blog

i’m having trouble breathing in

Posted on By Wil

ForeverOne of the many delightful* things about having Depression and Anxiety is occasionally and unexpectedly feeling like the whole goddamn world is a heavy lead blanket, like that thing they put on your chest at the dentist when you get x-rays, and it’s been dropped around your entire existence without your consent.

Physically, it weighs heavier on me in some places than it does in others. I feel it tugging at the corners of my eyes, and pressing down on the center of my chest. When it’s really bad, it can feel like one of those dreams where you try to move, but every step and every motion feels like you’re struggling to move through something heavy and viscous. Emotionally, it covers me completely, separating me from my motivation, my focus, and everything that brings me joy in my life.

I live with Depression and Anxiety. I take medication, I practice meditation and CBT, and I see a therapist regularly to help me handle it. It doesn’t control my life, and it doesn’t define my life … but when it’s really bad, it sure feels like it does. When it’s really bad, it feels like it is the only thing in my entire life, the Alpha and Omega of my existence. (more…)

Film

Because you asked: some thoughts on Star Trek Beyond

Posted on By Wil
Star Trek Beyond
This poster, though, is fantastic.

I was asked on my Tumblr thing what I thought about it, because I didn’t like the trailer at all (I said something like “I just saw this trailer for a generic sci-fi action movie, but everyone was wearing a Starfleet uniform.”)

Before I get into Beyond, some context: I’m the guy who worked on TNG, but was a massive TOS fan growing up (and still is). When I watch Star Trek movies, I don’t watch them as someone who actually went to Starfleet Academy (class of 2389 REPRESENT!) but as someone who loves Star Trek and cosplayed as Spock before he knew what cosplay was. So, that said, to recap: I loved the first rebooted Trek movie. It had its flaws, but none of them were big enough to upset me, so I give it 4 out of 5 jars of Red Matter. I really enjoyed Into Darkness when I was in the theater, but the more I thought about it after, the more it fell apart until I now have to give it 2 out of 5 tribbles-on-a-stick.

Star Trek movies are always going to have a hard time with fans of the series, because when we think about Star Trek, we think about 79 episodes of the original series, or our favorite 30 episodes of TNG, or the last season of DS9. We take something that’s been spread out over days of on-screen time, spread out across years of releases, and then compare all that character development and nuance and series of individual moments with something that has to be a fully-told and completely self-contained story in 90 or 120 minutes, and it has to be accessible (as defined by risk-averse studio goons) to as wide an audience as possible. So I think it’s unfair and unreasonable to directly compare the film installments of a long-running TV series to that series. I won’t do that with Star Trek Beyond. I’ll just compare it to the two previous installments in this series.

Without holding Beyond next to the hundreds of episodes of Star Trek we can watch on TV, and just looking at it as part of this current film trilogy: I was really disappointed by it. Unlike Into Darkness, which was a lot of fun for me in the theater but fell apart upon reflection, Beyond just fell apart while I was watching it. You can read more if you’d like to know some of my reasons. There are spoilers.

(more…)

blog

we shone like the sun

Posted on By Wil

Wil Whistle 1983I opened the window in my office, and moved my desk next to it. It’s hot outside, but there’s a gentle breeze that cools the air just enough to be comfortable when it comes through the screen. It’s quiet in my neighborhood today, except for a lawnmower up the street, and I can hear the occasional train go by, up near the river.

I read a story once about a kid who grew up in a small town, and slept with the windows open so he could hear the trains when they went by a few miles away. He worried that he’d be stuck in his town forever, and those trains represented freedom and a world that existed beyond the county limits.

I can’t remember the name of that story. Maybe I made it up. I’ve always wanted to tell a story about a kid who wants to get out of his small town, but can’t find his way. You know, like everyone else in the world.

Anne’s out of town, so I made a bunch of taco stuff on Monday, and I’ve been having tacos every night, because I’m one of those people who would wear the same thing every day if I could, on account of efficiency. Did you know that tacos were invented by the Dutch? Look it up. It isn’t true.

I had another audition, for a show that I love, playing a character I’d love to play. This is not a repost. It was yesterday. I didn’t suck, and now I’m trying hard not to let myself hope, but I’m secretly hoping.

I wrote 1300 words today, and finished with just over 15,000 on this story I’ve been telling for about a ten days. I thought it was going to be a 2000 word blog post or two, but it just kept on going, and now it’s looking like it will be a novella. It doesn’t have a title, but it’s set in 1983 (thank you, Stranger Things) so I call it 83 until I can think of a title. Here’s a little bit:

Until I sat down to recall this particular story, about this particular summer, I hadn’t thought about these guys, who I lost touch with over thirty years ago, in at least a decade. They are all frozen in amber at that age, during this moment of our lives. Stephen’s house has lots of dark wood on the walls, heavy gold/yellow/brown carpet, and an orange, conical, metal fireplace in the living room that looked like it was from some version of the future, imagined in the 70s. His television is big tube model, in a wooden cabinet with stereo speakers on either side. There’s a cable TV box on top that switches to ON TV and nothing else. His mom’s stereo takes up several shelves next to the TV, and she has a lot of record albums. Stephen only owns three that I can remember: Def Leppard’s Pyromania, Foreigner’s Four, Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. They were all given to him by his older sister, who I’m now realizing was cooler than any of us thought when we were kids.

Some of that is true, most of it is from my imagination. This whole story is like that, and it’s been a lot of fun to write. I don’t know what I’ll do with it, or if it even works as a single narrative, but it’s something I need to do, so I’m doing it until it’s finished.

My dogs are keeping me company today. Marlowe is sleeping on the couch behind me, and Seamus is on the floor. Whenever I get up to refill my water or leave the room for some reason, he follows me, staying close. My dogs make me feel loved, and valued, and I allow myself to believe it is not just because I provide the food and walks.

I’m walking them every day, and running as much as I can. It hasn’t been that much, because it’s been really hot and something that my body hates is pollenating, but I’m getting about 7000 steps every day, and earning a small scoop of ice cream with dinner. I hit my target weight this morning, though I think I need to shave off one more pound to ensure that I stay here. Weight is just a number, and it really isn’t everything, but my scale is sort of like a score for me in my reboot, and I feel like I cleared a level today.

This story I’m writing is entirely fiction, but it’s based on real things that I did and real people I knew when I was a kid. It’s been a lot of fun to remember things the way they were, and then retell them the way I want to. It’s fun to think about kids I knew when we were eleven and twelve, because I haven’t thought about them in thirty years. Part of me really wants to step through time to go back to the summer I set this story in, so I can see the places I’m remembering and describing. Part of me wants to go back to those places right now, but I won’t, because doing that would tear apart the picture I have in my memory, and I want to keep it exactly the way it was.

I don’t know why it was important to me to start this off with the bit about my window, but it seemed relevant a little bit ago. Now it’s just a detail that ended up not being necessary.

But working with the window open is nice. I can smell flowers and wet dirt and cut grass, and it helps me to remember.

I wish time wasn’t linear.

 

 

 

blog

a little boat looking for a harbor

Posted on By Wil

StageIt was Friday afternoon. My manager called me and said he was sending me audition sides for a meeting that would happen Monday or Tuesday. He told me about the show and the role, and in spite of everything I have learned in 37 years as an actor, I got excited because it was really fantastic stuff.

I read the sides, and extracted as much as I could about the character from them. See, there’s a preparation thing that I have to do whenever I’m going to perform a role, whether it’s for a job I’ve booked, an audition, something on-camera or a voice job: I read the scene (or the whole script) and I ask a series of questions based on what it tells me. What does this person want? What’s in his way? How does he feel about that? What does he do about how he feels?

Sometimes, a scene makes the answers to those questions really easy to find. It’s there in the dialog, and in the prose that the writer uses to describe the scene. Sometimes, the characters are drawn so clearly, finding those answers is as easy as reading the words on the page. But most of the time, I have to do some work to find the writer’s intention, so that I can take words on a page and turn them into a character that makes the audience feel something. For this particular audition, the character was fairly clear, and though I didn’t get to read the entire script, the audition sides were an interesting scene that told me a lot about who he was, and why he was interacting with the other character in the scene.

I broke the scene into some broad strokes, so that I knew what he wanted. Then I broke down the lines into specific actions that let him deal with what was in his way, and how he felt about those things. To be completely honest, this is my very favorite part of being an actor. I love breaking down a script and then breaking down its scenes and then breaking down those scenes into even more specific actions, so that every single thing I do, every choice I make, is logical and real and grounded in the reality of the character and the world he lives in. (more…)

Books

the pretentious bullshit collection (selections)

Posted on By Wil

I’ve been doing this stupid and amusing thing on my Instagram for a few months, called The Pretentious Bullshit Collection.

For example:

Pencil, with paperclips. From the Pretentious Bullshit collection.
Pencil, with paperclips. From the Pretentious Bullshit collection.

And:

Distant tiles, close tiles, bathroom tiles. From the Pretentious Bullshit collection.
Distant tiles, close tiles, bathroom tiles. From the Pretentious Bullshit collection.

Or:

Tiempo por El Catrin. From the Pretentious Bullshit collection.
Tiempo por El Catrin. From the Pretentious Bullshit collection.

So you get the idea, right? Super pretentious, overwrought bullshit pictures of nothing, puffed up with wordy captions and declared to be art, but you probably don’t get it because it’s not for you. I guess it’s part serious art and part parody? It’s mostly parody.

I’ve been having so much fun with it, and so many people have enjoyed the sheer lunacy of the whole thing, I went ahead and made a very small, massively overpriced, hardback collection using some of my pictures. Go beyond the magical thing here to learn more about it:

(more…)