I walk into a cafe.

Middle of the afternoon.

The cafe is relatively empty. A few people eating in corners.

I am writing in my notebook after having just ordered pancakes.

After a moment a woman with a stroller with a child in it walks up to the front entrance.

She pushes the door open and works her way inside.

Her child is quite young, say, 3 or 4 years old.

The two of them look Eastern European. Possibly Ukrainian.

The woman is very attractive.

She has pale skin and is well-kept.

I assume her husband is off at work and she is enjoying a leisurely lunch with her child.

Nice.

She is approached by the waitress and proceeds to be seated on the other side of the near-empty restaurant.

I eat and write and pause to think and I look over at the woman from time to time.

Her child is quite cute and because of the emptiness of the restaurant I can hear the woman ordering.

As I look at her briefly I notice that she does not have a wedding ring on.

I feel like this is kind of odd.

I figure Eastern European people or Ukrainian people have what I assume could be called more classical values than Americans.

Or something. So I’m surprised that she isn’t married…

Or maybe she is married. And they have decided to forgo the rings? I don’t know.

However, I have been thinking lately about getting married myself. Not that I have anyone to get married to. Hardly. But just the idea of it.

And I have thought that if I do get married one day I don’t want to do it through the court system.

I’m down with saying I’m married to someone and wearing rings as an expression of that pact, but something about being binded through the government just feels like something I don’t want to do.

I feel like something about being binded in marriage through the government doesn’t bode well.

I don’t know.

Maybe this is coming from a lifetime of divorced parents and being shocked when I meet a couple that isn’t divorced…or too many videos of screaming Instagram lawyers telling me why getting married is a terrible idea.

That being said, married or not, the woman I am looking at across the way MUST be the mother of this child.

They look exactly alike. Same skin color, a pale hue.

But what if she’s the child’s nanny? But she just couldn’t be.

After all, she’s feeding the child like a mother would, and like I said they look exactly alike, even though with a closer look I see that the child is a boy.

But I’m just again surprised at her not wearing a ring.

Anyway, I don’t think much more of it.

I have writing to do and I need to attend to my pancakes.

But as I am about to turn away for good I see the Ukrainian woman stand up and pull something out of her purse.

It looks like the long black barrel of a rifle.

She proceeds to extend the thing.

After she fully extends it I see it is a tripod.

The woman stands up the tripod in front of her and her child and their table.

She then proceeds to place her phone on the tripod and frames up the shot of them all.

She sits down.

I watch now.

I am in awe.

What is happening?

I look around to see if the few other customers in the restaurant notice this.

I can’t tell if they do.

I wonder what the waitress is thinking. I can’t tell.

I see through the Ukrainian woman’s phone screen recording her and her son having lunch.

She has now adorned her son with a bucket hat. Almost as if she was doing this as a kind of costume.

I watch secretively.

I kind of for some reason don’t want the woman to notice that I am watching them. I don’t know why. I didn’t really want to interrupt their filming.

And even more bizarrely, a piece of me felt like what she was doing was totally normal.

Like, oh, yes, let me just film myself eating lunch.

But as I watched secretively the child turned to me.

His eyes were wild and Ukrainian blue. I looked at him. We locked eyes.

He had no idea he was being filmed.

He had no idea he had to wear that hat to look cute for an audience he also had no idea existed.

He was being commodified. No longer a child but a puppet.

And then I thought about the woman’s husband. Which I’m assuming she had despite wearing no ring.

Like was she filming this for him?

Was she going to send him this video after they finished?

Mind you, she filmed the ENTIRE meal.

I could see the red dot on her I-phone recording.

She let the entire thing run for about 30 minuets until it was time for me to leave.

I wondered for a moment if she was facetiming her significant other this footage. But this wasn’t a video call, this was a recording.

Or, was she recording this to then cut up it up later into clips for her social media?

This 30 minute video meal with her child would be cut into clips for her “day in the life” segment on Instagram or TikTok.

Hey guys! This is Svetlana! Come have lunch we me and Vladimir!

I thought more about her significant other. Maybe he was in the Ukrainian war with Russia? Maybe she got knocked up yet her and her husband Kandinsky were really in love and she was going to send him this full 30 minute video of her and their son Vladimir as he battled it out on the frontlines in Kyiv?

I felt a barrenness inside of me growing as I watched.

What was this?

I wanted to ask her but I also did not want to ask her.

Part of me wanted to say WE ARE ALL FUCKED.

Another part of me wanted to say HOW SWEET IT IS TO FILM LUNCH WITH YOUR CHILD.

I really didn’t know.

At what point did we arrive here?

Us.

Humans.

Where we film everything…

Where every second of our lives is an opportunity to be filmed.

It’s as if deep down we all really just want to be actors and actresses.

Or simpler put we just want to be celebrities.

Or more psycho-spiritually we just want to be seen.

Mother. Father. Please see me.

Mother of social media.

Father of social media.

Please see me.

Make me the celebrity I deserve to be.

Now.

And forever.

Amen.

I hope you enjoy this conversation!

I want this to be engaging for all creative people.

Much love,
Augustus

Notably, they made an amazing short film called THE TURTLE that recently premiered at a film festival in Los Angeles.
Their film is really good. No BS.
They did not pay me to say that!

Emotional. Atmospheric. Honest.

The film is about a relationship.
A couple in essence trying to solve the problems of their world late at night.
That always ends well.

I’m not giving anything else away! You gotta watch it!

The acting is terrific.
The directing is specific and intimate.
The writing is organic and natural.

I’m excited to see what these guys keep creating!

Also, Joe and RJ have a feature film called
CHASING PERSEPHONE that will premiere at a film festival soon and will hopefully be released to the public in the near future so you all can watch it!

Stoked!

Joe directed and wrote both of these films.

RJ acted in both of them.

Additionally, together they produce these films - their production company is called THE STOONADS - hit them up if you want to get involved with them!

This conversation was really thought provoking.
VARIOUS SUBJECTS LIKE:
-Why wait for someone to give you the green light to create?
-The rehearsal process?
-Writing process?
-Various directors and writers used as inspiration?
-What does “independent” even mean anyway???
-ETCETERA!

***Overall I wanted this conversation to be intriguing and helpful and inspiring for not only filmmakers but for ALL people that are creative!

NOTA BENE: Joe and RJ and their respective films are on Instagram so you can either find links to watch the films or stay updated on their release status there.

I hope you enjoy this conversation.

Let me know what you think!

Peace out.

Much love,
Augustus

this woman is on instagram

she posts this story

the story is a video of two women sitting at dinner talking to one another

the women are actually just moving their mouths and a conversation is dubbed over them

the conversation seems to be coming from a clip from some TV show, most likely a reality TV show

I have seen these kinds of videos before…

if you’re on instagram long enough you have seen EVERYTHING before

but it is what is being said in the audio that peaks my interest here, as well as the caption the person who has posted this writes over the story

(if none of the instagram jargon i am saying here makes sense to you I’m sorry, I hope you just follow along until you understand)

so let’s start with what the audio in the video is that the girls are mouthing along to

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this could all be expanded upon

however…

i used to spend summers and winters in Connecticut

nobody really knows anything about Connecticut

but i will tell you that rural Connecticut is as beautiful a place as you will ever find on planet earth

when i was there i was much younger

this was before the days of smart phones

i would go there and stay at my grandparent’s house

now i will tell you that my grandparent’s house was very nice

this was certainly a living situation that was reserved for affluent people

my grandparents weren’t like millionaires as far as i know, after all they were buying house during a time when you could actually work a decent job and still buy a house

but

my grandfather worked for decades at IBM and they bought this house in Connecticut that I always thought looked like a mini White House

the house sat up on a hill and was surrounded by around 3 acres of bright green grass

their neighbors were far away and everyone kept to themselves so it felt very quiet and almost isolated within nature

to gloat a little more, my grandparent’s house was certainly the nicest house on a very quiet and gorgeous road that finished at a dead end where the forest began

i would visit this place on every holiday and like i said during winters and summers

winters were perfect, a wonderland

snow came down and the fireplace was lit and we went sledding down the hill

wow, i feel a deep nostalgia as i write this

i feel an emotion of freedom as i write this

i played in that snow and when i was sweaty underneath big clothes i would come inside and there would be food laid out by my grandmother and i would warm up by the fire as my grandfather played classical music

and the summers were just as perfect

it was all about running outside and playing sports and walking into the forest and finding hidden magical rivers and small spots where native americans must have built camps and homes before everything changed years ago

summers were sweaty and happy and i would go to the local pool and go to the ice cream shop or the icee shop or the local outdoor cafe in town called Denmo’s and my dad would get a soft shell crab sandwich

this was living !

and i don’t think i feel that this was living just because i was young and the weight of adulthood hadn’t hit me yet

it felt like living because that is all we did

we weren’t pre-occupied with HOW to live, we were just LIVING

and again this was long before smart-phones

I say smart-phones instead of cell-phones because first of all I’m sure people had cell-phones but nobody had ever even heard of a smart-phone yet

and i think the smart-phone is what really damaged this feeling of living

these phones have taken us out of the moment

i used to be so romantic

i think

its all so hard to piece together

i used to feel this unchained kind of freedom before smart-phones

i used to walk up streets at midnight

i used to read dense literature and wonder how it was written

have you ever read Maldoror on a moonlit night??

i used to listen to music without dissecting it

i used to take a photo with a camera and that photo meant something

i used to sit up at night and listen to the birds outside

speaking of night time

maybe this is what i want to write about

this kind of romance

when i was in Connecticut i used to go to sleep and it would be pitch-black

nowadays i remember that blackness

something about it was primal

a primality i don’t think i have felt in so long

a primality now being swallowed up by lights and too much information

that darkness outside the Connecticut window that held secrets

scary secrets, magical secrets

no smart phone to gaze into before bed, obliterating the natural magic of my mind

i used sometimes get up out of bed and look out of the window into the pitch blackness and wonder

i could see nothing in front of me

all i knew was that there was a forest out there on the edge of the big back yard

i would be scared and curious and giddy at the same time

what was that noise?

what was that shape in the darkness?

now i don’t do that

now i can’t do that

because I am surrounded by light

because I am overtaken by an angst to look at a smart phone

why is it called smart?

I am surrounded by mostly pointless information

i have been thinking of moving back to the east coast lately

I want to search for that enchanting darkness again

will you join me

???

i assume you’re aware of this trend

if not i’m sorry to make you aware of it

the trend is this social media clarion call to “normalize s3x work”

i have seen this call to action being touted in various places

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i’m so excited to take her to dinner!

i bring flowers

white lilies from trader joes

trader joes sells beautiful flowers

do you know that?

they smell beautiful too

i always bought her flowers

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let me preface with the obvious

im just another idiot with a keyboard and a microphone

the earth is now full of idiots with keyboards and microphones

nothing i say is gospel

OBVIOUSLY

every reality now article is more or less just questions posed by another idiot with a microphone

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one day you wake up

or one day you fall asleep

i was on a train a long time ago

i was young

young(er)

early 20s

texting this woman

she said to me

youth is wasted on the young

i scoffed

that’s b.s.

what does she know

but now i know

she was right

the older you get the more you see that she was right

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what do i know

i preface with that because it feels like the last thing this world needs is another person offering up ways to self-help

at this point why aren’t we all levitating

???

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Or they no longer practice telling the truth? Or they are afraid of telling the truth? Or there are veils to hide behind now where one doesn’t HAVE to tell the truth?

Like, what is teh future of relationships? I’m genuinely curious.

Relations…

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i plan on expanding on these subjects

easy listening

much LOVE

Read more

Subscribe to listen.

This is an open and nonjudgmental conversation.

I am somebody interested in making sense of the world.

Much love, Augustus

Read more

"EVERYONE HAS A STORY TO TELL" writing workshop

I feel strongly that every person on the planet has a story to tell that can positively affect the world around them.

If you are someone who wants to write and has no idea how to go about telling your story (or needs help in getting your story off the ground and into fruition) then this is the workshop for you!

The outcomes & some of the things we will crush and dismantle here are:

-Writer's block (CRUSHED)

-Your lack of faith in your writing ability (CRUSHED)

-Your uncertainty about whether this is any good or whether other people will resonate when they read it (CRUSHED)

-Your fear of sharing this with the world (CRUSHED)

-Among others...

ONE: THE INSPIRATION

-45 minute zoom/facetime.

-What you'll need: your computer, notepad, and a piece of writing from another author that you have read that you love.

-Together we nail down what story it is you want to tell.

-I give you the tools and techniques to succeed in writing the first draft of your story.

TWO: THE FIRST DRAFT!

-45 minute zoom/facetime.

-You did it! You now have in your hands a glorious and messy first draft.

-So, we get right to it. We read your piece and talk about it.

-I help you unblock and go deeper into the reservoirs of your creativity.

-I am here to teach you how to get out of your own way and get rid of the beliefs you may have that have previously held you back from taking this step in exploring your writing.

THREE: SLAYING THE EDITING DRAGON

-45 minute zoom/facetime + one 15 minute phone call to check in on your process.

-You are walking out of the forest of creation holding the decapitated head of a slayed dragon that is also nicknamed 'the editing process'.

Come on, let's get a little kick ass here. Not everything in writing has to be soft. I mean, yes, let's be soft, but let's also be kick ass.

-Together we navigate the adventurous and sometimes treacherous process of editing.

-Remember, editing is NOT about correcting grammar and spelling, that is NOT what I'm talking about when I'm talking about editing. When I'm talking about editing I'm talking about getting down to the essence of what you have to say in your writing, I'm talking about fine tuning your bulky rock of words into a glittering diamond of energy.

FOUR: THE MANIFESTATION

-One hour zoom/facetime.

-We went from having a flicker of an idea of what could be to a fully-fledged manifestation.

-We talk about what you discovered.

-We read your final draft out loud.

-We discuss where you want to take this from here.

-I'm going to elucidate for you all of the different ways you can get this writing out into the world, whether you pitch it to magazines or quarterlies for publication, launch a newsletter to promote it and future writing, self-publish it as a stand-alone short story on Amazon, or seek to expand it and find an agent for your work.

MORE: YOU TELL ME...!

PRICE: $450 for the first four sessions

Payment will be required before we begin.

if you want to join email me at:
augustusbritton@gmail.com

much love

let me try and be coherent

slow down and be coherent

i don’t even know how it happened

you go from being glue to being ghosts

see

i talk about this and i want to be coherent but i end up abstract

i talk about everything and i want to be coherent but i also want to be abstract

i wish i was a musician

my life would be so much easier

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yearn for it

ache for it

almost desperate

at times desperate

for when

before

when things were quiet

i remember

these days i forget often

but there are moments of remembering

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I sat across from them

So beautiful

So cute

Totally innocent

Small feet

Small mouths

Soft texture

Unique colors

Funny sounds

A life of service

I would go out there and sit with them

Watch them

About a dozen of them

They’d look to be mindlessly walking

Something meditative about it

A simple life

Eating. Sleeping. Relaxing. Communal.

Something humans wish they were.

Chickens.

Out on the farm I was working at.

Then one fateful day.

Sun shining.

Streaks of light through trees.

We’re called to gather around.

I need to see a show of hands.

Who wants to slaughter the chickens?

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you can’t read this unless you subscribe

sorry, money is real and my pain is not for free

if you have no money i dont blame you so if you really want to read it just email me directly and ill give you this for free

otherwise thank you

sincerely

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maybe it’s just me

i hope not

i don’t think it is

but what’s happening with dating?

i don’t really like talking about this

but i feel like reality now is very much about…um…reality now…and reality now has a lot to do with dating

Read more

Some say success is the best revenge.

Unfortunately, that falls apart in our hands very quickly…

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