• Published on

    Strife in the Afternoon

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    It all started so innocently. Each person meant well, but each had a stress inside them, a bitterness, that they turned on the others without a second thought.

    The first person got on long before the ride would become unpleasant, well before they knew they'd be the locus point around which it would all revolve. 

    She was tired already, even before starting the shift she was on her way to– graveyard night-owl at a hotel downtown. She was too young to be called old and just barely too aged to still be young; call it youthful middle age, the time when you learn that personality, not looks, will be your defining attribute from here on out. She had on a purple T-shirt and sweatpants, casual, dressing down on her way to work, the way you need to on the 7. She'd gotten on way back at the bottom of the Valley: long commute.

    Thirty minutes later the door opens on an entirely unrelated life. Another denizen of the Valley steps in, a face I've seen more than a few times over the years. He's holding a thin bamboo pole about my height.

    "Operator of the year!" he exclaims, upon seeing me.
    "Aw, I'm not that good!"
    He says something about the bamboo. Maybe it's a fishing rod. He's got the outfit for it– salt-n-pepper beard, overalls and sturdy boots. He's middle aged as well, and like the purple-clad commuter also African-American. He walks past her without incident, sitting down by himself in the middle of the bus.

    So far, so great. But we're missing the crucial ingredient. 

    Here comes Melanie, staggering on for the first time in months. She's an unfailing sweetheart, whose cheery and generous attitude, incredibly, remains precisely the same no matter how drunk she gets. 
    "Long time!!" I say. She grins in return. 

    Melanie's not the crucial ingredient, though. The crucial ingredient is the man boarding behind her, a companion of hers similarly inebriated nature– but not so similar in temperament. 

    Roland, as Melanie calls him, is an unhappy drunk. Not mean; just unhappy. My bigger concern is if he has the motor skills to stand and sit. He ignores my hello and stumbles over to Purple Shirt. He staggers slightly too close to her for comfort, and starts slurring.

    "Can I sit next to you," he garbles. Purple Shirt glares up at his disheveled, maladorous form, his face beaten scarlet red from decades of hard drinking. She doesn't want to be bothered. She says, "no." Roland starts yelling about it. "Why're you such a bitch? I just wanna sit!"

    Bamboo Fishing Rod, observing from the middle, reacts with righteous indignation. He expects better from Roland, and accosts him with an authoritative southern accent. "Ay! Come on, stop that now. It's women and children up in here, you cain't talk like that."

    Roland and Melanie are Native American. The racial dichotomy goes unspoken, but noticed; Bamboo, perhaps feeling an unspoken need to stick up for his compatriots, and Roland, feeling outnumbered, a hint of two against one, lines drawn in the sand and not in his favor. Melanie's staying out of this. Roland puffs his chest and says simply, "I'm from Alaska."
    "What that got to do with bein' polite? I would beat your ass but I got God on my side. I don't do that."
    Mumbling: "I punk your sister."
    "What choo say?" Bamboo's stepping forward, and fast. "You piss on my sister?"
    "What? Yeah, that's right."
    "You just say one mo' word and I put the holy spirit on the bookshelf and ask fuh forgiveness later!"

    I'm letting it play. I don't want to escalate things. It's not a safety issue yet. It's just hot air. I know Bamboo guy. I can talk to him if I need to. And I know Melanie, so I figure I can get to Roland if it becomes necessary. Soon I'll ask them to keep it down. Even if they start fighting, this isn't going to involve me. I feel safe. 

    Mr. Bamboo, meanwhile, is letting himself get more and more worked up. No turning the other cheek for this fellow. He's less Prince of Peace and more Moses with the tablets. "I ain't no violent man," he growls, in the tone only violent men use. "But you ain't right in the head right now. You should be kicked off, bruh. This bus driver need to do his job."

    At which point I say into the mic, almost yell into the mic, with confidence: "Guys, I've already called the cops. They're gonna meet us downtown. Meanwhile let's try to stay one big happy family in here. Let's keep it together for ten minutes, I'm askin' you guys please, as a special favor to all these other nice people. Thank you."

    All street fights seem to be about inane trivialities, but they're actually always about the same thing. On the sidewalk and the roadway, the platform and bus aisle, it isn't money that makes the world go around.

    It's respect.

    Which means you need to respect people, especially the ones whom you think deserve it the least. Because they're not getting it, and they feel that, and it makes them behave poorly.

    Roland keeps yelling, and I can't get him to hear me. The lady in purple is long forgotten; she's retreated to another seat in the back, as the boys continue puffing their chests. 
    "Melanie," I say. 
    "Hi, Nathan."
    "Melanie, can I ask you a favor?"
    "Sure, honey. What is it?" Her sweet, fatigued demeanor is hilariously out of place right now.
    "Can you get your friend to stop yelling at people?"
    "Roland, hey," she says. "Come on, let's siddown."
    "Roland," I call out, finally able to grab his attention.
    "What."
    "Listen man, we gotta keep it low key in here, okay? I know that other guy's bothering you but we just got to leave it where it is and forget about all that, alright? We're just gonna leave it in the past and– nope, nope, nope– we ain't even gonna look back there, we're gonna look forward. He just trying to tempt you, we're moving past all that right now. It ain't no big thing. We can't be– Roland, hey! Not like that, bro, we're gonna, we can't be cussin' people out on the bus, that's not cool. No matter what he's saying to you, we're just gonna look forward. Moving past all that. I know it's not easy. I appreciate you workin' with me. Thank you, for makin' the effort."

    Ah, silence. How lovely. We never ended up needing the police after all. If you treat people like they have the capacity to be better, like you have faith in their qualities, rather than coming down hard... you can make magic happen. 
  • Published on

    Um Okay Finally: My Film is Done!!!

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    What can be said now, almost two full years later? No one takes 23 and a half months months to make a 33-minute film. Except me.

    No one takes two years to make a short, but more to the point, definitely no one takes a year to edit one. That's how long Scorsese and Schoonmaker take to edit their features, but their films are three hours. I'm just not as good, is the thing. You'll forgive me for needing more time to get it right (and okay, I did get a little sidetracked writing, publishing and promoting a certain book…).

    Getting it right is important for me on any of my projects– films, books, photography, writing or otherwise– but particularly so here, mostly due to the remarkable level of craftwork on the part of everyone involved. I gush here and here in numbing detail about how grateful I am for the ridiculously high level of talent, effort and enthusiasm brought to bear on this passion baby of mine. Because this wasn't their passion baby, but my own. Of course I would get up at the crack of dawn every day to throw my all into this… but the fact that they did too? If any one of the 118 people involved in the making of Men I Trust chose not to do so, this end product wouldn't be, couldn't be, what it is. 
    ​
    Why a Film?

    Men I Trust is about two sisters and a spouse as they navigate love and loss over a period of decades. Grief, mortality, and the tragic fact of death, how it proves the existence of time; these are the things we think about but don't talk about, sometimes can't talk about, because the sensations and reflections transcend the verbal, and we're reducing them when we translate them into words.

    Cinema doesn't have that problem. It's immersive enough and powerful enough to accommodate these aspects of human experience, and although the written word is better at articulating what's going on inside people's heads, images and sound are unsurpassable at expressing the experiential, the act of being. Which is why this story isn't a blog post or photo series. It's too big for that. 

    Why the Subject?

    Back in 2009 I resolved not to make any more films with male protagonists, and I stand by that dictum more than ever. The male psyche has been explored to death, and continues to be explored to death, by filmmakers waaayyy better than me. There's no reason for me to contribute to that. Better to balance out the field a little, and explore what to me is frankly more interesting, probably because it's so woefully underrepresented in cinema: life experience as lived by anybody besides attractive, heteronormative white males between 20 and 60. 

    You may know I recently gave a book talk at the Greenwood Senior Center. While there, I fumbled my answer to a great question about how I write about people of races and genders beside my own (said fumble, along with video of the entire event, will be posted here soon!). I would reply now that I spend a lot of time thinking about how life looks from other perspectives. It's essential not just for my writing to have any sort of value, but for my being to be able function as I do in life, to coexist peacefully and with enthusiasm in trying to understand where other people are coming from. 

    There's an important new awareness now that voices of suppressed peoples should be allowed to tell their story. I support this movement and couldn't be happier to see so many more debut films and films by women and people of color this year and last.

    There's a complication to this newfound inclusiveness that bears addressing, though; it shouldn't be interpreted as an inverse proclamation that we are only to tell our own story. If that's true, art dies, and fast. I'm a Korean-American man in his 30s. Although the hapa experience in cinema is basically nonexistent, and more visibility on that front would obviously be a good thing, I must admit I can't imagine anything more completely stultifying to me than making films about Korean-American men in their 30s.

    Thankfully other hapa filmmakers feel differently. But speaking strictly for myself, the thought of creating such navel-gazing self-absorption bores me to tears. I'm aware all my art is to some degree about myself, but it's more potently always about others. About us. Humanity. Considering the lives of others and what we have in common is what excites me, and, well, we don’t decide what we’re drawn to.

    The Essence of Reasons

    Artists have to be allowed the capacity to use their imagination. We cannot take Barry Jenkins to task for Moonlight because he isn't gay. Or say Ava DuVernay can't make a film about MLK because she isn't male. Or criticize Steven Spielberg's WWII films because he never served in combat. Have you seen Sam Fuller's The Big Red One? Fuller was a vet, and the film is about WWII.

    But it's a terrible movie.

    Experience isn't the guarantee of quality or insight; artistry is. The best artists have the ability to empathize, to consider with care and detail what it is to walk in another's shoes. No, Kathryn Bigelow is not a young black man, but it would be a crime to diminish her prodigious skill and research in mounting Detroit, and shunt aside her sensitivity and talent in favor of talking about the color of her skin. The merits of the work will justify, or not, its quality, and should be the nexus point of evaluation around which these complicated and fruitful discussions happen.

    Pedro Almodovar's career of complexly observed films about women might be one of the better examples of embracing what's universal about the human experience. Doesn't it go without saying that people are people before their gender or race, that we all have different but nonetheless relatable problems, and thusly an artist might have something valuable to say about Life, instead of just his life?

    Which is how I justify making films about characters that are not thirty-something Korean-Americans. I'm not the ideal person for my subject matter, and I know it. But I hope I'm bringing something thoughtful to the table. It may be easier for me to articulate the perspectives of my homeless friends than talk about myself, or make movies about the concerns of people two decades older than me, but of course, at the end of the day my art will always be about myself, how I see.

    Why the Title?

    Narratively, I want Men I Trust to achieve what the title does with grammar: Men is for once not the subject but the object of the sentence, the receiver of action, not the arbiter of it.

    I watch a lot of movie trailers. Often one will begin and I'll roll my eyes, thinking, “Great. Another movie about boys and guns." That's what we think is happening as we start to read the title here… but wait! Who is this I? There's someone besides men who have authentic, essential lives burning with joy and pain? 

    Of course there are. The title is the title because I want the audience to enter the film from the female characters' point of view. One starts out on the sidelines, and gradually becomes a main character. The other is the I who takes a leap of faith– trust– in someone she cares about. The male character (being trusted!) is defined by his love and support for another, and thus plays what would normally be the female role.

    It's tiresome to watch film after film where the female character is always a supportive wife without goals looking up to her man, but I happen to know some men who are like that, defined by their love for another, and I think they're absolutely beautiful. In their emotional security and generosity I think they represent both an epitome of what being a man can be, and also the danger one risks to one's identity when it's so heavily defined by that of someone else's.

    The Relational Act

    Humans are relational beings. We define things by their relation, or differences, to the things around them. We understand ourselves, for example, by noting what we are not. We conceive of life as a series of dualities– light and dark, motion and stillness, joy and pain, day and night, love and fear. We enjoy harmonies in music– contrasts from chord to chord. We speak of variety, even in the organization of our routines. In physical eyesight we are drawn to the point of highest contrast between tone values. It's all about contrast.

    Which is why cinema is the most immersive art form. Because the principal communicative element of the film medium is the cut. The juxtaposition of moving images. Only in cinema can you set two moving images next to each other and create a third thing, the meaning that arises from between them. Or set the contrast between an image and the music underneath it. This is cinema, pure cinema, the human relational act of defining brought to bear at its most condensed and dynamic. The film medium doing what only it can do, beyond the purview of literature, theatre and all the other forms we see hints of in film. 

    Basically: we weren't going to rush the edit. 

    Of particular note in highlighting among those 118 lovelies mentioned above is co-editor Brittany Hammer, the Thelma Schoonmaker of Seattle. You don't often get to collaborate at the level where silences communicate as much as the words. Yes, it's a film about grief, but we wanted it to sing. To sizzle. Film is a visual medium. My training is photography, and I like to go for high-impact; if all we're doing is parking the camera in front of actors and having them read lines under flat lighting, it's not worth making a movie. It should be a sensual experience, as rich with popping color and dynamic edits as any joy-filled art piece can be, while yet keeping those high-wire aesthetics relevant to effectively amplifying the issues at hand. Figuring that out took a year, because I'm not the Martin Scorsese of Seattle by any stretch, and it was worth every minute.

    We Tried

    This is all what I'm trying to achieve. You get to decide if it's effective. Like my book, this film contains everything that I am, to probably embarrassing degrees I'm glad I can't comprehend. Filmmaking is the biggest, hardest, most complex thing I know how to do, and after eight short films, this is the first time I am completely happy with the result. Ninth time's the charm, I guess.

    ​Each of my previous pictures is marred by some major, unfixable flaw– something technical, bad audio maybe, or a critical casting mistake– and it’s always been my fault, something I the director didn't know enough about. I was hellbent on ensuring I made no such goofs on this one. We auditioned a hundred people. The screenplay, which is partly in French, was translated and vetted by five experts, two of whom are French teachers, and the footage was reviewed for take selection by two more French speakers, one a native. We took no chances on anything. As an earlier post explores in much more detail, short films don't usually get made at the frankly ridiculous levels we pursued here. Who knows what I'll make of it in ten years. But right now I'm happy.

    On Chunkiness

    The poster above reads, "medium-length film." That's right. This isn't a short film. It's 33 minutes. Short films are all about brevity: how efficiently and quickly you can get in and out with a story. I admire that form, but Men I Trust isn't that. It's a Chunky Monkey. We're not speaking in the vernacular of short film grammar here, but of feature film grammar. This shift in approach came about partly on the discovery that you can't do snappy, fast-paced dialogue about... grief and mortality.

    The attempt here is rather to create something that feels more like the third act of a feature than a short, where we use the time-based nature of cinema not as a crutch but an advantage, something to revel in and explore. We (like to think we!) shift tempo and rhythm like a conductor would– as another tool in the kit, the better to envelope the viewer in an experience.

    Believe me, I'm completely aware of how presumptuous this all sounds, as my passengers with their altogether more elemental problems remind me nightly. I'm not saying I nailed it. I'm saying I tried to nail it, and I prefer watching movies that err on the side of being too creative rather than too banal. I'll take an interesting, living, experimental failure over wooden dead serviceability every time.     At best, I can say with confidence this film is definitely the former and definitely not the latter.

    Anyways

    I can't wait to show you what we’ve come up with. The feedback so far has been glowing. It'll be a while yet before a screening, but there will be one; I want to take an extra moment to get everything right (sound familiar?), with blu-rays et cetera for y'all. Plus, organizing a screening at a theatre is darned expensive, after you've just spent everything making a film! Stand by for more promotional materials and information as the year wears on. 
  • Published on

    Surviving the Social Desert: Nathan on High School

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    "Who put such a high premium on being typical?"
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    ​-Almost Famous, dir. Cameron Crowe

    Those fraught and happy days. That's how I describe youth in an earlier post, and I stand by the words– and especially the word. Fraught. I recently woke from a dream in which adulthood hadn't happened yet, and I was back amongst my high school friends, jostling for self worth, wondering, like all teenagers, why I felt so unwanted. I'd forgotten how utterly high-stakes everything felt back then. Trying to be desired, respected; do you remember the desperation of those days, emotions pulling you toward a  confused loneliness, a language it seemed only you could understand? 

    One of the many virtues of Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life is that it stresses how unhappy childhood is, in addition to how happy. In all parts of Life we stand there wondering Why, but in adolescence the questions have so much more to do with ourselves, personal and raw. My friend Paul is a father and once said, "almost all teenagers are incredibly beautiful people, and almost none of them know it." I know what he meant. It's just too overwhelming of a time.

    What would I tell my teenaged self? Perhaps the same thing I tell other actual teenagers, with the likely result that it would fall on just as deaf a set of ears. I'd tell them they're already okay– already great, really– just as you are, and that you don't need to keep trying so hard. 

    It's fine. 

    We, they, I– won't like you any less if you just revert to being yourself, a thing you did so easily in childhood. They won't hate you, or put you down, or find you unattractive. Or they may. But the thing is....

    Every grown person reading this knows what the rest of that sentence is, and how obviously true and therefore reassuring it should be to hear at a young age. But when I've said it to various teens, even the many whom I adore and respect, I notice a vacant look in their eyes, and in that vacancy I recognize my younger self. They, I, we– weren't ready to hear that yet, and when we did it didn't mean too much. It didn't land and how could it, stormy as the roiling sea living in our hearts was then? When we did everything we could to our bodies and psyches, and even still, we weren't rewarded with quite the love we so desired? So much damage. How would I tell my younger self that I was trying everything except the thing that works?

    Being ourselves. A thing we did so innately, so beautifully, in the first phase of life; which we then completely forget how to do in adolescence; and after which in adulthood we bottom out somewhere in between. But if the best things in life are elusive, ephemeral, you've got to chase them all the more, and differently: by relaxing into the flow of things. It's okay, I want to tell the boy in my dream. You don't have to try so hard to be something else. Would you have had me turn into a cranky bus driver, just so I could fit in? The dividends of junking your own identity just aren't worth it.

    If you stop being you, in favor of something superficial, you'll draw toward you people who aren't actually like you. You'll never get to meet those others with whom you would have a lot in common. You can't see them if you're hiding under someone else's concepts of popularity. Just continue being yourself, and watch them come forward. You'll draw like minds toward you. Be yourself– with confidence. Don't be cocky– that's gross– but do be confident. Figure out how to be confident and humble at the same time.

    Because that's what friendliness is. 

    People think the big secret thing is coolness, appearance. It isn't. The answer is you walking into a room and you're actually comfortable with yourself. They're looking at you thinking, whoa. That person seems to know something about how to live life. I want that. I need to get closer to that. What they're awed by isn't clothing or makeup or attitude, but you actually being at home in your own skin. That's what's sexy, desirable, elusive. Confidence. Not suppressing your beautiful personality so you can be a shadow of someone else. Don't be a shadow. Be authentic. 

    Be you, and wait for the world to catch up. 

    Every one of them is just as insecure as you. At that age, that's half the reason for all their actions. Be kind. It'll hurt sometimes, but not as much as being unkind. Somebody's got to set the example.

    That's all.
  • Published on

    21st Century Man

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    Something about the hard shadows gave the proceedings a quality of immediacy. You know, like the old westerns: standoffs beneath an unblinking desert sun.

    I first knew him as a sullen teen sitting in the back of today's largely empty 120. He pimp-rolled to the back lounge, a high-schooler swaggering to an audience of no one, preening like a sage grouse on an empty prairie. It takes a lot of effort to look like you're putting in no effort, as many a teenage boy knows, but the few passengers I had– an East African grandmother here, a Latino mom and toddler there– couldn't care less.

    He sprawled out on the back bench and lifted up his shirt to expose his chest, revealing sculpted muscles and smooth, dark skin. Glancing in my rear-view mirror, I found the whole thing amusing; who exactly was he trying to impress? Was he aware how absurd it looked to 'accidentally' lift your shirt up to your neck and leave it there? No one does that. But hey, if it works for ya, you do you, my friend. It's not like he was bothering anyone.

    He got off on Ambaum at 124th, sashaying up to the front door, silently     ambling out into the hot noonday light. Someone else was putting a bicycle on the bike rack, and thus I remained stopped.

    He moved to cross in front of the bus.

    Collisions put you in a different modus of processing time. It's a strange and terrifying mixture of everything happening both much too fast, and sickeningly slowly. The car that flew down my left side seemed unstoppable.

    He moved to cross in front of the bus.

    Ambaum Boulevard is four lanes. My bus was southbound, alongside the curb. Lane one. Lane two was invisible to him, because my bus was blocking the view. That's why there's a sign inside every Metro bus that says, "do not cross in front of the bus." He was breaking into a jog now, crossing in front of me, oblivious. It was still today for him, regular unremarkable today.

    I've seen people get killed doing this.

    I remember a man's body spiraling in the air after contacting a car he didn't see– because he ran in front of the bus. I was a passenger, Route 16 at 5th and Northgate Way. I remember him talking on the bus two seconds ago: "thanks, driver..." And now, somersaulting against his will off a speeding car hood, smashing onto the ground and hard, the base of his skull the first point of contact.

    That man died instantly.

    I remember everyone from all directions dropping their concerns instantly and running over. Sprinting over, even if it was too late. In the mid-nineties people didn't wear headphones; we all heard the snapping report of separating bone. I remember the car that did it speeding off as fast as it could, the only thing moving away from the body. I remember a man in dress shirt and slacks, running over from across the street; something about his concern. The things that make you want to be a good person.

    That's what I thought about now. I thought too about my bus driver friend Paul, who years ago taught me to avoid honking the horn– unless it is to save a life. He's saved someone that way, and I have too. Did I honk now? I actually can't remember. I want to say I did, and I may have, but the speed of existence sometimes...

    He is turning his head.

    He is turning his head to the left, looking up the street, looking for cars. Smart. But this car is flying. Flying, down lane two, passing by me on my left. I'd looked in my left side mirrors and seen it also. I'm always looking at my mirrors.

    It happened both very fast, and at exactly the speed it needed to. Here's three young kids in a middle-class white sedan, probably their parents' car. It's a total mom car. Practical. Three Asian teenagers cruising down lane two on Ambaum, not slowing down because why would you, it's midday in the suburbs with no traffic, and sure we're passing the bus but what's the big deal.

    Kid from before, in lane two now. He's right in front of them. This is life measured in fractions of a second. You have to be up for it, or else.

    A minute ago I had thought he was a lanky show-off, swagger-splaying his body out in the back of the bus like that. The kind of insufferable self-absorbed haughty machismo that the narrow definitions of masculinity within hip-hop culture too often celebrate– in short, the black kid I see other black kids rolling their eyes at.

    All that vanished from my mind. Isn't braggadocio just another form of insecurity? "Little boy lost, takes himself so seriously," Bob Dylan sings in "Visions of Johanna." But wouldn't we be serious if we were lost and confused, and what is adolescence if not an overwhelming period of confusion? It is the time of going too far in any number of directions, testing out what this strange life is, the better to figure out what suits you, as you settle into something in between later on. That's all he was doing. I saw him at the moment of his imminent death as the child that I also am, that we all are. The universal human child, living life for the first time, searching in the dark for answers.

    I desperately wanted him to live.

    The kids in the sedan slamming on their brakes. The antilock mechanism preventing a skid. They are stopping fast; but they will still hit him at this rate of speed. The air is pregnant with heat and silence, only the sound of the car really, the top-down noonday shadows striking everything with an evenly graphic visual drama, clear tinted yellow, and contrasty.

    He has registered the car's zooming approach. With half a second to spare he jumps straight into the air, directly up, up, up, lifting his knees.

    He is jumping into the air as the car drives beneath him.

    He is landing on the hood– balance, almost– wobbly– scrambling up the windshield and toward the roof because the car hasn't stopped yet. Responding by reflex and momentum now, still moving to counter the car's continuing roll beneath him.

    The car halts just then, as he makes it to the roof. He has sort of ran up the windshield glass, and is standing on the roof now, teetering, arms out for balance. I think to myself: 

    Whoa.

    Now everything is silent. All eyes are on him– me, the kids in the car processing what just happened, a pedestrian here and across the way, somebody in a balcony, my guy with his bicycle on the rack. He’s still standing there, spread-eagled and balanced like da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. It’s a shock to the system how fast that happened, to me, to all of us, and him too. It’s catching up to him, the present is. And something else, manifesting now on his face: I just pulled that off. I am still alive, and there isn’t a scratch on me.

    We didn’t run to him because we collectively perceived we didn’t need to. Every eye on him now had an element of admiration. The agility, the sheer speed… when things move so fast your reflexes do the talking for you, you better hope you’ve lived a certain way. He had to have been athletically inclined. The entire thing was over in under three seconds, and his every move was perfect. Sublime. The first time I saw someone cross in front, all those years ago, they died. But he because of his inclination towards basketball or track or soccer or jogging or whatever it was, he lived. Because of who he was, he lived.

    Life can give you no better compliment than that. 

    He sat down on the car roof over the driver’s seat, his legs dangling down over the driver’s side window. He leaned his head way down, to look downside up at the driver, who was rolling open his window. I wonder they said to each other. Neither his bearing nor the driver’s gave any indication. Our Vitruvian Man said something brief, and then walked off. I was surprised he didn't say more. The rest of us together watched him finish crossing the street, still processing what had just happened. It didn’t matter how haughty he was, who he was or how he acted. None of that mattered. He was a young man in the 21st century. I wanted him to live. ​

    And he did.
  • Published on

    Thank You, Greenwood!

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    Thanks to all the lovelies to who attended the Greenwood author event– what a bundle of great energy you all were!! Every face, so radiant, and all those ruminative questions... such a treat. Thank you for feeling the light, and the weight, and believing in the value of positive perspectives now. How could I ever ask for more? A big thanks also to graphic designer and publisher extraordinaire Tom Eykemans, who I'm always happy and lucky to share a stage with. Video of the event will be eventually go live online. I'll keep you updated!

    Did you miss the event? The book lives! Click here for more info and links to buy. 

    I've got a roster of stories (plus some film essays) standing by for the blog, including one I'm super excited to get out to you shortly! Check in again very soon!

    ​Photos by Kat Humphrey & Ariel Burnett.
  • Published on

    Book Talk with Nathan: 8/29, 12:30pm

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    Hello, friends. In the wake of my book being nominated for the Washington State Book Award, I'm having another book talk at the Greenwood Senior Center, on the afternoon of Thursday the 29th. Why there, you ask? 

    Because they're a swell bunch. They allowed me to rent their rooms for my film rehearsals when the rest of the town wanted an arm and a leg. I also worked on another film project that was made there (read this friendly newspaper article for more!). And because it's free to attend!

    And, you don't even have to be a senior! If you are in fact of the generation that covers its mouth when it yawns (well, that would be anyone over 40, and a tradition I'm keeping alive myself), there's no reason not to stop by; but youngsters will feel right at home too. I'll be there, after all, and I look 12...

    I also said yes to this venue because it's north of the ship canal, and my North End friends have too often made the shlep down to Georgetown or the Hill or Pioneer Square, and wouldn't it be nice to cut them a break? If you live up there and have missed some of my previous events, I don't blame you. Stop by this one if you like– I'll be reading from my book, answering your questions, and chatting onstage with my friend and co-creator Tom Eykemans, the Seattle-based graphic artist who designed the book.

    Time: Thursday, 8/29, 12:30-2:00.

    Location:
    Greenwood Senior Center
    525 N 85th St.  
    Seattle, WA 98103
    ​
    More details here.

    ​    See you soon!