something that your readers can imagine you sitting down and pouring directly from your brain out onto the page and into their eyeballs.

We’re all in a time loop when you zoom out; our planet looping around the sun, another year, another Phil predicting another spring since 1887, and then zooming in to all the patterns and routines that give meaning and structure; feeling like either a groove or a rut depending on how your brain is working that day. Time loop movies show what you can accomplish over time2 (and probably feed into my fantasy for only needing a single day to master a challenging new skill…even if the “life hack” to getting better at guitar is folding the space time continuum and living that day a thousand times to get it right).

During the depths of the first COVID lockdown, every day started feeling more like a depressive time loop: doing the same dishes, walking the same walks, zooming the same Zooms, shouting up dumb jokes to the second-story window of the same friends, watching different movies from the same couch. My favorite time-loop movies remind us that even if the world feels like it’s stuck on repeat, we’re still changing inside of that loop.

For example, I am starting to lose my hair. :)

I’ve been wondering if this new thinning (as a 32 year-old-man) is a bit like what nearly every middle school girl goes through. Not the hair specifically, but the flood of messages from the world and yourself about things being not-quite-right. Similar body-image-issues (embarrassed of being embarrassed, MORE LOOPS), mysterious changes beyond my control (OH GOD, FOREHEAD IS GROWING?!), off-handed remarks or a bad photo that sends dysphoric ripples through my sense of self, and a sometimes overwhelming feeling that I must be the only person in the world going through what is actually an incredibly common human experience.

Personally, I’ve had it incredibly easy. Much of the world I move through every day is set up for people who look like me. Also, on top of these mountains of privileges, I am also tall! I am six feet and four inches (un-slouched) which means you won’t even notice my little thinning patch unless I take off my hat or sit down or you get the angle just right.

And those angles! Every photo is a “before” photo if you think about it. Scrolling back in time through my phone’s photo reel I can see a whole series of sneaky, self-checks…what’s the status of the patch? Looping my arms up and over my head and blindly trying to get the blurry dark-side-of-the-moon style pic of the spot.

(It’s easy to get stuck with an outdated version of yourself. For years when auditions would ask for my weight I just put in the number from the last time I weighed myself which was six years prior right before the Arkansas High School State Swim Team competition. It turns out, things have changed since then!)

It’s something I desperately don’t want to feel self-conscious about and can’t seem to stop feeling self-conscious about. I’ve shaved my head multiple times throughout my life (got a great looking skull, so long term? In terms of me and my big, tall, skeleton? I’m not worried) but I think it’s the fear of the unknown in-between, the increasingly sparse shift, that can sometimes get me down and out and anxious.

Oh, and I should also come clean and say that I’m taking the drops. Do you know about the drops? I take the drops. Mine are the generic over the counter brand from CVS and I’m supposed to put them on the spot once or twice a day, which I usually remember to do. There’s a not-so-secret coalition of us thinners who have the same little bottle in our medicine cabinets. We are legion, etc. etc.

I’m working on simultaneously accepting the flux and flow of an ever-changing physical body in a chaotic universe expanding towards entropy with also, tbh, just doing the drops to see how that feels too.

I think, at it’s core, what is interesting to me about this whole process are all the myriad stages and versions of self-wrestling. Clocking the moments our bodies are changing or becoming less elastic (i.e. what do you mean there are no more baby teeth? I was just getting the hang of popping those suckers out!), finding what elements are still malleable and what are fixed, what is still in flux and what has settled, deciding that if some liminal thing is forever maybe it’s not in-between, it just is.

And then, just like that, I’m back in the time loop. The same feelings coming up but this time I’m trying to live through them a little differently, a little more generously, a little more lightly.

This time I’m the ground hog and I’m being very brave. I’m trying to let the waves of feelings about feelings wash through me with minimal judgement (or at least minimal judgement about judgement) so I can live with and love this drippy, droopy, beautifully messy body that is shedding and slipping and slurping through a fun life. Even writing THIS means that my targeted ads for the next three months are essentially SHOT - nothing but 1.) hair loss products and 2.) things that companies think men who are losing their hair will buy for dumb-dumb hair-based-masculinity overcompensation. I’m screwed.

And now, please enjoy this angsty banger about haircuts.

And remember, if you have anyone in your life that you think might be losing their hair, it’s always polite to forward them this newsletter. Time loops be damned, the next will be different (as usual).

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xoxo,

will

p.s. shoutout and thank you to for reading and editing out the most egregious of my self-conscious spiraling. An infinite time loop would be infinitely more fun with you in it.

I’m back! Did you even know I was gone? Perhaps that growing anticipation of an email not yet sent nor received but percolating? Well, rest easy friend. One of your top ten favorite bi-monthly bulletins is back at it and right on time.

Abby (my partner), Bean (my dog), and I (my self) drove up to Michigan on Friday night for a very-belated-Christmas with the Sonheim-side. We drove through nasty weather heading North — weather conditions that made you google “dog friendly hotels” while inching along and optimistically muttering “starting to clear up” as you white-knuckle past a US postal truck mournfully blinking from the median. As the driver, I uttered a steady stream of un-encouraging encouragements, all variations of “snow isn’t scary” and “I was a cub scout in Arkansas”.

But we made it! That thumbnail for this very post? Three generations of Sonheim boys pretending to climb Mount Everest. I mean, come ON. It doesn’t get much better than that.

And now, to quote my guy Bilbo, we made it there and back again and I’m safe at home googling “add mint chocolate chip ice cream to coffee if milk expired?”1.

I hope you are also reading this post from a safe and cozy nook (unless you’re checking your email from the chairlift on the way to shred some fresh powder, in which case cow-a-freaking-bunga dude, you do you).

AN INVENTORY

(CW: Death & Grief)

My grandpa died last year over Thanksgiving and this year during our belated-Christmas my parents passed along some stuff.

A warm hat (faux fur), handfuls of photos, laminated newspaper clippings from my nerdy 8th Grade accomplishments (QUIZ BOWL! DESTINATION IMAGINATION!) and my middle-of-the-pack swim meet finishes (SONHEIM TAKES 2ND IN THE 100 BREAST! 5TH IN THE 50 FREE!), a plaque for a racing pigeon named “Olympic Champ” from a 1970 long distance race, thank-you cards now returned-to-sender a decade after being sent the first time, and a mixed box of my grandma’s used art supplies — unsharpened Ticonderoga #2 pencils.

Grief swings between an archeological dig and getting the air knocked out of you. A dull ache, a jump scare, a rug pulled, (me, adding to all the million imperfect grasping metaphors, language like a blind collie trying to herd sheep that aren’t there.)

What else is there to say that hasn’t been said? Or is the point not always to say something first or new or fresh, not a TAKE at all but just another stone to the cairn that people have been building since we first realized we could lose each other?

And what about all this? This…waxing poetic? A waning grief gibbous? It feels, somehow or sometimes, wrong to get sucked into the language, the words, finding pleasure in a turn of phrase or an image [[a sudden flash: I’m a kid, single-digits, curious in the midst of tears about what my face looks like in the mirror when I’m feeling something this BIG. Keep crying but moving with a purpose to the bathroom mirror. Surely, I will look…real/different/striking/pure?]]

[[Disappointing answer: I am ugly and wet]].

As I get older, I’m determined to be a bit more patient and nonjudgemental with my own bullshit. This kind of thinking about thinking. What else can you do? How else could I be? Is trying to describe a stomach ache navel gazing? Sharing a scattered or shattered state without putting the pieces back together for someone else is…what it is.

This is broken.

This is not a how-to.

This is not even a reflection, it is a mess.

Once again, it has been zero days since our last incident.

It is filthy but I’ll put the kettle on. Come over. There are dishes in the sink and I haven’t dusted in years and I’m embarrassed but/and I miss you, so text me when you’re down below and I’ll come get you? My dog will bark at you but we’ll call it “screaming” instead of “barking” and that will help.

On Thursday, I had a single pint of Guinness over three hours with a friend. I asked her what she thought of all of the hyperlinks in my previous posts. She didn’t click on them but she said they felt the way thinking can feel. The jumps. The associative tangents. I think my links are a way to try to match what the inside of my brain feels like, either alone in my head or when I’m lucky enough to have a social jam sesh with a friend, skipping stones and jokes and memories off in every direction. The point isn’t to get anywhere in particular. It’s one big riff with forward momentum around the spine of, say, catching up.

Or, also, it’s opening the box of stuff from my grandparents while my nephew tugs at my leg asking to “play Star Wars” in the basement. It’s more and more of both/and. Now if it doesn’t feel the way I expected it to, I’m more likely to trust it.

This, along with everything, is probably nothing new.

This year I’m taking more cold showers.2 Someone told me that cold showers reset your nervous system. I haven’t read anything else about this. Tacked above my desk is a picture of someone wading into a cold lake in Scotland from a piece in the New Yorker about wild swimming.

I took one cold shower on purpose in 2022 and it was the day after my grandma died.

It was the day after and my thoughts feel like the Great Pacific Garbage Gyre, swirling around just below the surface, nothing but bottle caps and six-pack rings and micro-plastics all the way down. A storm system of shame coming in from the Northwest, but it’s not about me. It’s not about me and to remember that and forget everything else I try taking a cold shower.

My dad, her son, takes ice baths after long bike rides, or long days or just because. When I last visited, the freezer was full of plastic greek yogurt containers full of frozen ice, mini bergs to ease the aches and pains.

The last time I talked to my grandma, on an upswing before the next dip, a dip I pretended wasn’t coming, I told her how much I loved her and how good it was to hear her voice. On the other side of the phone, she mumbled warmly, unintelligible but full of love and recognition, and then asked someone in the room for coffee.

It was a miracle. Even at the end. My certainty of death, being surprised by more LIFE, a little more time, going off script, and then death came back in — oh excuse me, sorry, just stepping out for a second, where were we, sorry, so sorry for the miscommunication —

Now I’m taking cold showers a couple of times a week and the moment is a stack of transparencies on an overhead projector, layering and layering and layering.

I’m thinking about what might go in my box. I’m thinking about the things my grandpa saved to represent me and himself and the world. I’m thinking about the new things you learn after losing someone and the things that were and continue to be a mystery.

If you’re reading this, I’m thinking about you too. Maybe send a letter or laminate a newspaper or fall in love with something you’ll never fully understand. Let me know how it goes, and I’d always love to hear from you.

NOW TAKE A BREAK AND/OR CHASE IT WITH A BIG DUMB THING

This is not the big dumb thing, BUT will safely segue us there — my friend Ellen recommended some sweet ass science fiction after my last Pillow Fort and I’ve already devoured her recommendation of A MEMORY CALLED EMPIRE by Arkady Martine. Hot DAMN do I love an epic space opera, especially when it means I can have an intergalactic/interstate book club with a childhood pal. I’ll sometimes play a game with Abby where I’ll improvise a YA Dystopian Novel and, from that dumb bit was born an even bigger and dumber bit that I performed once (1x) last year. So now, I would now like to dramatically blow the dust off old leather cover of that bit and share it with you here.

All the bold segments are selections are from a fake-book I’ve written called THE SHADOW OF BREAKING GIANTS and all of the italics are asides to you/the audience.

[[p.s. if you’d prefer to see your comedy LIVE and IN THE FLESH I’ll be improvising with my friend Caleb Fullen this Wednesday at 9:30 as part of the Real Angels Logan Square Improv show. ]]

~ ~ ~

[I wrote a book that’s being published and I find doing a kind of practice reading among some people I know is…well, it helps! Would it be ok if I read you some from the manuscript before it comes out? Kind of a sneak peek? Ok, cool! Thank you. Without further ado…]

THE SHADOW OF BREAKING GIANTS

[It’s, uh, YA. Young Adult - if that context helps?]

A PROLOGUE

The cliff face, shaped by eons of pounding wind and surf, towered above the broiling sea below. 

[um, also, kind of sci-fi fantasy world…which - ok, I’ll stop adding caveats and stuff and just read. Let the material speak for itself Will!!!!]

A shadow, seemingly molded to the sheer face, fluttered, detached itself from the unforgiving stone and began to climb. A bone white hand with a missing ring finger emerged, gripping the lip of the cliff. The shadow pulled itself over the edge. A breath.

It was time. In a way…everything had always led to this.

With a snap like a frozen lake cracking beneath ill fated footsteps, the world went silent and still. Frozen. The waves hung motionless, drops of sea floating, reflecting back the horror of unnatural stillness. The smell of rot and decay filled the motionless air. 

A Shadow Lance Blade, forged in the bowels of Lax EnDentra, sliced a hole in time, bending and fraying the edges of reality, and opened the third Wound Between the Worlds. 

[Sorry, I’m realizing…so this is the third book in my Under-Walls of Darkness Trilogy - Has anyone read the Underwall Trilogy? Ok. Cool cool cool. Yeah, I don’t feel like you have to have read the other ones, um, but I’ll try to..I’ll just give you the information you need to…to really enjoy it… it’s really about the STORY and the characters so - uhhhhh, let’s see…]

….and opened the third Wound Between the Worlds.

[Shoot, actually you might need to know a little bit more for this to make sense…first wound was childbirth of this like prophet guy who dies, the second wound is the cataclysmic landslide outside the citadel, doesn’t matter, and this is the third, so this is like, a, like a really BOLD way to start the final novel, you know?]

Opened the third Wound Between the Worlds. Emerging from the slit in space and time, mossy armor dripping with sludge, was the familiar form of a Hagarenthalisk.

[Hagarenthanlisks are these, uh, pig people with tri-tusks -who are — in book three you think they’re good and then in book two you realize they’ve actually made a deal with the overlord of Shadows….NOT so good.] 

The shadow spoke in a gravelly voice. “Boxo. You always did love to make a scene.”

[This is, uh, a pretty funny callback to book two, The Underling’s Gambit but, uh, ok - ]

Boxo, the armored Hagarenthanlisk

[pigman, good, then bad, now…we’ll see!]

Grunted in response. “I’m surprised you decided to show Graven.”

[Shit. Um, Graven is the…he’s the protagonist. He lost his finger to this spider goddess that was trying to seduce the heirs of man for the opals of truth, um - Graven is great! He’s the hero.]

Grunted in response. “I’m surprised you decided to show Graven.” It’s a long way from Magarak

[The forest fortress of the the Elven Seers, destroyed in a fire at the end of book two, there’s a map in all the books that I spent a really long time on if you want to buy it and check it out.]

To Grunikdil.

[Mountain, lava, dark magic type stuff]

Graven slid is hood back revealing a smooth scalp marred by a jagged scar -

[the second wound between the worlds???!] 

“I wouldn’t miss it for all the world.”

Graven parts his cloak to reveal the talisman of Anakardareth.

[Uh…this….goes on for a while…So the Talisman can be used to fold back time as a way to get revenge on Malkor who, uh, he’s the witch warrior that’s been stealing the seven facets of light as a way to leech the past and bleed it across the nine-fold kingdoms to bring about an eternal winter… but…let’s see…maybe I’ll just….the prologue is not a great place to start because it’s going back over all of this old stuff….maybe I’ll skip to a battle?]

[flips pages for one full minute]

[ok! Here we go….]

The Mordrigan Battalion launched a volley of flaming gormgals, screaming across the Trisgaresian plane directly for the Carillian Siege Engines, breaking through the Vathlair’s armored Frimborains, leaving burning Druixels in it’s wake. 

[Shoot, that’s a spoiler if you end up reading the first two in the trilogy….um…maybe…I think I’m close to time, so maybe I’ll just read you this poem, it’s an original poem, a war song about love and loss that I think, actually really applies to everything that’s going on in our world today, honestly. 

Oh, it’s in….does anyone here speak Paradashan? If you understand Tolkien’s Elvish this is…like Spanish to Italian I guess? Like they’re both Romance languages so….]

Galaharadyianith — !!!

BLACKOUT / Lights / Scene / el FIN

~ ~ ~

And that’s that! Ooo — and to wrap things up with a gentle plug on theme, this week I read and loved my friend ’s newsletter — check it out I tell em’ WILL sent you.

bye for now & please keep it cozy,

Will