Greetings to you from Portland, Oregon, where yard-mulch cider is not just a preferred beverage, it’s the law. Let’s begin:

WHAT HAPPENED IN August (BROAD STROKES):

• my short film “Freak Farm” will world premiere at Local Sightings in September

• made a new short film called “In Transit”

• got studio production certified at Open Signal

• saw Bill Callahan at Revolution Hall with M

• 3rd annual father son camping with N

BEST THINGS I SAW in August: Ugetsu (Clinton St Theater. in 16 mm!), American Dream by Barbara Kopple, Araya by Margot Benacerraf, Bad Press by Rebecca Landsberry-Baker and Joe Peeler, Emitai by Ousmane Sembene, Art School Confidential by Terry Zwigoff, Crimes + Misdemeanors by Woody Allen, Marie Antoinette by Sofia Coppola, About Tap by George T. Nierenberg, Colette and Justin by Alain Kassanda

BEST THINGS I READ in August: This is Not For You by Richard Brown (with Brian Benson), Two American Projects by Daywould Bey, Zen Mind Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki, The Black Echo by Michael Connelly, The Butterfly Girl by Rene Denfeld, The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich, A Violent Masterpiece by Jordan Harper, No Way Home by T. Coraghessan Boyle

Therein ends the violent cicadas in purple twilight, now onto the gentle leaf-blowers in the periwinkle dawn. Let’s begin:

FREAK FARM

My short film Freak Farm will play Local Sightings in Seattle on Thursday, September 24. Freak Farm looks at the alienation and isolation of the modern era using recorded phone conversations, video, voice-over, and photographs. Unlike most of my prior work - which usually begins with a script - Freak Farm began in editing, with me essentially throwing image and sound together and trying out multiple permutations and combinations before subtracting and reducing it to its final form. In addition to my general happiness to have this film out in the world, to premiere at Local Sightings makes the heart swell. Freak Farm plays in the Lenses (Experimental Films) block at 7:30 pm 9/24. Come if you can! more about Freak Farm here.

AUGUST SHORT FILM PROJECT

I tasked myself with watching at least one short film per day in August. This was a joyous enterprise and one I think I should just continue ad infinitum. Like meditating or running or abstaining after you do it for awhile your interior resistance breaks down and you just keep doing it without thinking about it. And then you can’t imagine you didn’t used to do it. Why didn’t you always do it like this? WTF is wrong with you? Anyway, they were all wonderful in their own way, but for the record (and the sake of my memory) I’ll report the five best short films I saw in August were: Old Man by Leah Shore, Tiger by Loren Waters, Grandma’s House by Sophy Ramvari, An Ecstatic Experience by Ja’Tovia Gary, and When It’s Good, It’s Good by Alejandra Vasquez. All of these are available on the Criterion Channel and all are worth your attention.

PROJECT UPDATES

Sister/Brother (narrative feature, 75 min) - took the summer off from this film, primarily due to my diluted focus and attention but now that school has started I feel like I’ve been gifted time from the universe. Got to rewatch the most recent cut last week and feel real good about it. The time off was a real reminder about how fresh eyes are of maximum benefit. I have some finalizing items to attend to but then am going to target a few film festivals in particular and then get this project fed, raised, and sent out into the world. More about Sister/Brother here.

in transit (experimental documentary, 3 min) - new project that looks at impermanence via the lens of an airport’s daily operations. out to festivals. more about the project here.

How Do You Move in This World (experimental narrative short, 2 min) This film played at VastLab in Chicago in July and now lives on my site. You can find it here.

Apology Ghost (experimental narrative short, 5 min) this film is out to a couple more festivals and then afterward will be available on my site. I will apprise. More about Apology Ghost here.

CHAMPOEG STATE PARK CAMPING

Third annual installment of father son camping. We go every August, just before school begins, a different place each time. We both tend toward laziness so we were thrilled to land a yurt at Champoeg. some photos from the trip.

ETC AND RANDOM BITS

impermanence clock

days I’ve been alive 19,802 | days until i turn 80 9,417

running

My running post Atlanta (see previous post) has remained at an uptick. I really don’t know what’s going on other than trying to keep my mental health in place and simultaneously attempting to push my self a little further each time. have two upcoming 5K’s scheduled later this month, a 7 miler in October (Silver Falls!), and a 10K in December.

music

my music project impermanent marker released a 5 song EP in July called petty grievance you can find it on bandcamp. I am at work on a new album that, if all goes well, will release in November or December. Watch this space.

fivver account!

I offer film editing, screenplay proofing, voice acting, and editing your kid’s AAU basketball footage into a reel. Do you have need of any of those? Does your loved one or friend? If so please go here. I could really use the support.

closing image

an action shot from class on studio production at Open Signal. I am trying lately, as a person who defaults to solitariness in life and in artmaking, to get more out of my comfort zone and more into the world. This class was great and, if you’re in the portland area, highly recommended.

thanks for reading this far. i really appreciate that. you didn’t have to do it but you did. how are you?

see you next month. xo

Greetings to you from Portland, Oregon, where renewable sustainability is the password to most velvet-rope social functions. Let’s begin:

WHAT HAPPENED IN July (BROAD STROKES):

- How Do You Move in This World world premiered in Chicago at the Vastlab festival

- edited a new short film called don’t opt in

- edited a promo video for xray.fm.

- had 2 photos published in Palisades Review

- ran the Peachtree Road Race in Atlanta

BEST THINGS I SAW in July: The Love That Remains by Hlynur Palmason, After Hours by Martin Scorsese, The Storms of Jeremy Thomas by Mark Cousins, Juvenile Court by Frederick Wiseman, Hospital by Frederick Wiseman, Mr. Scorsese by Rebecca Miller, The Odyssey by Christopher Nolan (Lloyd cinemas IMAX), My Neighbor Totoro by Hayao Miyazaki (Moreland Theater), Trances by Ahmed El Maanouni

BEST THINGS I READ in July: The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, El Paso by Jazmine Ulloa, The Revenent by Michael Punke, A Temporary Affair by David Radin, The True America by Ernest Cole, Nerve Damage by Annakeara Stinson

Therein ends the unnecessary first-act exposition, now onto the mythological journey of our embattled yet four-quadrant rootable protagonist. Let’s begin:

HOW DO YOU MOVE IN THIS WORLD

You know that feeling when you’ve had a personal breakthrough, a sort of bird’s-eye look at the contours and shape of your life’s trajectory and it’s so galvanizing and activating that you commit to making mammoth changes right now right this second and then reality intercedes somehow - a phone call, a text, a knock at the door - and that moment vanishes, subsumed by the world outside your head? How Do You Move in This World? attempts to speak to that, via the conceit of a man’s response to a ego-breakdown seminar in the woods, and his quick pivot when back in reality. The film was conceived on a walk with my dog at a nearby nature park, where the video was shot. Originally, the entire film would exist in the woods but during editing I added a highway shot and came up with the closing voiceover.

At the end of July, How Do You Move in This World? played in Chicago at VASTLAB experimental fest. The film is now available on my website or below.

ATLANTA RECAP

I was at PDX airport early on July 3. Flight to Atlanta went without incident until about an hour out when the pilot said active thunderstorms at Hartsfield were slowing all incoming flights so we circled in the air for ½ hour and then continued. Once we landed we all waited on tarmac for about 45 minutes before a gate became available. S picked me up. We’ve been friends since 9th grade. Went to her house in Sandy Springs and unpacked and then went out to dinner at a Thai restaurant and caught up on all fronts but mostly kids and parents and all peripheral considerations. I was in bed by 10 east coast time (7 pm west coast) and woke up at 3 am (midnight west coast) for no demonstrable reason and could not fall back asleep despite aching for slumber. I think my body clock was seriously off kilter but also being back in Atlanta, where I lived for roughly 10 formative years and catching up with a very longtime friend was also somehow pulsing through me, as if I could feel past present future rivers of time all moving independently and as one simultaneously. This sensation is a churning and tempestuous, almost dissociative, out-of-body experience that I’ve felt a couple times in my 50s. I had no option but to close my eyes and do some deep breathing exercises and try to rest and hope that along the way I would gently drift off but before I knew it my watch was beeping and it was 5:30 AM (2:30 AM west coast) and I had to get up, utterly spent and worse for wear.

Chris picked me up at 6:00 AM in the driveway. We drove toward the Brookhaven Marta station and parked across the street. We walked the half-mile or so to the start line, catching up and talking about everything we’ve been up to since we last ran together. Due to staggered start times we had situate ourselves separately among the other 60,000 bodies. The race began. Despite this being the 3rd time in 5 years that I’ve run the Peachtree, I sorely underestimated the heat and humidity and within half a mile I was gushing sweat and cursing myself for going out too hard. My sorely messed-up body clock did not help matters nor did the shrimp and noodles I consumed the evening prior. As a result, I crossed the finish line much slower than intended or than I trained for. But it really didn’t matter because my time was not really the point. It was fun and I was glad I was there, even if it didn’t go exactly as planned. (also applicable to general matters of existence.) We walked to the closest Marta station and took it back to Brookhaven. Chris drove me back to S’s house, where I showered and, around 10 AM (7 AM west coast) instantly fell into a deep, all-consuming sleep.

That evening, Chris and his wife came over and we ate some festive bbq’ed items and caught up. Shortly thereafter our friend JB arrived. It was so fortunate he was in town for our sake but the true reason he was in town was because his father was in hospice so not really very fortunate at all. I quickly felt those rivers stirring again, suddenly gushing through the room. I was just up to no good with these people, in our teens at murphy candler park and perimeter mall chick-fil-a, and now moments later we were discussing screen-time limits and navigating college applications as well as the vagaries of independent living scenarios for our elders. What does it all mean? I really have no idea. Just whistling through space and time like a rapidly-deteriorating arrow, shedding and accruing all at once.

The next day S and I went to the High Museum to see the Amy Sherrald exhibit. (While awaiting our time we also got to check the Isamu Noguchi exhibit as well as the photography exhibit in the basement which had some Stephen Shore, Daywoud Bey, Diane Arbus.) After, we went across town to the MLK museum (this February, reading King by Jonathan Eig, I decided somewhat impulsively to buy a plane ticket to Atlanta several months in the future. As in: how have i never ever been to the King museum? you know what i should do? buy a plane ticket tonight and run the Peachtree in july and use that visit to also go to the MLK museum. So from that vantage it was a bookend of sorts.) The MLK museum, steps away from his birthplace in one direction and Ebeneezer Baptist Church in the other, was partially under repair but we got to see some good things including the very blue reflecting pool.

The next morning S and I walked along the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area in the gathering humidity and went out to lunch at a nearby diner before she took me to the airport. I couldn’t help but contemplate how different things might be if I hadn’t left there in 1992, a mix of gratitude and stupefaction. 4 people were having a business luncheon at the table near us. When their food arrived they held hands and loudly prayed. This, I was reminded, is an unremarkable occurrence in Atlanta. I flew home shortly thereafter thinking about rivers and arrows and not quite sure how to assign meaning to any of it.

DON’T OPT IN

Speaking of long-ago trapdoors to sub-floors to winding staircases alongside surging rivers, I recently digitized some super 8 footage from spring 1995 and have been cutting it into a new short film titled don’t opt in. The title comes from the fact that as i was reviewing said digitized footage an email dinged in asking me to take part in a quick survey. The kind of meaningless thing that washes ashore hourly. Without any forethought i recorded myself reading the email and started cutting footage around it and these two distinct eras were seemingly fused (or in conversation, as every filmmaker/artist is compelled to say regarding two different things smashed together.) This footage was really my first grappling with how to take images and simply understanding the operation of super 8 camera. It was oh so long ago. Repurposing the footage here to something else, far away in space and time from the original intent and moment it was captured, has been real fun but also an ever-extending hall of mirrors. will finish soon and share at an appropriate time. standby.

PHOTOS IN PALISADES REVIEW

The above photo appears in Palisades Review magazine, alongside writing by Crocket Doob. this photo is called parking garage and was taken on December 10, 2024 at 12:35 am at the Portland Airport on my iphone 14 pro.

The above photo appears in Palisades Review magazine, alongside writing by Sarp Sozdinler. This photo is called streetlight and was taken on February 25, 2026 at 6:42 am on my iphone 14 pro on MLK while i was waiting at a stoplight near the Hawthorne Bridge after dropping my son at morning baskeball practice.

XRAY FM PROMO

I was very happy to cut this video for xray.fm (I didn’t shoot it.) The very excellent Margaret Malone has a show on xray titled Bust the Canon, which you can listen to here and learn more about here. The whole point of this video is: xray.fm is moving locations and they need your assistance. learn more here and help if you can.

COASTAL HIGHLIGHTS

Speaking of the very excellent MM, she and I got away mid july for an evening and went to to the coast. It was a mere 18 hours from end to end but great. (big thank you to Andrea C.) As we hiked near Oswald West in the late afternoon, M deduced that it had been 30 years to the day that we’ve been together. What are the odds? We talked about the micro choices and movements that had to happen to put us together (including me leaving atlanta in 1992) and the grit and good fortune that helped us remain together across space and time. That’s a long-ass time, we reasoned, for two human beings to be in close contact. Before we could dwell too long in our joyous mystification we were driving back to town, quickly subsumed by the details of daily life.

PROJECT UPDATES

Apology Ghost (experimental narrative short, 5 min) out to a few festivals. Will probably make this available on my website in the coming months. more about Apology Ghost here.

Sister/Brother (narrative feature, 75 min) - still chugging along in watching-paint-dry fashion in post. More about Sister/Brother here.

Grief Stick (documentary short, 17 min) out to festivals. A 2026 fall screening are possibly beginning to take form. stay tuned. More about Grief Stick here.

ETC

impermanence clock

days I’ve been alive 19,771 | days until i turn 80 9,448

running

I’ve had notable uptick in running since Atlanta, pushing myself at pace, duration, location. Very much out of my comfortable cobwebbed zones. Unclear if this is just a post race spike or if it’s in some way a response to the rivers of time and aging referenced elsewhere in this post. Next big race upcoming is Silver Falls in October.

music

my music project impermanent marker released a 5 song EP last month called petty grievance you can find it on bandcamp.

fivver account!

I offer film editing, screenplay proofing, voice acting, and editing your kid’s AAU basketball footage into a reel. Do you have need of any of those? Does your loved one or friend? If so please go here. I could really use the support.

CLOSING IMAGE

here is the part of the post where i say something profound and/or witty that manages to exist as a standalone bit but also a summation and finalization of everything that’s come prior. I’m afraid to report I don’t have anything in the tank. thanks for reading this far though. i really appreciate that. how are you?

see you next month. xo

- - -

Greetings to you from Portland, Oregon, where eco-savants peddle bioswale naming rights with a staggering lack of compunction. Let’s begin:

WHAT HAPPENED IN June (BROAD STROKES):

- my short film Apology Ghost had its international premiere

- released a 5 song EP called petty grievance

- had a birthday

BEST THINGS I SAW in June: Safe by Todd Haynes (at the Academy Theater), Conbody vs Everybody by Debra Granik (5 episode series on Criterion), Hurricane Season by Michelle Trujillo, Secondary Currents by Peter Rose, Eno by Gary Hustwit, RRR by S. S. Rajamouli (at the Hollywood Theater)

BEST THINGS I READ in June: Colored Television by Danzy Senna, Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey, The Killing Hills by Chris Offutt, Murderland by Caroline Fraser (so good and so incredibly disturbing), There is No Place For Us by Brian Goldstone (also incredibly disturbing but in a different way).

Therein ends the ribbon-cutting ceremony at the new waterfront smelter, now on to the magisterial plumes of lead and arsenic that will cover lakes and valleys with eternal darkness for a few millennia. Let’s begin:

WHAT IF THIS IS THE BEST IT GETS?

Been thinking lately about the always-looking-forward, just-you-wait-world, aspirational frame of filmmaking and art making, which i’ve had my feet in, in one form or another, for close to three decades. Each project of mine to date has been imbued (by me) with a shimmering sense of this-is-the-one wherein after completion and release I will at last find myself swimming in a lavish pool of boundless acclaim, myriad opportunities, and a considerable surplus of cash. Big sigh. Across all my projects, this pool has remained an elusive, hazy mirage. In the harsh clarity of daylight this conceit of mine is very clearly just the garden-variety delusion particular to getting film projects made, the sort of mania that flows vigorously (probably) for anyone with any kind of creative practice. But lately I’ve found myself confronting it more frequently, wondering what if this is the best it gets. One consideration: the current apparatus of film development, production, and distribution bears zero resemblance to the one that existed when I graduated from film school nearly 30 years prior (not that that version had any demonstrably lesser degree-of-difficulty.) So what does that leave for the aspirant to hustle toward? Some now non-existent representation of success built of metrics that are empirically impossible to get close to? And what exactly undergirds this chase? The simple post-adolescent tug for validation? Can it really be that simple? Probably. Has a base and craven need for approval really followed me into my 50’s? Probably.

A question arises: what if I am able to put my head down, continue to make my very small projects, maybe get them into a smattering of film festivals, maybe attend those festivals where possible, and move on to the next project? Would that be enough to sustain me until the end? The answer is resoundingly yes. I don’t really need anything further. (note: that said, more robust resources would not be the worst thing.) This widening realization - learning to substitute my ceaseless striving for just-continuing-to-make-things irrespective-of-how-they-arrive-or-are-received - was a profound release, landing fully for me one Thursday afternoon in June as I drove to my day job, watching the gas needle skirt the bottom of the gauge yet again knowing it will cost me around 65 dollars to fill up the tank again with money I don’t have (thanks to my sustained artistic dedication. take note young aspirants). Like a gathering, slow-motion lightning bolt it gained form: If I am able to keep doing what I am doing, does it really matter if I am unheralded, unsung, unwatched? The answer is resoundingly no.

open doorway, no constraints but the self-imposed ones. deep cleansing breath, onward.

JENNIFER LANIER

Jennifer Lanier and I met in summer of 2021, at a coffee shop on SE Hawthorne. I was casting for Season 2 of MICROAGGRESSIONS and we met in person to see if we would be a good fit for one another. I could tell instantly she was great: warm, quick-witted, and full of a joyous quality exciting to be near. We bonded over our shared experience of triumphs over cancer and discussed the particulars of the role and series. Later that week I went to see her perform Shakespeare at Irving Park (she was at the time the co-artistic director of the Original Practice Shakespeare Festival. more here) and afterward I grew even more excited to work with her. How could I not? She was an undeniable talent and a force. We shot MICROAGGRESSIONS in October 2021, six episodes across five days, and shot her episode on October 11th along the Springwater Corridor at Johnson Creek.

Jennifer was so prepared and on point that despite our 7 am call we finished by 10:30 am and wrapped for the day shortly afterward. Jennifer and I hugged and made plans to work together again and remain in touch.

On June 9th, 2026 she passed due to a recurrence of the disease she had once beaten. Please consider donating to her family and her memory here.

The Portland theater, film, and creative community is now collectively mourning loss and all the poorer for her absence.

PETTY GRIEVANCE

On my birthday in mid-June, impermanent marker released a 5 song EP called petty grievance. You can listen free below or listen/purchase here. only 4 bucks. All songs written, performed, and recorded by me. (related: I just need 4 more followers to cross the 50 mark on bandcamp. I’d be honored if you chose to be one of them. but no pressure b/c i know you have a lot on your plate as is.)

songs on petty grievance are as follows:

1. we are out of time - about how you want to be decisive make some kind of personal change or revolution but keep messing up and failing in familiar ways

2. anthony no more - about how a loved one’s ghost won’t go. i don’t know anyone named anthony who has died recently but the name kind of fit rhythmically and is a stand-in for at least 5 people who have died in the last two months.

3. rivers of blood - about the current/forever state of the world

4. safe forever - about kind of gently reckoning with eternal darkness

5. i wish we still were friends - about a broken friendship that can never be unbroken and how even though it ended real poorly and was a tornado of destructive energy there’s a part of you that still aches for the before part and is desperate to regain it in your life, despite knowing you can’t and shouldn’t.

I am at work on an full-length album that will release in early or late fall depending on how it goes. I will post more about that here at the appropriate time.

PROJECT UPDATES

How Do You Move in This World (experimental narrative short, 2 min) will world premiere in Chicago on July 29th at the VASTLAB experimental festival. VASTLAB sent all the accepted filmmakers a list of 9 questions to answer about their ethos and filmmaking process. My video response is below. Learn more about How Do You Move in This World here.

Apology Ghost (experimental narrative short, 5 min) had its international premiere on June 20 at the International Experimental Fiction Film Festival in Manchester, England. On June 19th, many of the filmmakers met online for a festival-curated zoom to introduce ourselves briefly and have a discussion about the merits of experimental fiction filmmaking. Undistilled joy. This festival puts focus on projects that straddle narrative and experimental or that are told in unconventional ways and features some amazing filmmakers and I was very honored to be included. More about Apology Ghost here.

Sister/Brother (narrative feature, 75 min) - at present re-editing after several months (read: years) of dormancy and am approaching picture lock. More about Sister/Brother here.

ETC

impermanence clock

days I’ve been alive 19,740 | days until i turn 80 9,479

running

All set to run the Peachtree Road Race in Atlanta on July 4 with Chris M. I will provide update on how it goes and the particulars next month. Here’s us walking to the start line in 2023 and after our hs graduation some 36 years earlier.

photography

I have some photos coming out this month in The Palisades Review, one on July 10 and another on July 17. You can sign up at the magazine link to subscribe. Should you want to purchase prints of my photos you can email me for specifics or you can always go here. I welcome your support but know you’re probably busy already following me on bandcamp so never mind.

fivver account!

I offer film editing, screenplay proofing, voice acting. Do you have need of any of those? Does your loved one or friend? If so please go here. I could always use your support but oh god so craven and desperate. forget it and disregard. i’ll be fine.

CLOSING THOUGHT

Some of the AI + filmmaking discourse these days seems to be of the what if this is just the dawn of a new tool that filmmakers can use to enhance their vision? The thing is though that AI’s not really a tool, unless you mean a giant-razor-blade-turbine-engine shredding innocent frogs as they gargle boiling-toxic-landfill-water while twilight turns to crushing darkness, falling on a bubonic and skin-meltingly profane utter and total razing and erasure of everything good and sacred - a line we’ve all somehow already crossed that we can never ever uncross and that future generations of filmmakers will rightfully hold us in seething contempt for allowing to happen so easily. If you mean that kind of tool then you’re right.

ok on that note bye see you next month xo

***

Greetings to you from Portland, Oregon, where utility bills rise proportionate to wait times at inner SE yak burrito food carts Let’s begin:

WHAT HAPPENED IN MAY (BROAD STROKES):

- had a photo published in Lenscratch

- first album review for Empty Conversation by impermanent marker

- attended the joyous Frederick Wiseman celebration

BEST THINGS I SAW in May: Sweet Sugar Rage by Harclyde Wallcott and Honor Ford-Smith, Adjustment and Labor by Frederick Wiseman, Boxing Gym by Frederick Wiseman, La Danse by Frederick Wiseman, Monrovia Indiana by Frederick Wiseman, The Asphalt Jungle by John Huston (at Academy Theater), The Sheep Detectives (which i attended reluctantly but managed to enjoy), Take a Flippin’ Hike (webseries by Rale Sidebottom).

BEST THINGS I READ in May: Lightbreakers by Aja Gabel, Lost Light by Michael Connelly, Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Beloved by Toni Morrison, Color Television by Danzy Senna (in progress)

Therein ends the low-res jpeg of your recently-adopted tuxedo cat, now on to 300 dpi file which fully captures her magisterial essence:

BRIAN LINDSTROM

My friend Brian Lindstrom died on May 15th.

Brian was a sui generis documentary filmmaker and an stellar human being and inspiration to me on both fronts. And though those words are all authentic and true, words can neither capture the positive of his presence nor its negation by his absence. His death has been like a depth charge exploding repeatedly in slow motion.

We met Brian and his wife in 2004, shortly after we arrived in Portland after years in Los Angeles, where i had been attempting with difficulty to make inroads in the film industry. LA is a place where the mere appearance of power, in whatever form, has actual meaning. Where a person’s value is instantly reduced to how they can benefit your creative aims, in whatever form. What an utter surprise then, coming from years of toil and aspiration in LA, to meet a filmmaker as pure and true as Brian Lindstrom. A filmmaker with no apparent ambition beyond serving the people in his films. How can this be? But Brian Lindstrom was a person who worked in service of others, who made films in service of others. I have not crossed paths with any other human beings who do or have done this, who lived and worked how he did, fully integrated, community-minded, ego-less as one can be. If you didn’t know him I really recommend the below ted talk, which manages to embody his warmth and defining ethos, as well as this obit in the LA Times. And of course the films he made. Finding Normal, To Pay My Way With Stories, Mothering Inside, Alien Boy for starters. Seek them out. You will be all the richer for it.

In 2006 he asked me to help him on a project to work with youth from families in recovery to help them learn the tools of cinematic storytelling and then make a short film. We met with the kids every weekday from 10 am to 2 pm at Marshall High School and then at the end of 3 weeks we shot a short film. On the above postcard you’ll note he lists us together as filmmakers, as if we had some sort of equivalent agency or stature on this project. The fact is at the time I was only a filmmaker in aspiration. Though I had written screenplays, I had yet to direct a single thing and I was quaking internally about how to begin and meanwhile he had a celebrated, growing body of work. The fact that he did this, defining me in this manner, knowing what it would mean to me and how validating it would feel for me, is a perfect thumbnail of his grace and selflessness. When the project ended he took me for ice cream in outer SE and revealed he had once worked there.

I miss you Brian. My love and deep admiration for you will continue. I’m making a short film for you. xo

Okay.

And now I’m going to type out the rest of this post as if everything is normal and May was just another normal month with normal, un-shattering things happening:

PHOTO PUBLISHED

This is a photo of MM and our son, some years ago in Hoyt Arboretum, published last month in a mother’s day photo exhibition for Lenscratch. (This photo is also forthcoming in another publication so I’ll say more about that when the time comes.) Meantime, you can see the other Mother’s Day photos from Lenscratch here.

FREDERICK WISEMAN FESTIVAL

This festival to honor Frederick Wiseman on the recent occasion of his death at 93 was a buoyant enterprise, and a corrective to the ills of the world and of the local Portland ills also. All of his 44 films shown chronologically 24/7 back to back in 3 different environments at one venue. Not merely the joy of his films themselves, but the collective nature of the event, and for a few days knowing that no matter what time of day it was or what you were doing, his films were playing. Man it was like some sort of celestial affirmation and so very cool. By happenstance or providence my daughter was out of town for the week so some of my parental duties were relaxed enough to get me to five of the films: Meat, The Store, Boxing Gym, La Danse, Monrovia Indiana. It filled the spirit. humanity in and alongside process.

MUSIC REVIEW

The album Empty Conversation (released at the end of 2025) got its first official review and it was positive. This is a tiny piece of dry land in a raging ocean but I’ll take it. You can read the review here and listen to the album here.

If you haven’t heard of impermanent marker yet you can find us on bandcamp. In addition to Empty Conversation, we released an EP last month called my mistake and have another EP forthcoming called unsafe forever. follow impermanent marker on bandcamp to stay apprised or watch this space.

PROJECT UPDATES

Apology Ghost (5 min) will have its international premiere June 20 at the International Experimental Fiction Film Festival in Manchester, England. This festival puts focus on projects that straddle narrative and experimental or that are told in unconventional ways (note: and looks absolutely awesome) and I am so very honored to be included, as this project is sort of an in-between-worlds project, very much a narrative but not one told in an easily digestible fashion. More about Apology Ghost here.

How Do You Move in This World (2 min) this experimental narrative will world premiere in Chicago on July 29th at the Vastlab experimental festival. All filmmakers were sent a list of 9 questions to answer about their filmmaking process. Below is my video response. more about How Do You Move in This World here.

Sister/Brother (narrative feature, 75 min) - this is getting close. lots more to say in the coming weeks. Learn more about Sister/Brother here.

Grief Stick (documentary short, 17 min) out to festivals. A fall screening in Portland is gathering form. stay tuned. More about Grief Stick here.

ETC

impermanence clock

days I’ve been alive 19,710 | days until i turn 80 9,509

music

repeat of info above: my music project impermanent marker is on bandcamp. I released an EP called my mistake last month and will be releasing another very soon called unsafe forever. follow me on bandcamp to stay apprised. or watch this space.

running

currently training for Peachtree Road Race July 4, 2026. the regular running has been so good for me on a couple fronts. More to come.

photography

To purchase prints of my photos go here.

fivver account!

I offer film editing, screenplay proofing, voice acting, and editing your kid’s AAU basketball footage into a reel. Do you have need of any of those? Does your loved one or friend? If so please go here. I could really use the support.

Okay, that’s it for now. I really want to say something pithy and profound all at once to sew this whole thing up but my mind is a blank except for: Remember to watch the films of Brian Lindstrom and to be extra nice to someone today for no demonstrable reason.

xo bp

on may 1, 2026 impermanent marker released a 5 song EP titled my mistake. This post is to give some background and context on the EP and how it was put together and how the videos were constructed.

general background: I don’t really set out to make an EP or an album. At any given time I have a a volume of songs recorded or partially recorded and in downtimes or when i have the time i will mess around with them and/or determine which parts are needed or need to be augmented or whatever. writing and recording songs is just something i’ve done for a long time. i enjoy the process and it’s been solely a private one for decades. Over the last couple years I’ve been releasing them, if for no other reason that to hold myself accountable and see them through. I have no agenda or expectation beyond that. Anyway, if I have say 5 songs or less in semi-acceptable state, and further if they have some sort of cohesive element to them, musically or thematically, I will pick a date in the future to release EP, usually 4-6 weeks away and make that the countdown clock towards finishing. The reason this is important is b/c with out the constriction of the release date (even though it’s a manufactured constriction) I’ll just tinker forever and never ever release them b/c it’s rare that I’m ever truly satisfied with them and this ticking clock means I have to get them as close as I can and then part ways with them. Sometimes these songs have no lyrics yet, sometimes they have vocal tracks but need backing tracks, sometimes i need to add piano or bass. Lots of times what i need to do in fact is subtract tracks. (Sometimes I need to abandon the songs altogether.) I listen to these songs as they form and finalize many times, sometimes on walks with the dog on repeat when they’re getting close, figuring out all the adjustments that need to happen. mix, adjust, repeat. by the time the EP is released I am pretty much at saturation point with the songs and can easily never hear them again.

specific background: songs on my mistake had been around for a few months in different iterations. for awhile there were a couple other songs in the running but over time they began to stick out or not fit or cohere so they were removed. in the end i was left with five songs: 1) slough of despond 2) going going gone 3) when where why 4) all my future dreams 5) coda.

more on each song and video below.

slough of despond

the song: is about watching a loved one die, but the lyrics are mutable and could easily be about the death of a relationship. whatever the case it’s about how sometimes it’s better to look away. slough of despond is a phrase of hopelessness from John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, which i read a few decades ago in college, and it always stayed w me (the phrase slough of despond i mean, not pilgrims progress. i can barely recall what i did yesterday much less remember the particulars of texts from college.)

the video: this one is not too fancy. two driving shots put together with a dissolve though i do mess with the speed when the guitars kick in.

going going gone

the song: about the bewildering concern of death and how can it be that a person is a breathing living organism one moment and then simply the inverse just like that. a contradiction here is that this process feels so intimate and personal and yet it’s the most banal commonplace enterprise there is. what are we supposed to do with that? I have no idea.

the video: i screen-recorded my photos on my computer, using the arrow key to forward through them. then I cut some photos out of the final video file b/c they were unsightly or personal and left it mostly all just human-less, until the end. as i was editing a swath of photos I took at Mauna Loa volcanic eruption in 2022 came up and that sort of fit perfectly with the gone part. this took me a few hours to put together.

when where why:

the song: i had the refrain first (I don’t know why i should forgive you) and had to build the verses around it. i really have a love/hate feeling toward these verses. on a possibly ill-advised whim i included the lyric “treat your old self to an evening of brine-covered toadstools” which i can’t really defend other than to say i talked myself into leaving it in place when maybe i could have held myself to a more rugged standard. so it goes. this is the one song that doesn’t really fit thematically with the others b/c it isn’t about death exactly.

the video: more not too fancy. a video of a tree in the wind and a video of driving around at night stitched together.

the song: about how you’re alive after someone you love is gone, left to the sole consolation that you’ll possibly see them again in another form but how that isn’t really the same. this was kind of an experiment to see if i could just keep the guitar very simple. I released a slightly different version of this song before the EP came out, a simpler one that just ended when the guitar ended. during the prep for EP release though i made it a little more atmospheric at the end, which felt appropriate given the subject matter. there’s a guitar bit at the end that’s literally a guitar track from when where why that i just pasted into this song.

the video: this is all one shot, slowed down and with a slow push in (done in post). I was sitting in my car killing time near Berkeley Park in SE Portland.

the song: about all the plans i make and how it can be over at any time. this i recorded out in the car just after i drove home from work around 12:55 am one night. i just kind of hatched the couplet right then and there and sang it on a couple different tracks. then i went to bed. it sat on my phone for many months until a few days before the EP was to be released I remembered it. I added some effects and some depth to the vocals.

the video: another one shot, this from a walk in Westmoreland Park in SE Portland.

thanks for reading this far. i appreciate it.

You can follow impermanent marker on bandcamp and/or purchase the EP there. you can see the my mistake videos on a playlist here.

bye xo

Greetings to you from sun-drenched Portland, Oregon, where the air is clean, the sky is blue, and where arriving with a slightly oxidized pour-over vessel may get you banned from future alt-country dinner parties. Let’s begin:

WHAT HAPPENED IN APRIL (BROAD STROKES):

- Apology Ghost accepted at the Experimental Fiction Filmmaking Festival in Manchester, England.

- had 7 photos published in two literary magazines (more below)

- released a 5 song EP titled my mistake (as impermanent marker, more below.)

- saw a lot of art (more below)

- ran a 5K

BEST THINGS I SAW in April: One Hand Don’t Clap by Kavery Dutta, Eldridge Cleaver Black Panther by William Klein, Visions of Eight (omnibus by 8 different directors, A+), Analogies by Peter Rose, Remember Mulugeta by Dan Evans and Nora Colie, some girl by Anika Yuzak, Our Mr. Matsura by Beth Harrington, Guardian of the Land by LaRonn Katchia, Peter Hujar’s Day by Ira Sachs, Meat by Frederick Wiseman, Store by Frederick Wiseman.

BEST THINGS I READ in April: A Thousand Ways to Die by Trymaine Lee, Vaim by Jon Fosse, Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy, On The Calculation of Volume (book 1) by Solvej Balle, Eyes Upside Down by P. Adams Sitney (in progress), The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami.

Therein is the close of the hasty charcoal sketch, now on to the acrylic magnum opus slowly coming together on the warehouse canvas. Put on these gently-used vinyl slippers and follow me:

ART CONSUMPTION, ETC

Was able to get to a lot of stuff this month. Partly this owes to my schedule allowing pockets of time to pursue these things, but mostly to my actual commitment to making them happen (which in turn is tied to last month’s post about a radio signal that started faintly but is now steadily growing, transmission seemingly coming from all quarters, a lot of which is centered around me as a filmmaker vs me as a person and where those two join and my attempts to merge them into one entity, one governed more by support and benevolence than need for validation or approval as sometimes the person I am in the world feels like an-out-of-control-marionette flapping in the wind with tangled strings, saying dumb shit or avoiding humans or feeling negative sensations towards others and so on; i have seen this happen repeatedly across the decades but have always felt a lack of agency. So, with all that in mind, as of now I am trying to reach out more. Help others more. Do things I wouldn’t normally do more, which ties into art consumption here:) This month I made it to Portland Art Museum, Oregon Contemporary, Boathouse Microcinema (screening via Cadence FF programmed by Portland Panorama), Hollywood Theater for a documentary feature and a NW shorts block (Portland Panorama), Open Signal Microcinema, NW Doc (showing a Frederick Wiseman marathon, be still my heart), and Hoyt Arboretum (which I went to solo at random and instantly became a member afterward, a sure sign I’m in my 50’s). All of these were singularly joyous but collectively a heavenly sun-through-the-clouds chorus of renewal and purpose. like a drug. I can feel the ice floe fissure, feel the slow movement up to the light.

PHOTOS

Had the good fortune to get some photos published in literary magazines in April: one in the Palisades Review and six in Anti-Heroin Chic.

this image appears in palisades review, is called growth, and was shot at detroit lake in summer 2024 on a camping trip with my son.

this image was taken on a walk in Oaks Bottom park in fall 2025. it, along with 5 others appears in anti-heroin chic magazine.

please check out both publications and lend them your support, in whatever form is meaningful for you, if you are so inclined. I have another photo forthcoming in a different publication and will talk about that as it becomes appropriate to.

PROJECT UPDATES

Apology Ghost (experimental narrative short, 5 min) will screen in June at the International Experimental Fiction Film Festival in Manchester, England. This festival puts focus on projects that straddle narrative and experimental or that are told in unconventional ways and I am very honored to be included, as this Apology Ghost is sort of an in-between-worlds project, very much a narrative but not one told in an easily digestible fashion. I am hoping to attend but not yet sure if I’ll be able to. This is the international premiere for Apology Ghost as well as for me as filmmaker. More about Apology Ghost here.

Sister/Brother (narrative feature, 75 min) - at present re-editing after several months (read: years) of dormancy and am approaching picture lock. I’ve been here before and gone back to the drawing board so I say it with caution but it’s true. The time off and fresh eyes were both so important, forcing me to step back from intention and look objectively at the footage I have and the pathways forward to finish. Hope to be done with a cut by June or July and have film finished by year’s end. If you’ve been waiting and waiting and/or feel like giving up on this one I believe it and I know and I’ve felt it too and all I can say is thank you for your patience and good will. More about Sister/Brother here.

How Do You Move in This World (experimental narrative short, 2 min) Super excited to report that this experimental narrative will world premiere this summer at the Vastlab experimental festival. Originally scheduled for March in Los Angeles, we will instead appear in the 2nd installment of this year’s fest, date and location forthcoming. Vastlab sent all the accepted filmmakers a list of 9 questions to answer about their filmmaking process. Here is my video response. more about How Do You Move in This World here.

Freak Farm (experimental short, 3 min) out to festivals. more about Freak Farm here.

Grief Stick (documentary short, 17 min) out to festivals. A couple 2026 Los Angeles screenings are possibly beginning to take form. stay tuned. More about Grief Stick here.

MY MISTAKE

my mistake, a new 5 song ep by impermanent marker is live. listen below or watch the video playlist for all 5 songs here. Released May 1, 2026 my mistake was written and recorded in feb/march and mixed in april. songs are about death, devastation, and the certainty of future grief.

songs: 1) slough of despond 2) going going gone 3) when where why 4) all my future dreams, 5) coda

note: while these songs were conceived with sort of an abstract future grief in mind, about how one day this or that person or situation won’t be there, after the songs were written and recorded i learned of the impending death of a friend i love and now this EP has become informed by that knowledge for me and i can’t listen to it without thinking that by the time i write next month’s post this person, friend, artist, human, loved one, will almost certainly be dead. when i type that out my heart races and my breath quickens and i want to say something profound. but all i can say is that the EP is about the anticipation of a shattering and under the cover of night, when i was busy looking elsewhere, one has arrived and i can sense it’s reverberation will hum through me for a long long time, like wind across a cold ravine. it feels abrupt to leave it there but i am going to. xo

ETC

impermanence clock

days I’ve been alive 19,679 | days until i turn eighty 9,540

music

see above for impermanent marker news

running

Ran 5K on April 3 with my daughter and it was such a mostly joyous enterprise that I decided to run the Peachtree Road Race, a 10K in Atlanta on 4th of July, which I ran in 2022 and 2023. I have elementary and high school roots in Atlanta so it’s also an opportunity to see friends and run with my old friend Chris. More to come but I am actively training and enjoying it.

photography

if you want to purchase prints of my photos you can always go here.

fivver account!

I offer film editing, screenplay proofing, voice acting, and editing your kid’s AAU basketball footage into a reel. Do you have need of any of those? Does your loved one or friend? If so please go here. I could really use the support.

okay that’s it for now. Thank you for reading and supporting this. I hope you are staying afloat in these challenging and often gut-wrenching, heartbreaking times. my mind holds the phrase all things must pass, like a well-worn stone whose very existence contains devastation and relief all at once. xo

Greetings to you from spring in Portland, Oregon, where the trees are blooming and the organic kale burritos are social signifiers of one’s rapidly onsetting eco-fury. Let’s begin:

WHAT HAPPENED IN MARCH (BROAD STROKES):

- attended an inaugural screening at Open Signal’s Microcinema. left electrified.

- wrote a 2026 artistic manifesto and began a pattern of looking and working outward

- went to Bend and the Oregon Coast

- received an MRI

- worked on an upcoming EP and released one of the songs that will be on it

BEST THINGS I READ in March: Heartwood by Amity Gaige, The Come Up by Jonathan Abrams, Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi (holy crap, this book), Echo Park by Michael Connelly, On the Calculation of Volume (book one) by Solvej Balle (in progress).

BEST THINGS I SAW in March: Max Roach: The Drum Also Waltzes, Albert Brooks: Defending My Life, Trailblazers vs Clippers 3/31/26

Therein is the close of the reluctant toe in icy lake, now to dive straight in without upturning the canoe in these mild currents:

RADIO SIGNALS

If you add my trip to McMinnville at the end of February (see last month’s post) to two trips in March (Bend at the start of the month to attend state championships for 6th grade girls basketball and a trip near Arch Cape over Spring Break), I had 3 short jaunts in rapid-fire succession over several weeks that in their collective totality, setting aside their particular joys and grievances, have sent beacons and radio signals to me, as travel or anchor-raising can do. I’ve been doing my best since to receive, document and process all these signals. Some have to do with future creative projects, some with my ongoing relationship to time and mortality, a lot of it has to do with maximizing the usage of the person i put into the world and how best to optimize this in light of all the things I want/need to do before the game ends. (if that doesn’t make sense, that’s okay. this post is really a series of breadcrumbs for my past/future self). All by way of saying, it’s been a transformative few weeks, helping me reassert myself on several fronts. One of the things I did after McMinnville was to write a 2026 manifesto, a sort of artistic flag I planted to refer to daily to remind myself where to put focus. (note: this is the kind of thing the me in my 20’s would mock mercilessly but I’ve come to realize that guy was a lot of empty bluster so I am reticent to to accommodate him. ) The short of it is putting focus less on myself and more on the community, less on the response to my work and more on the work itself. tick tock and onward.

BRAIN SCAN

On Friday March 13 I had an MRI of the brain. I’ve had many of these over the last 22 years (dating back to my very first in December 2004, the one which led to my brain tumor diagnosis and which demarcates the singular before/after line of my life) but they always manage to reframe the context of everything. All aspirations, hopes, despairs, wishes wither under the cold fluorescent light as you’re inserted inside the tube and basic everyday thoughts, plans, schedules, annoyances, are instantly subsumed, rendered meaningless by the presence of the pounding, relentless nitrogen pump. I used to have these every three months. Three became six became twelve. Now I have them every three years to verify that what remains in my head after two surgical resections and proton beam radiation in 2005 hasn’t moved or changed or grown.

It was early morning. My tech was nice enough and no-nonsense. I laid in the tube and counted the moments. I was pulled out and injected with contrast. I was put back in the tube. I put focus on my breathing. I counted the moments, watching my fear and anxiety as it attempted to take form off in the distance, slowly approaching despite me shoo-ing it away. Eventually the scan was done. I put my gown in the the dirty gown hamper. I took my ring, wallet, and keys and clothes from the temporary locker and exited. I went home to my office and kept editing my film project until it was time for my day job. Time went by. I tried to forget the whole thing and get back to normal, as if a brain MRI was like getting an oil change or stopping at the store on the way home. A week later I received the report that contained magic words:

addendum: I have other annual checkups and blood draws to check other markers so in some ways this thing will have claws in me if i make it to 90 pr 100. But hearing these words is akin to getting a 3 year reprieve or shore leave or whatever metaphor is appropriate and is a reminder that if you are drawing breath and getting through the day without a medical situation pressing on your chest, you are eminently fortunate. (whispered: b/c it’s coming in some form. when not if. ) deep cleansing breath

PROJECT UPDATES

Sister/Brother (narrative feature, 75 min) - currently actively re-editing. It’s now officially been a gd decade since Erin McGarry and I met up in 2016 and hatched the idea for this movie (and to talk about best Disneyland practices with our then small kids. ) While the multiple delays and setbacks to get this film to the finish line are noteworthy I will save discussing them for another forum. Suffice to say if you have been keeping your eye on this one it’s finally come off the back burner and being attended to daily. More about the project here.

Apology Ghost (experimental narrative short, 5 min) out to festivals. more about film here.

How Do You Move in This World (experimental narrative short, 2 min) Super excited to report that this experimental narrative will world premiere this summer at the Vastlab experimental festival. Originally scheduled for March in Los Angeles, we will instead appear in the 2nd installment of this year’s fest, date and location forthcoming. Vastlab sent all the accepted filmmakers a list of 9 questions to answer about their filmmaking process. Here is my video response. more about the project here

Freak Farm (experimental short, 3 min) out to festivals. more about the film here

Grief Stick (documentary short, 17 min) out to festivals. A couple 2026 Los Angeles screenings are beginning to take form. stay tuned. more here

ETC

impermanence clock

days I’ve been alive: 19,649 | days until i turn 80: 9,570

music

As impermanent marker just released new song (see above)

running

5K upcoming April 4th. One of these posts I’ll get more into detail about the running stuff.

photography

if you want to purchase prints of my photos please go here. Sold one recently to Alex B and would love to get one to you, maybe for your other home in the high desert or for the studio in the rehabbed barn where you mean to work on your art but you usually just scroll on IG instead? think about it.

fivver account!

I offer film editing, screenplay proofing, and voice acting. Do you have need of any of those? Does your loved one or friend? If so please go here. I could really use the support.

Okay that’s it for now. Thank you for reading. I hope you are doing well and still planning to becoming your best self this year. What’s stopping you? Reach out. Let’s make this April the best one yet, k? xo

Greetings from Portland, Oregon, where the air is clear, the trees are green, and the property taxes are levied to fund well-meaning but hard-to-explain abstract municipal machinations. Let’s begin:

WHAT HAPPENED IN FEBRUARY (BROAD STROKES):

- my short film Apology Ghost played at the very excellent McMinnville Short Film Festival (more below)

- I am back into editing Sister/Brother actively after a run of semi-dormant months.

- I finished a draft of a pilot script for a limited series (hopefully more to come on that.)

- several of my photos got accepted for publication in an upcoming issue of a literary magazine (more to come when I know it)

BEST THINGS I READ in February: The Closers by Michael Connelly. also see below

BEST THINGS I SAW in February: 1917, If I had Legs I’d Kick You (at Tomorrow Theater), I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not. also see below.

Typically, I don’t separate my books or movie consumption by any container aside from date consumed but since February is Black History Month, and further since I felt a pull this year to go deeper than I usually do I’m notating it here. This desire was primarily initiated by a day in the third week of January where - needing to kill time at the Albina Library while my son was at basketball practice nearby - I randomly grabbed The 1619 Project: A Visual Experience off the shelf at the library from the art books and photography section and got tractor-beam pulled in to a reality which I have had the sheer luxury of observing from a distance all my life decided to go all in for the month of February, to watch only cinema and read only books that fit the bill (exceptions listed above). One section of The 1619 Project: A Visual Experience referenced The Weeping Tree by Anne C. Bailey, which regards an 1859 slave auction (the largest on record), and I felt a white-hot, I-have-to-read-this-right-now sensation spread up my spine. I put The Weeping Tree on hold and, three days later when it arrived, I read it. Around the same time my wife handed me Percival Everett’s The Trees, and suddenly it was February and I was off and running:

Black History Month read: The Weeping Tree by Anne C. Bailey, The Trees by Percival Everett, Tulsa 1921 by Randy Krehbiel, My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite, King by Jonathan Eig, The Come-up by Jonathan Abrams (in progress)

Black History Month watched: Daughters of the Dust by Julie Dash, I Am Somebody and Integration Report 1 both by Madeline Anderson, A Time For Burning by Barbara Connell & William C. Jersey, Mandabi by Ousmane Sembène, Black Panthers by Agnes Varda, A Different Image by Alile Sharon Larkin, Talking About Trees by Suhaib Gasmelbari, Will and Twice as Nice both by Jessie Maple, Nothing but a Man by Michael Roemer, Cane River by Horace Jenkins, Soleil Ô by Med Hondo, Malcom X by Spike Lee (in 70 mm at the Hollywood!), Hunting Party by Ibrahim Shaddad, Say Amen Somebody by George T. Nierenberg, Losing Ground by Kathleen Collins, A Certain Morning by Fanta Regina Nacro, Marseille apres la guerre by Billy Woodberry.

When I type that out, I guess that’s a lot for four weeks. I could/should say something about each of these books and films but lest I subject you to the ramblings of a white man in his 50s at last taking heed of realities and iniquities (to be mild) that have been happening around him for decades and beyond while he whined about say the bus being late or not getting into this or that film festival, I will merely say it was a cumulatively profound instructive enterprise that I continue to learn from, though those feel like empty words that don’t quite do justice to what it has felt like in toto. Films that I am still thinking about are: Talking About Trees, a documentary about 4 Sudanese filmmakers later in life attempting to get a cinema up on its feet in the city of Omdurman and the obstacles they encounter; Nothing But a Man which features amazing black-and-white photography and pitch-perfect performances; Will which has a haunting energy, great acting and a real document of its time cinematically and culturally; Hunting Party which while made in Germany by an African filmmaker has an extremely western feel and historical relationship to present day; Soleil Ô which explores French revulsion towards Mauritanian immigrants among other things and which feels heart-breakingly undated and relevant and thusly depressing as shit, which is offset by the energizing nature of the filmmaking, which manages to be hilarious and devastating at once. All of these films are A+. All currently on Criterion Channel.

Therein is the close of the of the salad bar, now on to the buttermilk biscuits, slow-aged ham, and bone-broth gravy part of this posting.

McMinnville Film Festival

Had an outstanding time at the McMinnville Film Festival for the Oregon premiere of Apology Ghost. Sitting in a darkened theater with perfect projection and sound watching films I have no foreknowlege about is pretty much by dream experience generally speaking but throw in this festival’s loving vibes and detailed attention to filmmaking/filmmakers a mere hour drive from my front door on a couple of unseasonably clear and beautiful days in late February then it’s almost like I died and was inhabiting my aspirational idea of the afterlife.I was able to see 5 blocks of short films and each one was stellar.

Best things I saw:

Les belles cicatrices by Raphaël Jouzeau - a couple revisiting their demise. this one suffused with the ache of breakup, the great divide between people who once were connected. surreal and beautiful (animation block).

Il burratiino e la balena by Roberto Catani - puppet attempts to become child. sound and repetition use to great effect here (animation block)..

Como si la tierra se las hubiera tragado by Natalia León- a woman returns home to Mexico for past/present reckoning. holy moly, this one creeps up on you and flattens you. devastating (animation block).

Way of the Shepherd by Matthew Boyd. a Peruvian shepherd working in Berkeley, CA. straightforward but moved me (environmental block).

Stew to Eat by Nathaniel Jameson + Alex Saltiel. two men make a stew and in doing so journey into an theatrical german expressionistic world. this was the balls-out kind of bizarre film you just let wash over you and internally mutter ‘fuck yes’ at various intervals. loved. (experimental block).

It Doesn’t Pass by Dan Lopez. a man is caught in seeming endless loop of liminal space in a small town in the middle of nowhere. brisk and dark and effective.(experimental block).

Making Beauty by Tammy Salzl. a young artist and her questionable art. this is grounded in reality but with odd surreal details and it gets odder the more it continues. (experimental block).

Borrowed from the Earth by Zach Johaneson. an exploration of Blackfeet Indians, their language, and their symbiotic relationship with horses. This was somehow intimate and majestic all at once, with a clearly substantial budget to film horses thundering across mountain plains at sunset and at a racetrack. poetic and moving. (native american block).

Redbird by Emma Barrow. 3 generations of Cherokee mothers and daughters dealing with loss and transition. scene of the salt argument at the stove and the last shot of the movie in particular were so good. (native american block).

Pekewa by Woodrow Hunt and Olivia Camfield. a brief exploration of dams and their impacts on multiple levels. very effective experimental documentary, dispiriting and inspiring in equal proportion but in different ways. (native american block).

Of the five blocks I saw, my favorite was the Experimental/A Bit Strange block but that’s really by default and because my film Apology Ghost was in it, so I’m clearly unfairly biased. All of us in that block had films that straddled different zones and/or were hard to put into easy classifications so I felt like I was with my people in the right end of the pool. The Q + A led by Heather Older was robust and solid and I left that night feeling inspired and alive, laying in my hotel bed feeling grateful.

What a glorious time! My only regret is that I had to return to Portland before the festival ended due to work obligations. I will be back. If I can have future short films play at McMinnville and nowhere else, and once a year make the trip back out and live inside a theater for four straight days i will be all the luckier for it.

PROJECT UPDATES

Sister/Brother (narrative feature, 75 min) - currently actively re-editing after several months of dormancy. The time off and fresh eyes were both so important. Hope to be done with a cut by June and have film finished by year’s end. If you’ve been waiting and waiting and/or feel like giving up on this one I feel your pain and all I can say is thank you for your patience and good will. More about the project here.

How Do You Move in This World (experimental narrative short, 2 min) Excited to report that this experimental narrative will world premiere this summer at the Vastlab experimental festival. Originally scheduled for March in Los Angeles, we will instead appear in the 2nd installment of this year’s fest, date and location forthcoming. more about the project here

Freak Farm (experimental short, 3 min) out to festivals.

Apology Ghost (experimental narrative short, 5 min) out to festivals. see above for reportage on latest screening.

Grief Stick (documentary short, 17 min) out to festivals. A couple 2026 Los Angeles screenings are beginning to take form. stay tuned.

ETC

impermanence clock

days I’ve been alive 19,618 | days until i turn 80 9,601

music

my music project impermanent marker released an EP last month called Future History. you can find it at bandcamp or on youtube.

running

Pretty good by the end of the month. Trying to be semi-regular again. 5K upcoming in April which will force outdoors to train despite my internal whinging about temperature or precipitation. one of these posts I’ll get more into detail about the running stuff but thus far there isn’t too much to report that warrants it.

photography

if you want to purchase prints of my photos please go here. Sold one recently to Alex B and would love to get one to you, maybe for your other home at the coast or for the just-painted condo downtown? think about it.

fivver account!

I offer film editing, screenplay proofing, and voice acting. Do you have need of any of those? Does your loved one or friend? If so please go here. I could really use the support.

Okay that’s it for now. Thank you for reading. I hope you are doing well and still planning to become your best self this year. What’s stopping you? Reach out. Let’s make this March the best one yet. xo

Greetings from Portland, Oregon, the home of well-intentioned bike corridors and entitlement-infused kombucha. How’s your new year going so far? Are you becoming who you said you’d be? Have you been troubled or energized by the Trailblazers lack of a true point guard this season? There’s no wrong answers. Let’s begin:

WHAT HAPPENED IN JANUARY (BROAD STROKES):

- my short film Apology Ghost was selected to play at the 15th annual McMinnville Short Film Festival (more below)

-released a 4-song EP titled Future History (more below)

-made a short experimental film titled Security (out to festivals soon)

- saw the Mel Brown B3 Organ group at the 1905 jazz club with M + friends. (may you carry yourself with the joy Mel Brown has on stage)

- my son lost his wallet on trimet but recovered it fully intact the next day. what are the odds?

BEST THINGS I READ in January: Transformer: The Complete Lou Reed Story (finished! so good), Art Work: On the Creative Life by Sally Mann (A+), The Narrows by Michael Connelly, The Weeping Time by Anne C. Bailey (in progress)

BEST THINGS I SAW in January: A Real Pain, The Spanish Prisoner (rewatch), 1968 (4 episode series on HBO), Christ Stopped at Eboli (4 episode series on Criterion based on Carlo Levi’s memoir, highly compelling), The Prairie Trilogy (3 short documentaries about North Dakota socialism via a man named Henry Martinson circa 1916 and beyond on Criterion. great), Yojimbo (rewatch), If I Had Legs I’d Kick You.

Therein ends the apertif, now join me in the newly-remodeled parlor for the harder stuff:

FILM UPDATES

Apology Ghost (narrative short, 5 min) - excited to report this film is an Official Selection at the 15th annual McMinnville Short Film Festival, our west coast premiere. We are playing Thursday 2/26 at 9:15 pm in the Experimental/A Bit Strange block where we are also nominated one of the best films in that category (curiously, a bit strange is the exact phrase my 2nd grade teacher used to describe my general demeanor on a progress report.) Come join us if you can! more about Apology Ghost here.

How Do You Move in This World (experimental narrative short, 2 min) This project will world premiere in Los Angeles the weekend of March 13th, 2026 at the VASTLAB experimental festival. VASTLAB sent accepted filmmakers a list of 9 questions to answer about their filmmaking process and below is my video response (yes, I included this on last month’s post too but it references what the film is about as well as some contextual data about me and my process so here it is again.)

More about How Do You Move in This World here

ADDITIONAL PROJECT UPDATES

Freak Farm (experimental short, 3 min) out to festivals, more about Freak Farm here.

Grief Stick (documentary short, 17 min) out to festivals, more about Grief Stick here.

Sister/Brother (narrative feature, 75 min)- currently re-editing. More about the project here.

FUTURE HISTORY

FUTURE HISTORY, a 4-song EP by impermanent marker (ie me) was just released at the end of January on bandcamp and youtube . Songs all concern death and hope and destruction in various forms and are written, performed, mixed by me (for better or worse). If you are willing to listen I recommend headphones and a darkened room with lightly incensed air at 68-70 degrees and a cup of steaming coffee or chai tea, or any variables that may work for you. I have no expectation or even hope of how these songs land in the world but I get a lot of satisfaction out of the process. Sometimes they turn out okay, sometimes less so. Either way, when it's done I set it and forget it, moving on to the next thing.

some context on each track:

dot the eye: these were initially kind of placeholder lyrics but i left them in. i like the noise in this one. the progression literally came to me randomly one morning (not that it’s particularly complex or anything) and i had my phone nearby so recorded it right then and over several weeks built the rest around it.

century city: this song was written in 1999 and very much about my aching need to succeed in los angeles and what it meant if i did or didn’t. sometimes i think i dodged a bullet by not succeeding the way i meant to when i arrived there but then i wonder if i’m just putting balm on a wound by saying that. but no, lets be real, i dodged a bullet.

shattered shell: initially was going to just be bare vocal and guitar but i kept adding tracks. this song is kind of about how it feels to endure a weeks-long depressive episode when you’re all emptied out. i like the hold/repeat of the last note

blood thin: this song was also written in 1999 but it’s always kind of hung around. it was written toward a specific person and corrosive situation but surprise i don’t remember any of the details with any degree of precision. they’ve just sort of dissolved and evaporated with time. and as such i sort of see the lyrics of this one, pointed and derisive as they are, as really directed at myself, or a previous iteration.

thanks for checking it out. follow me on bandcamp if you are willing. it’s free

GREEN LIGHTS, ETC

I’ve been transferring a lot of old MiniDV and VHS footage to digital lately (both a function of my endlessly-looping nostalgia combined by a ticking-clock urgency to get things into viable forms before tapes and older media become untenable) which has been a process of re-discovery for a lot of things. It’s at once a look at the unsophisticated equipment and vantage I had then, re-examining the memory of that time, and finding/discovering old footage that I can maybe repurpose in current projects. Overall it’s been a really positive enterprise. Anyway, one of the things I had transferred last month is the first thing I ever properly directed (skipping over some super 8 projects in college that is), a music video titled Green Lights, made in 2002 when I lived in Los Angeles (though it was shot in Humboldt County USA). I also found a folder (ie a physical plastic folder) with original shot list and storyboards also. (I’ll include a storyboard below which beyond showing my vision for the project also illustrates that i should never draw anything ever again. ) Watch the video below and learn about its origins and encumbrances HERE. more storyboards at the link plus shot lists and history, and context.

ETC

impermanence clock

days i’ve been alive: 19,5858 | days until i turn 80: 9,631

music

I already told you about that above so I’ll just leave it there lest you accuse me of being too self-aggrandizing. I do have a gaggle of upcoming tracks and projects in the works and we’ll get to those in due time.

running

weak sauce this month. counter to most beginning of the year undertakings, I didn’t run once this month. partially this is b/c i’m tired all the time b/c of aging and b/c of my punishing day-job schedule (4 nights a week!) which renders me without the resources to do much of anything physical. Or when I choose to push through it and go for a run anyway, I’ll get sick and then down for the count for a week or more. I need to jump back in and I will. I promise. Don’t give up on me. I did sign up for a 5K in April so there’s that to look forward to no matter what.

photography

if you want to purchase prints of my photos please go here. Sold one in December to Alex B and would love to get one to you, maybe for your other home in the mountains or for the just-painted human resources office? think about it.

fivver account!

I offer film editing, screenplay proofing, and voice acting. Do you have need of any of those? Does your loved one or friend? If so please go here. I could really use the support.

Okay that’s it for now. Thank you for reading. I hope you are doing well and still planning to transform into a butterfly this year. What’s stopping you? Can I help in any way? Reach out. Let’s make this February a good one, or a great one even.

Los Angeles. Somewhere in Spring 2003 my friend and neighbor Sherri told me one of the bands she drummed with, The Lisa Marr Experiment, had a novel idea for their new upcoming album. They were going to basically let anyone make a video. It would be at the maker’s own cost and with their own resources but there were no real artistic boundaries except nothing unsavory or exploitatively violent. I can’t recall if I picked the song Green Lights or if it was assigned to me but, despite never having directed anything yet, I was very eager to accept this opportunity. A producer and I were trying to get a feature script of mine called After The Summer up on its feet, with me as writer/director. Directing this video would be an opportunity for me to sneak little parts of the After The Summer narrative (a non-linear drama about a couple in college who go on a hiking/camping expedition and there’s a terrible fall and you come to suspect that one party pushed the other party for a variety of reasons) into the music video and if nothing else let it be a real-world proof of my ability to direct something. I immediately hatched a plan and wrote a treatment to outline my vision for the video.

Idea solidifying, I got a hold of a video camera from the Echo Park Film Center, an outstanding establishment created and run by my friend Paolo (who as fate would have it was seeing musician Lisa Marr, which made the whole enterprise feel all the more validated). Paolo urged me to use EPFC’s computers to edit the project on when the shoot was complete. I very gratefully said yes. Next I had to find 2 actors and figure out where and how to shoot this. I got in touch with my friend Marsha, living in Portland, Oregon with her newish boyfriend Charlie and asked if they’d be willing to be the couple in my video. Neither were actors but they were both game, despite the mildly dark subject matter (ie: she pushes him off a cliff.) I asked if we could meet up in Humboldt County over 4th of July weekend. They agreed. While this was obviously a weekend that would be convenient for all of us to get away, I had an ulterior motive: to shoot them on the Samoa overpass at highway 101 kissing while fireworks went off in the sky behind them to use as footage of a couple in happier times. Marsha, and M, and I all went to college in Humboldt County so the area was well-travelled and familiar for us all. I intended to use the Elk Head trail in Trinidad for the bulk of the hiking part of the video. Somehow everything worked out and it was on the calendar.

The video was all I could think about for weeks and weeks. In the somewhat desperateness of someone who has not directed yet, I created an exhaustive shot list, storyboarded the whole thing, and devoted every free ounce of thought and energy toward it. (I mean, this is what you normally do anyway but I was waaay over-the-top and manic about the whole thing proportional to the project, as if my extreme fastidiousness about every cut, angle, and contingency would somehow evaporate anyone’s doubt - especially my own - about whether or not I had any business attempting this in the first place.) I watched and rewatched films that directly or obliquely influenced the After the Summer screenplay and attempted to smuggle certain shots into the video. (one of the shots on my shot list says “Rashomon shot”, which is just a sun through the trees. lol.) I even wrote out dialogue for Charlie to say, even though sound was not recorded, just to help him give the impression of a wildly unpleasant and complaining person, one that would impel someone to push him off a cliff. And so on. My mania had no bounds. At last the day arrived.

M and I drove up to Humboldt from Los Angeles. I filmed a ton of B-roll on the Grapevine, along the Central CA feed lots. At one point I fortuitously found a car the exact same make model and color as the one my actors would use (ie our car) and was able to get a couple shots of it. We stayed that night at M’s mom’s house in San Mateo. Next morning we drove across the Golden Gate bridge and up to Humboldt. Meantime, Marsha and Charlie drove down from Portland. We met up and shared a room at the Hotel Arcata on the plaza. I instantly pulled out the video camera and started shooting. We shot the scene of them laying in bed in the hotel that opens and closes the video. We left and headed to our friend Matt’s house a few blocks away, to get a shot of the couple walking to the car, wearing backpacks (which belonged to M and I, wedding presents from my sister and her then partner.) We drove up the 101 to Trinidad. Once at the trail I got shots of them in the vehicle, parking, walking down the trail path, and to the overlook where she would push him. I don’t remember referring to the shot list for any of this but that could be because it was burned into my brain. All went well and more or less according to plan.

That night we went to the Alibi for drinks (just a couple doors down from Hotel Arcata, and the site of voluminous collegiate moments I still remember with acute and crystalline clarity, 30 years onward which is mildly alarming b/c i can’t find my keys right now or remember people’s names when i meet them) and at the opportune moment headed over to the 101 bridge to get them kissing to the fireworks. All went according to plan. The next day, after a brief visit with friends in town, we parted and went our separate ways, them back to Portland and us back to Los Angeles. No doubt I continued getting B-roll the whole way back. I felt the hum of excitement of having shot something, summoned something, come what may.

Back in Los Angeles, I spent a whole weekend and beyond at the Echo Park Film Center reviewing footage (on iMovie) and started cutting at last. This was a process that took a looong time, especially for someone green like me. The cut went through multiple iterations but after multiple visits to EPFC I was able to put something together that I was okay with. The Lisa Marr Experiment ended up releasing their album American Jitters but without the videos. I can’t remember the reason why. It didn’t really matter to me (though I was likely bummed for a moment) because I had the video now and could use it to help get the movie made.

CUT TO: That movie hasn’t been made yet but so it goes. Regardless, this video was the first thing I ever directed (not counting super 8 films in college) and despite the rough edges here, I am happy with it. It was a tremendous learning experience and the very first item on my resume as a director.

HERE’S THE VIDEO:

***

Happy New Year to you from Portland, Oregon, the home of locally-produced, small-batch ennui. I deeply love the electric potential and shimmering possibility of a new year, don’t you? Let’s begin:

WHAT HAPPENED IN December (BROAD STROKES):

- my short experimental film How Do You Move in This World was selected to play at the Vastlab experimental festival in February 2026 in Los Angeles (more below)

- my 10-second-film contribution to Fall of Freedom is available to watch (more below)

- my daughter and I ran a holiday 5K

- i sold a photograph (thanks Alex!)

- i put together my 10 favorite photos of the year

- celebrated 5 years of no alcohol

BEST THINGS I READ in December: Every Man a King by Walter Mosley, Transformer: the complete Lou Reed story (in progress).

BEST THINGS I SAW in December: The Alabama Solution, Mountainhead, Bullets Over Broadway (rewatch), Undercover (S1 of Belgian detective series on Netflix), Black Bag, Heaven’s Gate: Cult of Cults (HBO 4 episodes), Holy Hell, The Source Family (on Tubi).

therein ends the undercard portion of this endeavor. on to the main event:

PROJECT UPDATES

How Do You Move in This World (experimental narrative, 2 min) Super excited to report that my new short film will world premiere in Los Angeles in February 2026 at the Vastlab Experimental festival. A very cool thing Vastlab did was to send all accepted filmmakers a list of 10 questions to answer about our filmmaking process, who we are, things that interest us and so on. We in turn were to respond to these questions with a video. Here is mine.

All the other artist Q & A’s are extremely compelling. I love to hearing how other artists work and how they get snagged by daily life or the art they turn to and so on. Every festival should do a version of this to my mind. Check out the other 2026 Vastlab artist Q & A’s here and learn more about my short project here.

ADDITIONAL PROJECT UPDATES

Freak Farm (experimental short, 3 min) just finished and out to festivals. excited about this one.

Grief Stick (documentary short, 17 min) planning some west coast 2026 dates, stay tuned. more about Grief Stick here.

Apology Ghost (narrative short, 5 min) - out to festivals. more about Apology Ghost here.

Sister/Brother (narrative feature, 75 min)- currently re-editing but with the hint of a gleam of a possible pathway forward. More about the project here.

FILMS FOR FREEDOM

This fall the Filmmakers Cooperative and Canyon Cinema joined forces to support a nationwide arts movement to defy the rise of authoritarianism, called Fall of Freedom, and put an open call to filmmakers to submit ten-second films that, in whatever way the filmmaker deemed, cohered to the stated purpose of defying the encroachment of totalitarianism. I’m really excited to be included in this project not only due to help extinguishing autocracy and hegemony, but also because the level of quality and the other film submissions is awesome.

The whole film can be found HERE. It runs about 25 minutes and features contributions from over 100 filmmakers. My ten-second contribution comes at 21:22 (see above pic for reference) but I really recommend watching the entire thing uninterrupted in a dark room with great headphones and maybe a fresh hot coffee in your hand. Right away you can feel the rising power and strength of it all. I found it extremely inspiring and hope you do too.

DEATH OF ROB REINER

Oh man. A battery of strange sensations upon learning of Rob Reiner’s death to put it mildly. I worked at Castle Rock Entertainment on Maple Drive from December 2000 to October 2003. I was an Operations Assistant during this time, meaning mail room and reception but also other duties as needed. As mailroom staff we interacted with any and all departments and personnel. The vibe company-wide for an outfit of its stature really was quite open and warm, and any dealings with RR, despite his outsized personality and mythos, were equally warm. He was a pretty low-ego, no BS, open and accessible kind of person, though it was abundantly clear he was the head of the ship. My shift was 10 am - 7 pm Monday through Friday. At 10 am every day all 5 of the Operations Assistants would meet with our boss AK and her boss CP, in CP’s office to review anything and everything of consequence (which could mean in the building, in the area, in the office needs of the productions that were mounting or going, in regards to the new keyfobs we all had to use as a result of the recent aol time-warner merger and so on), then we’d disperse to begin our work day: 3 of the 5 of us would go to mail room, 1 of us to main reception desk (on 1st floor where publicity, legal, marketing, executives lived), 1 of us to satellite reception desk (on 3rd floor where development, production, several offices for some embedded producers, a couple of in-house script readers, video services, and others lived). Of the 3 remaining Operations Assistants now in the mail room, 1 would be designated for reception breaks and reception lunches for the day, and the remaining 2 would essentially be on call for the day after delivering the mail. Those 2 would leave the building and walk a block to the post office with a loading truck and get the mail, (usually 2-3 mail tubs full) then we’d wheel it back. take the elevator back to 3rd floor, sort the mail, toss unsolicited screenplays or packages into the trash, load the mail cart accordingly, and deliver mail to the 1st and 3rd floor offices. Oh, we also were responsible for daily stocking and cleaning of 7 kitchens, an enterprise which included emptying and running dishwasher, cleaning any dishes in sink, restocking all fridges with 3 kinds of canned soft drinks, and 3 kinds of bottled mineral water, wiping all surfaces, and essentially making sure all were spotless and stocked and ready for any snacking or beverage contingency. On weekends 1 Operations Assistant would go to the nearest Ralphs (Beverly at Doheny) and purchase half-and-half, milk, and skim milk for all 7 kitchens (usually 80-90 dollars worth if memory serves, paid out of petty cash) and then deliver it to each kitchen accordingly and then do a deep clean of each kitchen, typically on a Saturday or Sunday AM. This netted 4 hours of OT, which we were all grateful to receive. Film productions and/or releases that happened when I worked there: Hearts in Atlantis, Murder by Numbers, The Majestic, A Mighty Wind, The Salton Sea, Dreamcatcher, Two Weeks Notice, Alex and Emma.

Around and through this time, I made some tiny inroads professionally, gaining a manager and taking a spate of meet-and-greet meetings around town, based on a script of mine that opened one or two doors. Some of these meetings, if they were near Beverly Hills, I would take on my lunch break at work. A real strange sensation to go from a being a guest at a tony westside office suite, being told how much they love my script and how genius it is, only to return to work and be ordered via walkie-talkie to restock the stirrer straws at the first floor kitchen. So it goes. [note: after a few of these meetings I realized they said those things about every script and I shouldn’t take them at their word. all part of the game.]

This span was a highly formative time for me in voluminous ways and I have many specific memories - about productions, about personnel, about very specific items and moments - but I’ll save them for another venue and time. [sidebar: A couple weeks ago I was added to a fb messenger group of former Castle Rock staff and employees that ballooned quickly to include scores of alumni which in turn led to a shared document many pages long filled with individual tales, memories, narratives about people’s time and experience there, before/during/after my time which was quite moving to absorb in totality.] Suffice it to say when I started at Castle Rock I was a young pup, a year out of film school and oh so dewy-eyed and quaking with desperation for my ship to come in and presuming/believing this would be my last refuge until that occurred. Instead, I left employment there slightly discombobulated and wildly unhappy - though to be clear there was a wide variety of personal and professional considerations at play - and in fact would leave Los Angeles altogether in February 2004 for Portland. I remain extremely grateful for my time at Castle Rock and all the instruction i received there from the top of the ship on down. Thank you RR.

2025 SUMMATION

This was a really great year for me. I had 3 different projects play at or get accepted to play at 3 different festivals in 3 different categories (documentary, short narrative, short experimental), first time that has occurred. I released an album and an EP, each with corresponding music videos. Grief Stick had some great local events in Portland. I found a pathway forward to finish editing Sister/Brother (currently in progress.) Had a photo published in The Sun. And so on. On personal fronts, M and I celebrated 25 years of being married (plus we were together a few years before that) and travelled back to Humboldt to honor it. Also, our son started HS, our daughter started MS. I hit 5 years of no alcohol. Most important milestone for me however, and one from which all the above is predicated: I hit 20 years of brain tumor survivorship. I could write here for a year straight about the cascade of thoughts of gratitude and mercy and unfairness and anger and black fear and really just the gnarled mess of it all and still not come close to approximating what it feels like or unraveling enough of it to express it to another person, but I’ll reduce it to this: man, what a gd gift to draw breath. You might/probably already know this. But I had to say it. On to 2026.

(note: if your 2025 was terrible or less-than-good, I am sorry. I have had some of those years as well xo).

ETC

impermanence clock

days i’ve been alive: 19,558 | days until i turn 80: 9661

music

my music project impermanent marker recently released an album called EMPTY CONVERSATION. stream below or find here

running

Very good in December. feeling steady and strong again. Ran a 5K with my daughter on December 14th. Took a few days off running afterward but then got right back to it, running 4 days a week, usually with the dog. Excited to run more in 2026.

photography

I was excited to sell a print of this photo this month to my friend Alex. Do you want to purchase prints of my photos? please go here and you can find some of them.

fivver account!

I offer film editing, screenplay proofing, voice acting, and editing your kid’s AAU basketball footage into a reel. Do you have need of any of those? Does your loved one or friend? If so please go here. I could really use the support.

okay that’s it for now. Thank you for reading and supporting this. I hope your new year is a period of personal transformation and growth. I’m going to work on trying to keep my eye on the clock, running more, not heeding negative internal voices, volunteering more, and essentially trying to keep the engine going and the lights on. How about you?

1. Johnson Creek, December 2025

   this was at the end of a run on the neighboring Springwater Corridor. The water was much higher than usual due to atmospheric river event. I was with the dog, who refused to listen to me or move aside as a man was walking by and instead of extracting ourselves I made the man go around me. It dogged me afterward, that I should have let him pass and made me feel petty and small. But ten minutes later, when i saw the same man I didn’t go and say sorry even though the opportunity was pulsing in front of me. It was like watching myself fumble again in slow-motion. This image - a long exposure that i accidentally moved during taking - somehow contains all that for me.

2. PDX airport, September 2025

   got the opportunity to tour the construction on the B concourse, including the roof.

3. Sue-Meg State Park | Trinidad, California | September 2025

   M and I returned here for our 25th anniversary. We were married at the top of the rock on the right, Wedding Rock. Humboldt County has a lot of meaning for us both (to put it mildly) and to be back here really felt momentous, feelings matched by the natural beauty of the northern California coast.

   

4. Brooklyn School Park, November 2025

   walking around on a rainy afternoon waiting for my daughter to get released from the neighboring school.

   

5. outside Woodstock Bi-Mart, November 2025

   A photo of mine had just been published in The Sun and I was feeling real good as I stepped outside into great shadow and light and took this pic. I instantly new it would be submitted to The Sun for consideration. They passed but I like it anyway!

   

6. Franklin HS, December 2025

   Was sitting watching my daughter’s PIL game in the 9 am hour and the sun started coming through the far window bathing part of the court in light.

   

7. Jessie Honeyman State Park, September 2025

   on the annual camping trip I take with my son. last year we did Detroit Lake, this year the dunes, which I learned were - understandably - the inspiration for Frank Herbert.

   

8. Somewhere on SE Holgate, October 2025

   driving my child to school and the fog way off in the hills was just right. taken at a red light

   

9. Errol Heights park, December 2025

   late afternoon walk with the dog and the light and sky were so nice. this is atypical for december in Portland.

   

10. airport parking garage

    taken in September. I like the idea of this photo more than how it turned out. I just couldn’t get it quite right

That’s it for this year. Thanks for making it this far.

Hello friend, reporting to you from Portland, Oregon, a town where the immense joy to live here can only be matched by the incomprehensibly mammoth size of your water bill. Let’s begin:

WHAT HAPPENED IN November (BROAD STROKES):

- my short documentary Grief Stick played at Up Up Books! and Portland State University

- my music project impermanent marker released album: EMPTY CONVERSATION

- Saw the inimitable Corrina Repp at Dekum Theater.

- running 4 days a week again.

- gave extreme thanks to be alive and also continued to wrestle with the idea of impermanence and death. they’re intertwined I guess.

BEST THINGS I READ in November: Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico, Exiles by Mason Coile, Audition by Katie Kitamura, The Name of this Band is REM by Peter Ames Carlin, The Empty Mirror by Janwillem van de Wetering (a westerner goes to a Kyoto zen monastery for a year), Fair Warning by Michael Connelly

BEST THINGS I SAW in November: Train to Busan, After the Hunt, Umbrella (Christo documentary on Criterion Channel) 20th Century + His Girl Friday (Howard Hawks rewatches on Criterion), Eddington, Season 1 of The Trip (on Criterion), Jay Kelly (on 35mm at the Hollywood Theater. not sure if the movie all works but seeing anything on film at the Hollywood is win), S2 of Starting 5 on Netflix (which made me an SGA fan where previously i was a hater). The Chair Company on HBO.

therein ends the recap portion of this post. onward to the more substantive action:

ALBUM RELEASE

Excited to announce that my music project impermanent marker has released a 13 song album titled EMPTY CONVERSATION. And I made 13 videos to go with each song. Songs are primarily about depression, death, and the river of time. You can listen and purchase it on bandcamp (which comes with 2 bonus tracks when you buy it) or you can watch the videos gratis and ad infinitum on youtube or vimeo (the latter of which has slightly better video quality). I have been writing and recording songs for awhile now but choosing to go more public with it, though I have no expectation or hope really about how this will land or arrive in the world; it’s mostly about me holding myself accountable and starting to be better at actualizing the things I tell myself in my head that I’ll do one day while the clock ticks. [I mean, don’t get me wrong, I obviously hope people like it but I also really don’t care. Somewhere along the way I shifted from worrying in this lifetime about acclaim to realizing I’m racing the clock to get as many points on the board as possible before the end buzzer.] I am also the sort of person that needs to be working on something at all times or my idle mind will tend toward the darkness and writing songs and making these videos is a much lighter lift for me than say raising capital to make my next short or feature. Below please find a 40 second video featuring 2-3 seconds of each song so you can get an idea of the vibe. All songs written and recorded by me.

PROJECT UPDATES

Grief Stick (documentary short, 17 min)

We screened Grief Stick twice in the month of November. First up was Friday November 7 at Up Up Books as part of the Portland Book Festival, shown at a reading titled Conversing with the Dead, which featured readings from poets Allisa Cherry + Alex Behr, and memoirst Jason Arias, before screening the film. It was a very moving experience to show the film to those gathered and a wonderful evening in general, all of us united by celebration of mortality. (side note: please support the very excellent Up Up books for all your indie and local literature needs.)

Second screening was Monday November 17 at Portland State University. Very interesting to show the film in two entirely different environments a week apart. At PSU we were in a small conference room. Professor Gabe Urza introduced us and the film, we screened, and then Alex and I did a Q & A.

Both of these screenings were so moving to me. The film has really shown itself to do best in these smaller intimate settings. Alex and I are planning to do a mini West Coast tour of the film in 2026 so stay tuned.

Apology Ghost (narrative short, 5 min) - out to festivals. more about Apology Ghost here.

How Do You Move in This World (narrative short, 2 min) - out to festivals. just got rejected from one as I’m about to post this and I can feel the white-hot waves of rejection moving through my body. more about the project here

Sister/Brother (narrative feature, 75 min)- currently re-editing. If you’re wondering what’s taking so long, it’s real complicated on tactical and liminal levels. Don’t you dare give up. More about the project here.

CORRINA REPP | 11.15.25 at DEKUM THEATER

I have known Corrina for a long time, several decades. Getting to see her play at the Dekum Theater in Portland was not just deeply enjoyable in an in-the-moment way, but also because of how long we’ve known one another. Watching her play that set of mostly instrumental music to a reverent audience, as indelible images and videos of hers played behind her on a loop one couldn’t help but to think: man that is a person fully in their element doing exactly what they are meant to. It was so very inspiring. [Corrina also allowed us to use a song for the close of Grief Stick, which she played at the set: Release Me. And by sheer coincidence Alex Behr, producer and subject of Grief Stick, sat beside me and M and F, so there were rivers of time and life meeting in one spot. A vortex of joy and positivity. Anyway.] If you don’t know Corrina’s work, you should check it out.

THANKSGIVING

I had to work at my day job on Thanksgiving night (booo) so my family had a brunch to celebrate instead. When I got home from work, around 1 AM, after the dog woke up to come and say hi and then returned to bed, I sat on the couch for ten minutes and took a deep and penetrating inventory of all the things I’ve been able to do, the projects I’ve gotten to make, the races I’ve been able to run, the places I’ve been able to go across the past 20 years, month by month, year by year. It was stirring, especially viewed through the lens of friends like Mike and Jessica and Ray and Tim and Jack who aren’t here any longer. I get to sit on a couch and write blog posts and go for runs 20 years past my brain tumor diagnosis owing to what feels like the utterly random nature of this whole deal.

related: When I come home from work and everyone’s asleep I sometimes read old journals prior to going to sleep. This week I read an entry from Fall 1996, before I’d started making films or even writing them, and I had just seen a studio film (at the Minor Theater in Arcata CA) that was demonstrably celebrated but not so good and I wrote: “These are not the films he wants to write. These are not the films he wants to make. These are not even the films he wants to see. He wants to fuck things up, to engage the intellect, to force audience members to consider things, to examine their own thought processes, he wants to catch them off-guard.” I am exceedingly thankful that this ethos guided me back then and that - for better or worse - I have not strayed from it, current self aided and buttressed by the idealism of a past iteration. In summation and tying to the above thoughts about the ticking clock: I still sometimes get snagged by the lack of response to my film projects where i should instead be putting focus on the joy of being able to make them. getting points on the board as the clock runs out > someone clapping

oh and if you’re wondering why this is in third person it’s b/c I experimented with that in this journal back then, writing everything in third person as a sort of exercise to some unclear aim, at least it’s unclear now. back then i probably had a reason. the journal that came chronologically after this one was written in 2nd person.

ETC

impermanence clock

days i’ve been alive: 19,528 | days until i turn 80: 9691

running very good this month. kicked things back into high gear in anticipation of 5K that I’m running with my daughter later in December. I’ve been running 4 days a week, usually with the dog. It’s been a boon for my mental and emotional health that I’ll go into depth about on a later post.

fivver account!

I offer film editing, screenplay proofing, voice acting, and editing your kid’s AAU basketball footage into a reel. Do you have need of any of those? Does your loved one or friend? If so please go here. I could really use the support.

okay, that’s it for now people. thanks for making it to the end. see you next year!!

WHAT HAPPENED IN OCTOBER (BROAD STROKES):

Hello my friend, reporting to you live from Portland, Oregon, where the air is crisp, the sun is ready to sleep for six months, and the locally-sourced kombucha flows like a mighty river. Let’s begin:

- I had a photograph published in The Sun, November 2025 issue (more below)

- I released the first video from my upcoming album release (more below)

- Grief Stick screened at Turn! Turn! Turn! (more below)

- nba basketball started and the trailblazers have a flicker of promise (and a new coach due to unfortunate circumstances best saved for a different time).

BEST THINGS I READ in October: Yoko by David Sheff (oh my goodness Yoko Ono is such an amazingly ignored and marginalized artist. This book was extremely inspiring and I’ve now been listening to her non-stop. highly recommended), The Doorman by Chris Pavone (won’t rock your world maybe but a quick and well-hewn narrative), Advice Not Given by Mark Epstein (still reading but chapters follow the Eightfold Path of Buddhism, which is endlessly interesting to me especially where it intersects with impermanence [everywhere].) The House on Buzzards Bay by Dwyer Murphy (took awhile for me to get into this one but i ended up liking). Flashout by Alexis Soloski (still reading but good), Acting Class by Nick Drnaso (graphic novel i literally grabbed at random at the Albina library. real good)

BEST THINGS I SAW in October: Cloud, Union, All of Us Strangers (loved), Annie Hall + Interiors (rewatch after Diane Keaton died. hadn’t seen either in 15 years at least and both I found remarkable on a couple levels, cinematic and personal. also Gordon Willis), M. Hulot’s Holiday (rewatch). Bring Her Back (bananas in a good way.) Mastermind (at Cinema 21, loved).

Therein ends the October summary sampler platter, now on to the meat and potatoes (or seitan and potatoes if you rather):

THE SUN MAGAZINE

I am honored to report that my photo below appears in the November 2025 issue of The Sun magazine. I’ve been a reader for a long time and they have a high bar of photography and writing so to be included is really wonderful. The Sun is supported 100 percent by subscription, no advertising whatsoever, which makes them a life-raft in the choppy endless ocean that is this modern age.

brief story of the photo: in March 2021 Margaret and me and the kids went to Yosemite. The trip was set up to honor my father-in-law John, who passed some months earlier. In addition to being a great and warm and hilarious man, he was an avid hiker and had an abiding love for Yosemite which he installed in his daughter and me by proxy. The four of us stayed in the valley and drove up the next morning to the high country to Tuloumne Grove. The snow on the path was roughly five feet high and made it slow-going but the light was great, sun rising behind the trees and I took this photo.

This image and others available for purchase here. No pressure though.

UPCOMING ALBUM

Super duper excited to announce my band impermanent marker is releasing a 10 song album titled EMPTY CONVERSATION later this month. Songs were written and recorded across the last 18 months or so and thematically primarily hover around depression, death, and the river of time. It’s fun! The first song released is called That Sinking Feeling, video below. Each song on EMPTY CONVERSATION has a corresponding video that I will roll out one per week or so. Stay tuned for more info about the album release and in the meantime if you are so inclined you can hear a couple of impermanent marker’s self-released EPs here. Now press the play button below. It’s on the bottom left. Come on, try it buddy.

FILM PROJECT UPDATES

Grief Stick (documentary short, 17 min)

We screened Grief Stick Sunday October 19 at Turn! Turn! Turn! It was a moving evening. Alex Behr read some poems (a couple of which are featured in the film) with the motorcycle helmet that once belonged to Chris Hartman (also featured in the film) at her feet. Mae Starr played an awesome set followed by Arch Cape (aka Rachel Blumberg) who played along to several of her films projected on a wall in the other direction.

Then the film screened. I hadn’t seen Grief Stick in its entirety since February and, even though I edited the project and watched multiple iterations across the months, I was moved by the resounding chorus of impermanence that echoes throughout as it honors Chris Hartman in life and death. A bar is arguably not the most hospitable environment for a quiet documentary about life and death but within a few minutes in everyone was paying attention. Gosh, what a night. If you couldn’t make it, there are two more Portland opportunities to see it:

Friday November 7 at Up Up Books as part of the Portland Book Festival, shown at a reading with 3 poets titled Conversing with the Dead. more here.

Sunday November 17 at Portland State University. more here

Sister/Brother (narrative feature, 75 min)- currently re-editing, a process that’s felt not unlike entering a labyrinthian series of interlocking sub-basements with no easy way out. This is due to lack of material due to global pandemic that interrupted production and I’m sure you’ve already heard a version of this story so I’ll stop myself. Hope to have a new cut of the film soon. More about the project here.

Apology Ghost (narrative short, 5 min) - out to festivals. more about Apology Ghost here.

How Do You Move in This World (narrative short, 2 min) - out to festivals. more about the project here

20 YEARS POST BOSTON

As I referenced last month, 20 years ago at this writing I was in Boston, MA getting proton beam radiation treatment on my brain tumor. We lived for 8 weeks in room 503 of the Kendall Square Residence Inn (me and M and our dog Maxwell) and 5 days a week took the T up to Mass General. I would check in, a different time every day, sit in the waiting room, get called back to the gantry, lay on the bed strapped down at the face as Ron and Jim and Tricia the techs made multiple adjustments in and out of the room, a process that could take anywhere between 10-20 minutes, and then receive the treatment itself which lasted anywhere between 90-180 seconds depending on where they were putting focus that day. Then back on the T, back to the room. Round trip to and from treatment usually took an hour or so.

Some days we’d walk over to the Kendall Square Cinema (movies I remember seeing there: shopgirl, the squid and the whale, the constant gardener, thumbsucker, keane). Most days we’d walk Maxwell around the Esplanade, over the Mass Ave Bridge, then over to the Longfellow Bridge and back. We took weekend trips to Montpelier, Western Mass, Portland, ME (above pic is from drive back from Portland ME to Boston.) We had visitors come. We saw monks make sand mandalas at Harvard. We saw the Boston Symphony. We saw some bands, we we saw films, we went to museums. Aside from the dark cloud of a brain tumor and the pulsing fear and rippling uncertainty it brought with it, it was a lovely time. At the end of the 8 weeks we got back in a rental van and drove across the country - Harrisburg, Yellow Springs, Iowa City, North Platte, Rock Springs, Boise - arriving back in Portland the day after Thanksgiving.

It’s an experience I continue to process, despite all the years since it happened. There’s profound gratitude that exists alongside a bewilderment, one that over time has moved from a individually-centric one to one more concerned about this whole enterprise of drawing breath and what it means or if it’s completely random, and if the latter then what that signifies or could or should signify. The trip to Boston exists in a bubble outside time and space for Margaret and I both, as if it happened yesterday and a century ago all at once. The below video captures the very end: a walk around the Esplanade, my parents visiting, us packing up to leave, and then us driving back across the US in late November, armed with a good prognosis, but very much impacted the events of the year prior, uncertain how things would land for us as individuals and as a couple. This, we came to learn, is extremely common after seismic events.

ETC

running not so good this month. not so good at all. I blame the hours of my day job.

fivver account! got my first client for film editing this month (thank you Corrina!) I offer film editing, screenplay proofing, voice acting, and editing your kid’s AAU basketball footage into a reel. Do you have need of any of those? Does your loved one or friend? If so please go here. I could really use the support.

IMPERMANENCE CLOCK (as of November 1, 2025)

days I’ve been alive: 19,498 | days until i turn 80: 9,720

Okay that’s it for now. Thank you for reading this and supporting me. I hope this November is joyous for you and maybe even electrifying. Why shouldn’t it be?Until we meet again.

Hello friends! I am reporting to you live from an autumnally-tinged Portland, Oregon, home to gaggles of incoming gestapo who no doubt will soon suffer from bioswale envy and hastily-created spreadsheets to track the best westside food carts that use yak butter. What a time to breathe and be grateful for the opportunity. Let’s begin:

WHAT HAPPENED IN SEPTEMBER (BROAD STROKES):

- I made new short film How Do You Move in This World?, currently out to festivals. more here.

- Celebrated 25th anniversary of MM and me getting married. (more below)

- Cut new trailer for Grief Stick (see below.)

- Got a photo accepted for publication in national magazine (more soon.)

- Subsumed myself to the River of Time momentarily but then for longer (more below.)

- Saw SWANS at Revolution Hall (more below.)

- Sold a copy of my 5 song EP, Storm Clouds (thanks Ber!) my first official sale as a musician. Check it out here.

BEST THINGS I READ IN SEPTEMBER: Shred Sisters by Betsey Lerner, The Waiting by Michael Connelly, Transit by Rachel Cusk

BEST THINGS I SAW IN SEPTEMBER: Weapons (at the Hollywood Theater), Billy Joel documentary on HBO (I have no real interest in Billy Joel whatsoever which probably enhanced the film for me), S1 of The Pitt (rewatch for me, first time for MM), One Battle After Another (at the Hollywood Theater in 70 mm; this film was shot partially in Humboldt County, which intensified the hall of mirrors/river of time sensations I’ve been riding lately. see below)

Therein ends the thumbnail sketch of September 2025. More details about some of the above is below.

FILM PROJECT UPDATES

Grief Stick (short documentary, 18 min)

Exited to report Grief Stick has 3 screenings in Portland this fall:

• Sunday October 19 at Turn! Turn! Turn! in NE Portland. with musical guests Arch Cape and Mae Star, featuring a poetry reading by Alex Behr. more here

• Friday November 7 at Up Up Books as part of the Portland Book Festival, shown at a reading with 3 poets titled Conversing with the Dead. More specific details to come.

• Sunday November 17 at PSU. Details to come.

After a great screening in February at Tomorrow Theater, Grief Stick sort of slipped into the background of my focus due to several factors - other projects, parenthood, day job et cetera - but new fall screenings being scheduled returned it to the forefront. While it was dark and thorny subject matter to work with, and while some viewers may resist or even fear it, I feel a deep affinity for this project and am confident it will find its audience over time. More details on screenings will appear at griefstick.com. Meantime, please check out our new trailer:

Apology Ghost (narrative short, 5 min) - world premiere’d in August at Defy Film Festival in Nashville. Currently out to festivals. more about Apology Ghost here.

Sister/Brother (narrative feature, 75 min) - currently editing. More about the project here.

SWANS AT REVOLUTION HALL, SEPTEMBER 24TH

What can be said but yes. My second time seeing them. Not to be too flowery but it was a near out-of-body experience that touched me at the core of my person/s and I also couldn’t stop smiling, which if you know me, you know is definitely not my default setting. MM could not come so I gave ticket to MS who was not a fan going in but was moved coming out.

25TH ANNIVERSARY RECAP

On September 19*, MM and I drove down to Humboldt County, where we met, went to college, and where we got married (several years after we graduated and had moved away to Los Angeles). We ate at the same restaurant that hosted our rehearsal dinner 25 years prior, we went to Cafe Mokka, saw Jervis at the North Country Fair, bought supplies at the Arcata Co-op where we saw DJ Red, went to Wedding Rock (where we were married 25 years prior) and then to Red Alder Grove (where our dinner and party after the ceremony was 25 years prior) to stand around the fire pit catching up with friends as a thick fog fell. Suffice it to say that it was one of those hall-of-mirrors enterprises with multiple corridors of sense-memory refracted, reflected back, and happening all at once. At dinner I very nearly had to step outside because I could feel the low stirrings of a panic attack approach, sourced solely to the fact that multiple rivers of time were flowing through and around me. It was not an entirely pleasant sensation, at once a diminishment of personhood and individuality and also a multivalent cosmic pronouncement, reverberating on several planes and sensory levels. There was the me in that space pre MM (circa 1992-1995), during MM (circa summer 1996-spring 1997), the me and MM returning to Humboldt for the wedding (September 2000), and the us of that second in time twenty-five years later, as well as presumed future ghosts, that I could feel - all related phantasmic iterations in unknowing conversation, all existing at once, rocketing past at breakneck speed.

(*September 19 also happens to be the 20th anniversary of us getting in a rented mini-van to drive across the country to Cambridge MA, to live in a hotel for 2.5 months so I could get 35 sessions of proton beam radiation on my brain tumor. (You can read about that journey - and the return trip - in M’s piece in Oregon Humanities here). Below is a brief video of our 2005 trip out including: our rented mini-van in the driveway just before leaving, Grand Avenue in Portland, trees and hills whirring past somewhere near Missoula, our dog Maxwell, Badlands SD, Niagara Falls. [note: I have more video from this corridor of my life on mini-DV tapes that I really need to digitize one of these months.]. )

Contained within this 2005 trip to Boston for me is what happened and the memory of what happened, alongside what could have happened and the corresponding gratitude/guilt that it didn’t, each a pathway with ten thousand sub-pathways, all connecting to the ghost iterations I was in college referenced above, and all of them ending at the person right now sitting in his office typing out these words. If I was more of an adventurous spirit I reckon I could come off my knees into a crouch and ride the waves with joyous abandon but I am not that person, or at least I am not that person in this current iteration. I have felt this relationship to time - feeling multiple past/present/future timelines existing as ellipsis or cycle - increasingly in different registers as I age and am not sure where to put it or how to address it. Do you ever also feel anything akin to this? Is this a common thing or a me thing? Or a me-for-therapy thing? (You don’t have to answer really, it’s rhetorical. ) This essay, Winter Light by Douglas Penick about old age as relates to time, including a closing quote from Andre Gregory, was a balm of sorts for me (even though i’m comparatively young.)

Okay that’s it for now. I hope your October is filled with gold in whatever form you need and that you find sustained peace and mercy among the increasingly sisyphean tyranny of the every day.

bye xo

hello friend, it's great to see you again here at the lip of autumn, unquestionably the best stretch of the year, even though global catastrophes spread with the unchecked abandon of a legion of house centipedes. I come to you with an admixture of hope and optimism, based on nothing demonstrable but the faint waft of leaves desiccating from the hills and an internal feeling that it's all going to work out. Let’s begin.

WHAT HAPPENED IN AUGUST (BROAD STROKES):

- my short film Apology Ghost world premiered at the Defy Film Festival in Nashville, TN.

- I released a 4 song EP called Storm Clouds. (more below)

- went camping with my son at the Oregon Dunes.

PROJECT UPDATES

Grief Stick (documentary short, 20 min)

Exited to report Grief Stick has 2 confirmed screenings in Portland this fall:

Sunday October 19 at Turn Turn Turn in NE Portland. playing alongside two great local bands. Put it on the calendar.

Friday November 7 at Up Up Books as part of the Portland Book Festival. Film will be shown at a reading with 3 poets titled Conversing with the Dead. Put this on the calendar also. More specific details to come.

Very possible we will also screen this fall on the campus of a local university but that's TBD. I am so excited to get more people to see this film. I hope you can come to one or more screenings. more details on all screenings will appear in the near future here .

Apology Ghost (5 min, narrative short)

World Premiered at Defy Film Festival in Nashville, TN. I was not able to attend but the festival communication was great and they clearly support and love non-mainstream cinema. More about Apology Ghost here.

Sister/Brother (75 min, narrative feature)

2 more rejections, both from PNW festivals, including one I've played at before. Oh the agony. While camping with my son and getting several hours of intermittent top-layer sleep i was in a hazy gauzy dawn dreamstate and had a lightning bolt idea of how to possibly re-cut this together. (it's existed in rough cut form for several months - still missing final cut and final score - and i had kind of a seismic reframing that arrived in the hypnogic with crystalline clarity. Whether that holds is TBD). More about the project here.

STORM CLOUDS - EP

last week I released a 4 song ep. You can listen below, you can buy it on bandcamp, you can watch the videos for it here. All songs written and mixed this summer.

BEST THINGS I READ in August: The Girls by Emma Cline, The Hole by Hye-Young Pyun, The Dark Hours by Michael Connelly, Pattern Recognition by William Gibson, John & Paul: a love story in songs by Ian Leslie.

BEST THINGS I SAW in August: Flow (at the Hollywood Theater), Seasons 1 and 2 of Detroiters, S1 of The Pitt (rewatch, in process), S2 of Quarterback (esp notable for Kirk Cousins advocacy of great clips), Naked Gun at City Lights Cinema in Florence OR (esp notable for how cool this theater is and how much they clearly love cinema)

running

some decent motion. trying to stay consistent and have at least 3 runs a week is a real challenge with the time demands of my day job. I ran 3 miles last Sunday with the dog on the Springwater Corridor and it was so nice and good and raw and fun. As a person who contends with varying stripes of depression and anxiety, running is the best antidote. F and I signed up for 5K in december

fiver account!

I got my first official client last month for screenplay proofreading (Thanks Lisa!) In addition to screenplay proofing, I offer film editing, voice acting, and editing your kid's AAU basketball footage into a reel. Do you have need of any of those? Does your loved one or friend? If so go here

okay that's it for now. I hope your September is filled with gold in whatever form you need. I keep a small but ever-expanding gallery of photos of people who’ve died over my desk. They talk to me. They remind me that drawing breath is a luxury, that complaining about film festival rejections is a privileged position, that worrying about AI is a benefit (at least until the machines ascend and use our bodies for batteries). That said, it’s far too easy to get ensnared in the gears of daily life. Are you struggling in one or more areas? Me too. Hit me up.

greetings dear friends. thanks for coming. Summer continues, Autumn looms.

WHAT HAPPENED IN JULY?

Hard to recall with precision. A mash of heat waves and global horror. M went to the coast for a few days for creative retreat. We both drove our kids to multiple points in the metro area. I’ve included some photos from this time frame throughout this post for your consideration. Let’s begin:

PROJECT UPDATES

Apology Ghost - World Premiering at Defy Film Festival in Nashville, TN later this month! So excited in large part b/c this film was made with a budget of zero entirely by myself, which really feels like the direction I am headed creatively. Apology Ghost plays in the Experimental block at 7 pm on Friday August 22. Tickets and info here. I am still not sure if I am going or not based on several factors (ie time and money) but I really want to.

Sister/Brother - 3 festival rejections so far. 2 rejections came from festivals I have played at before including a well-regarded but tiny regional festival, which makes the pain point of rejection that much more agonizing (not that I or my film are owed anything.) But the fact that this is a teeny tiny narrative feature that puts thematic focus on artistic endurance in the face of zero reason to gives these rejections a different degree of unpleasantness for me to say nothing of the fact that I've carried this project across the deserts of development, crowdfunding, pandemic, eons of post production to arrive here and be ignored really triggers my woe-is-me and excuse-me-are-you-joking buttons. Some of this I should save for my therapist probably but I include to show at least snapshot of the continued vagaries and consequences of deciding on the artistic pathway. Fraught with hazards of all stripes in service of a goal that gets more opaque and shadowy the further you progress. Oh wait, final score is not in yet. Maybe that will help the movie land in more generous cinematic cushions in the coming months. See, the delusion returns as quickly as it flies off. Is that cause for optimism or alarm? More about the project here.

Grief Stick - Rejected from a San Francisco based festival. This rejection was also painful but it was anticipated, kind of like a scheduled dental visit for deep scaling. You're emotionally prepared but it doesn't lessen the bleeding in your third quadrant or the sing-song chatter from the dental tech. Two non-festival autumn screenings are scheduled in Portland and I'll say more as they draw near. more about the film here

REJECTION CITY

wrote and recorded this song on 7.28.25, after a festival rejection. video here.

RUNNING

been doing more walking than running lately but on the evening of July 24, I ran at work on the treadmill on my lunch break. A mere 2 miles but it was like a lightning bolt of re-discovery, a union of purpose and clarity. Fog broke and I could see a path forward. Ran again two nights later. on my days off I ran two times with the dog who is jittery and slow which works fine for me. Let's see if it holds. Running, along with watching movies and being in the woods and spending time with family, is about the only thing that can quiet and still the chaos that sometimes happens in my head.

DEATH

no substantial inroads on this front, aside from trying to maintain some degree of mindfulness on a daily basis. Being cognizant of finality has been helpful and I’ve noticed that with aging the reminders start to accelerate.

BEST THINGS I READ in July: Scarecrow by Michael Connelly, Rose Gold by Walter Mosley, I Curse the River of Time by Pers Petterson, Final Cut by Charles Burns.

BEST THINGS I SAW in July: Beau Travail by Claire Denis (saw this as a much younger person), The Shrouds by David Cronenberg, Winter Sleep by Nuri Bilge Ceylan (omg yes), The Virgin Suicides by Sofia Coppola (at a movie theater! joy and bliss. this movie always gut punches me). Shame by Ingmar Bergman. (have you seen this? go watch it). Partially through American Primeval on Netflix and enjoying so far. Same for Ballard on Amazon.

That’s the broad scope of the highlights i guess. More to come. I remain a mix of resignation and unfounded optimism. How are you? Send word.

hello friend, it's great to see you again. Let’s dive right in:

WHAT HAPPENED IN JUNE?

I got real sick for a few days. We put some wood-chips in our woefully untended backyard. I had a birthday. One kid graduated middle school, another elementary. (note: the acceleration of time around one's child is frequently commented about but it really is a rocket you strap yourself to).

• BEST THINGS I READ in June: If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery. linked short stories about a family in Florida (mostly). so good. Radical Empathy by Robin Romm. Short stories that frequently feature iterations of parenthood and caring/grieving for parents, often with a haunting element and usually hilarious. Loved. Aflame: Learning from Silence by Pico Iyer. Still reading this one but loving.

• BEST THINGS I SAW in June: Distant by Nuri Bilge Ceylan rocked me. The Silence by Ingmar Bergman is jaw-droppingly stunning, no more so than in the performance of Ingrid Thulin. Stray Dog by Akira Kurosawa. The Four Seasons on netflix (series) was way better than anticipated.

PROJECT UPDATES

Apology Ghost (5 min, narrative short) World Premiering at a festival in August! So excited. I can't talk about it yet but I will soon. more about the film here.

Sister/Brother (75 min, narrative feature) out to festivals. Waiting to hear from 5 different ones, primarily NW based. hopefully more news soon and more about the film here.

Grief Stick (18 min, documentary short) waiting to hear still from one big festival. This film has had a lot of trouble getting programmed in festivals. Could be the length is challenging to put in a shorts block, could be the subject matter is grim. That said there are two fall screenings scheduled in Portland and I'll say more as they draw near. more about the film here

GRANT UPDATES

I got rejected for a NW-based grant I thought I had at least a shot at. Worked for weeks on it. Re-tooled the screenplay, adjusted the budget, reached out to a couple vendors, made a trailer, created storyboards. It was a lot of work and time spent that I could have/should have spent making a movie instead. There is absolutely no recourse with these rejections (well i guess for certain grants you can ask for feedback if you want it) so you have to sit with the sting of it and somehow transform that negative sensation into a project (or alternately you let the bitterness seep into your mainframe, coloring the lens you view the world by.) I really wish these grant funding agencies could find a way to simply email Yes or No, instead of bundling their ice-pick rejections with verbiage about the overwhelming task they assigned themselves and how burdensomely hard the choice was for them. (see also: film festival rejections). In any event, I checked out the projects that received the grant and they are all very worthy, lest I sound too sour grapes about it all and I very much look forward to seeing those projects come to fruition.

note to self: the key, as always, is to not let the darkness in. And to not stop.

DEATH

Keeps happening. Been trying my best to accept it. This is a work in progress. I will say that the Pico Iyer book referenced above has some great reminders about emphasis and temporality in it that I find eminently useful in this regard.

RUNNING

I ran several days in a row and on one day (my birthday as it happens) to rage against the dying of the light I pushed myself and ran further than I was used to. Was rewarded by getting very ill, unable to talk or swallow for several days. all better now but haven't been back running yet. as mentioned previously my day job schedule is challenging to daily life.

SUPPORT THIS FILMMAKER

Vu Pham is an amazing sui generis Portland filmmaker, truly a best-kept secret. He is making a film about tracking down the man who murdered his mother. If you know Vu's work, you can anticipate a sincere, visually stylized, impactful and not-soon-forgotten cinematic experience. Please check out his fundraiser here and support him if you are able. Also, track down his films and enjoy them.

STORM CLOUDS

On June 3rd I wrote, recorded, and released a song + video called Storm Clouds in the span of 3.5 hours. Normally this is a longer process - I have some songs that have been incubating for years no lie - so when it all clicks together so quick it's nice, irrespective of the final product. Watch below or you can see it here.

Okay, I guess that's it for now. have a happy July and let me know how you're doing. for real.

Greetings and hello,

How have you been? I’ve been trying to hold my self a little more accountable lately so therefore please find in this writing a summary of what i’ve been up to in the past few months. My aim is to make this at least a quarterly newsletter of my doings. If I am really on the ball it could move to bi-monthly or even more accelerated. I've said too much already. Let’s begin:

PROJECT UPDATES

Sister/Brother - feature film (2025, 75 minutes) almost done. still awaiting final color correction, sound mix and score. Applied to several film festivals and will apprise you in this forum or elsewhere. This film has encountered multiple obstacles and stumbling blocks but it persists, which happens also to be the theme of the film (ie persisting in the face of no reason to) so i like how that fits together. Hope to have good news to share soon but in the meantime you can see more about the movie here.

Grief Stick - short documentary (2025, 18 minutes) about a couple's response to a fatal illness diagnosis. We had a great screening in February at the Tomorrow Theater and are planning some more. At minimum there are two screenings upcoming in Portland this October so you can pencil that in if you live here. More info will be forthcoming but meantime more about the movie here.

Apology Ghost - short film (2025, 5 minutes). A man makes a series of phone calls across several nights driving home super late. Out to a few festivals. Excited about this one.

GRANT REJECTIONS

Applied recently for several grants and received none of them. It's hard to convey how painful it is to spend weeks, sometimes months on a grant application, polishing and calibrating, and to come up empty but that's the deal. You know it going in and accept it. And you know you’re not alone in the rejection since most of the applicants didn’t make it. Also, compared with the horrors of the world it doesn't (shouldn't) even register. As corrective, I keep a running tally of all the good things that happen each year to me at and at my house and when a rejection comes in I revisit all the positives and that really helps reset my focus. It’s hard not to be petty sometimes if you have a foot in the arts but it really doesn’t serve any purpose. onward.

DEATH UPDATES

I don't feel like i've made successful inroads into dealing with mortality of late. The finality of it all still messes with me, goes hand in hand with temporality and ephemerality. Do you ever feel like you're still in 3rd grade, watching the world from that vantage, and that there are just multiple iterations of yourself spread across time like semi-lucid ghosts, each self-consumed but aware of the others and your only real recourse is to mutely track them as they communicate with one another through a series of intermittent emotional memory pulses? Me neither.

RUNNING UPDATES

Not too much to report here. My day job work schedule is punishing for my running schedule. Hoping in the fall to maybe run Silver Falls again but not the half marathon probably b/c it exhausts me just pondering it. At minimum though I really need to get this regular running thing back up on its feet if only for the mental health benefits.

NOTABLE THINGS I’VE WATCHED

The Order - this was better than i anticipated and Jude Law was real good, a phrase i’ve never said before.

Adolescence - loved it. sobbed. the way this show was designed and executed is an endless well of inspiration.

Jem Cohen movies on Criterion Collection. highly recommended. working my way through them all.

Bergman/Kurosawa. This year I've committed to watch every Ingmar Bergman movie and every Akira Kurosawa movie in order chronologically, one of each per week. Bergman speaks to me more on an existential level than AK but I love them both. Best i've seen of each thus far:

Summer Interlude: so good. an excerpt of my notes from the screening are here: damn this movie kind of kicks ass. memory, ache, regret, some killer shots. IB's mirror work is A +. will need to rewatch this one

One Wonderful Sunday: perhaps the compressed time frame and two actors in a movie dealing with how they have no money is right in my wheelhouse but this movie moved me. So good.

FIVERR ACCOUNT

Speaking of having no money, I need to make some more pretty bad. I made a fiverr account for film editing, for screenplay proofing, for voice acting. Do you have need of any of those? Does your loved one or friend? Does your latest project? Think about it.

If you answered yes then please check it out here. (if you answered no check it out anyway and let me know your thoughts.)

okay that's it for now. how are you? send word.

We got to my parents' house around 10:15 am Saturday morning. Briefly we stepped inside - me, my wife M, our kids N and F - and then we walked with my parents (Bill and Marge, married 54 years) through Sellwood streets discussing neighborhood concerns like an unpaved road, a derelict shipping container in a front yard, whether Metro or City owns the land where someone chose to illegally park their boat, and so on. It was greyer and colder than usual for mid-April. We made way across the Sellwood bridge and then up the road into the cemetery. We looked at various gravesites along the way, commenting on trees and landscaping, and made way around the perimeter of the cemetery on a gravel road, then up a hillside, toward my parents' recently purchased plot, perched high up overlooking the river and the east side of Portland. My parents, both nearly 79 and presently in good health, sat on a bench about ten feet away from the plot. The kids sat with them and I took a picture. A mix of sensations were present for me. On the one hand it was a normal morning walk with my family. On the other, finality and mortality - typically concepts I actively retreat from - were everywhere, literally in the ground under my feet.

I'm not ready to accept my parents as mortal but that doesn't really matter because they are. My mom is choosing natural burial, my dad cremation. This allows a single plot since my dad's ashes can just be sprinkled on top of her one-day naturally-decaying corpse. We discussed the details if their deaths are staggered and how to contact the cemetery front office. We remarked on some of their soon-to-be neighbors, checking dates on gravestones, guessing at storylines. We noted how on a clearer day Mount Hood is visible from here. I became very grateful for this walk, my parents' transparency and honesty about this process, and especially that N and F were there for it, even though that evening at dinner they both allowed that it was "weird". One day it will all make sense I thought. One day you will be grateful for this moment. One day you will realize all roads lead here. One day I hopefully will too.

After awhile up there on the hillside, we departed, temporarily leaving all the people stuck there, and walked back down the way we came, back across the Sellwood Bridge, back to my parents’ present home.