Written Work
Written Work
Birdbath
some of my personal contributions to the film and media publication i co-founded in 2022. you can find all issues of birdbath here
Bram Stoker’s Dracula and the importance of a personal canon
I think part of that attachment to having “favorites” is due to the fact that I’ve spent so much of my life using media made by other people as a vehicle to understand myself better. When I feel an emotion that I don’t know how to process, I watch a movie, or listen to an album, or engage with some other piece of art that evokes that same feeling in me.
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REVIEW: Daniel Romano’s Outfit live at Bunk Bar
You know those clear turning-point moments in your life where it’s like, there’s before this moment and there’s after this moment, and once the moment passes you’ll never return to the way your life was before the moment passed? This was one of those moments.
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Why Bastille is more than just “Pompeii”
Does anyone remember Bastille? That pop band from 2013 that had one song absolutely explode (you know the one) and then kind of vanished from the zeitgeist without much fanfare? If you do, it’s probably because of “Pompeii,” and once that song disappeared after basically defining the early 2010s pop scene, you probably haven’t given them much thought since. Unless you have, in which case, you’ve come to the right place.
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SUNDANCE COVERAGE: The Persian Version
Every moment is edited to hold equal weight and it seems like the film doesn't know when to slow down and linger in a moment, which for such a complex drama, only serves to detract from more or less every emotional beat.
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SUNDANCE COVERAGE: The Eternal Memory
There's so much here about art as preservation -- books, theater, and film especially. It's a story about two people who are unconditionally in love with each other and their struggle to overcome a condition forcibly placed upon that love that they can't control, but it's also a timeless and universal fable about how we lock ourselves away in the things we write and read and perform and consume, and how later on if we lose ourselves that's a good place to turn.
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Director Charlotte Regan and cinematographer Molly Manning Walker (who's work includes music videos for everyone from FKA Twigs to A$AP Rocky to Wolf Alice) drench Essex in warm, inviting pastels and a perpetual early-morning glow, and the Wes Anderson-esque (I'm sorry) inserts of peripheral side characters make the film's wondrous world feel lived-in without feeling too derivative.
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SUNDANCE COVERAGE: 20 Days in Mariupol
There are moments of such intense, unbearable pain that make you wonder if the camera should really be rolling, but not a single moment of this feels exploitative or unnecessary in context.
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SUNDANCE COVERAGE: Kokomo City
Smith just sits back, rolls the camera, and lets these women say exactly what they need to say. Which really feels refreshing for a documentary like this. A great example of anchoring an overarching social issue in a focused, human perspective.
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Peripheral Love in The Daytrippers
It's about why we love each other and all the different ways we show it, and how sometimes the only way you can love someone is by hating them first. It's about how hungry we are all for our lives to mean something more than one person, one place, one thing.
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I kept secrets from myself that had such deep, transformative, unhealthy effects on me that once I worked up the courage to come clean and be honest with myself, I could hardly recognize the side of me that had needed so desperately for so long to be let in on the mystery.
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REVIEW: The Good Lives On - The Sadies Live at Volcanic Theatre Pub
Dallas was right there with them, not just literally looming over the stage but in every note they played, every beat they hit, every word Travis sang that Dallas had written — and even the ones he hadn’t.
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Whitman Wire
a selection of some of my favorite pieces I’ve written for whitman’s weekly newspaper. you can find more of my work for the wire here
“Western Epiphanies” embraces the gray area
Mops of wild, sun-bleached hair and faces luminous with months of hard-earned wisdom filled the front row of Maxey Auditorium on Tuesday, Nov. 30. The 2021 Semester in the West participants had just returned, and after bouncing up and down on the damp grass to greet long-lost friends, they settled in and prepared to tell their stories at the first of a two-part “Western Epiphanies” event.
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SASA holds luminous Diwali celebration
Thanks to the efforts of Whitman’s newly revitalized South Asian Student Association, the Reid Ballroom was transformed into a sparkling celebration of South Asian culture on Saturday in observance of Diwali, the annual festival of lights.
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Bodies are not easy things to have. They bear the weight of our environments, our emotions, our habits, relationships, injuries, social conventions—anything and everything we do, external or internal, demands something from them, weakens them, strengthens them, transforms and modifies them. As a result, it’s no mystery why we’re so enamored by the art of dance. It’s nebulous, but the poetic marriage of emotion, physicality and performance feels more dependent on nebulousness than virtually any other art form. And what could be more human than surrendering to mystery?
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The three C’s of cinema: Why college movie nights are our most important form of gathering
It feels like an eternity ago that community was still part of our cinematic vocabulary. Back when movie theaters brimmed with eager cinephiles and residence hall lounges served as venues for arthouse snobs to impose their cinematic pretensions on their hallmates, physically gathering around a piece of art was an act akin to taking a hot shower after a stroll on a snowy day.
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Fi Black confronts isolation and technology in “wishing you well”
In their brand new Stevens Gallery exhibit “wishing you well,” junior art major Fi Black casts a vibrant, electric glow on the junk left behind by a year plagued with longing, loss and technological self-medication.
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Finding closure in creativity: Piper Toohey releases EP “soup”
Since they first learned to play guitar at 12 years old, senior Piper Toohey has been on an endless journey of self-expression, from performing original songs at middle school talent shows to releasing self-produced singles on Spotify for small networks of close friends. On Saturday, March 20, they released “soup,” a collection of six acoustic songs, to the public.
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With their faces luminous against luscious, floral Zoom backdrops, playwrights Migdalia Cruz, Elaine Romero, Luis Alfaro and Enrique Urueta addressed the Whitman community Friday evening in a lecture panel entitled “On Borders and Hybridity: Contemporary Latinx Theatre.” The event was co-moderated by Urueta and Laura Hope, a Whitman professor of theater and dance.
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Jeremy O. Harris gets candid in “Theater Reimagined: Race, Culture and Radical Voice”
Dressed in a camel-colored turtleneck and an emerald green silk shawl, and framed with thin wisps of smoke from an off-screen incense stick, Jeremy O. Harris — mastermind behind the subversive Broadway hit “Slave Play” —addressed the greater Whitman community on Friday, Feb. 12. The Whitman Events Board, in conjunction with the Intercultural Center, hosted the renowned playwright and screenwriter for a lecture.
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Governor Inslee visits Walla Walla and unites community around climate action
Amid a statewide housing crisis and the impending threat of global climate collapse, Washington Governor Jay Inslee visited Walla Walla on Tuesday, March 14 to speak with the community and address issues of housing, education and environmental preservation.
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Washington’s climate warriors: Q&A with Fraser Moore and Elio Van Gorden
The Wire had the opportunity to sit down with Fraser Moore and Elio Van Gorden following their radio interview with Wash. Governor Jay Inslee to discuss their thoughts on Inslee’s visit and climate action plan.
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