☔️🌷May: Pandemonium Progress Report👹 (Patreon)

Hello, strange and wonderful reader – this evening's long offering starts a brief reflection on recent days, and then offers you some re-caps on what's been going on in film/TV world, book-world, circus-world, world-world ... you get the picture. (Speaking of which – there's pictures! wheeee)

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Reporting to you today from Montréal!

The croissants are flaky (see: me stuffing my face, above); the air is mild and warm; thick tides of pollen are drifting down from the mountain to coat the cars and benches in a lacy golden dust; and there's a rare flair of optimism and goodwill/bonhomie between strangers on the sidewalks here, only witnessed as the first blushing promise of the short summer season here makes the desolation of winter a distant memory.

I'm reading Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin, and The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. I'm eating ice cream more days than not and basting myself in sunscreen whenever I leave the house. I'm saying no, not yet, to social invitations. I'm figuring out what the fuck one does to keep HAIR out of one's eyes while flying around during aerial straps lessons with my coach (seriously, how the fuck do you guys deal with this? i have so many stupid looking headbands in my training bag now).

Back in December, when my stunt gig started, I did the unthinkable and (gasp) tried to plan some six months into the future to this moment:

I apartment swapped with a friend in Montréal, and I booked in for as many classes as my straps coach could give me.

An intensive month of physical exertion doesn't scream vacation to most, I know. To be quite frank, I'm not sure it's screaming that to me at the moment either.

I was going off a hunch that this might be a good strategy for recalibrating my body and mind after many months away from 'circus-normal', immersed instead in 'film/stunt-normal'.

I'm clinging to this Plan™️ for dear life. I know I need the structure. Life feels weird in the wake of my stunt contract concluding.

Whatever me is going into this summer feels like a person you recognize in a not-totally-pleasant dream, but can't place, and the dream-awareness of that brings on a sinister paranoia, tickling the baby hairs at the nape of your neck into electrified vigilance, even as the dreams itself plods on in a banal manner: nothing's wrong, nothing's wrong, nothing's wrong.

My long-planned Montréal summer bears an uncanny-valley feeling: that it's almost real, that it's almost right ... but not quite.

I'm not sure if I'm in the right place.

I'm not sure why I'm doing the things I'm doing.

My dreams and plans feel flimsy, a little transparent, when I hold them up to the light. This is an odd thing indeed, as moment-to-moment I go through the motions of my day with a rather smooth, neutral satisfaction.

When we are trying to do Difficult Things™️, I personally find it greatly preferable to do them with a fierceness and specificity of mind that re-focuses all of the difficulties, the pains, the friction, and sacrifices with a clarity that makes those things more easily navigable.

But maybe we can't always be passionately fierce, ferociously specific.

Maybe, sometimes, we just have to keep plodding towards where we swear we last saw the North Star, and hope the cloud cover passes.

For the moment, I'm chalking this slippery mental state up to extended sleep deprivation for most of the Spring (see: Franken-Stunts below). I've decided I won't worry about the above unless I still feel the same way in another few weeks of good sleep, good rest, good food, and predictable routine.

If you, too, are having an odd moment; feel like a chapter might be approaching an end; or maybe just need a nap – I offer us all the following from my very badass friend and fellow stuntperson Amy Szoke:

"Just keep going outside, drinking water, and resting when the sun goes down. You're basically a complicated plant."

🪴 amen 🪴

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Here's a leisurely stroll through a more in-depth account of what's been going down this past month, section by section

FILM & TV:

(a typical view from the satellite crew parking lot way down the road from the film studio, at wrap-time – 6am. the smokestack / building you see here is part of 'The Hearn': a derelict former generating station down in the Portlands of downtown Toronto. lots of TV shows and movies used to shoot inside there. it looks pretty dystopian inside. this particular morning i stayed late to jump the car of another stuntie whose engine had given up the ghost sometime in the wee hours of the night.)

My part in the Big Stunt Team Contract™️ mentioned in the April update  (and the above) has wrapped!

 (Well – the whole production is continuing on – but the big scene I was involved in is 'in the can', as they say in film).

The original conclusion date kept pushing deeper and deeper into April, as is often the case with big film shoots.

I ended up being on my zombified nightshoot schedule for closer to a month than the 4 days (nights) I'd initially mentally prepared for.

Since I can't say very much (anything) at all about projects like this, I'll instead share this little fragment of cuteness for now:

My dad was flying over the downtown Toronto area at one point during our outdoor filming and snapped the following photo from the cockpit.

"Where are you?!" he texted me excitedly.

Sadly Mother Nature was having a laugh and had sent this streamer of cloud cover riiiight over where the giant outdoor set pieces were.

Alas! Wouldn't that have been cool...?



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CIRCUS, CIRCUS, CIRCUS

The moment FRANKEN-STUNTS concluded, I was straight into bending my sleep-deprived body around a hasty rehearsal schedule, preparing for what turned out to be a fantastic rendition of VACUUM at the second CABARET MACABRE in Toronto on May 10th.

Patrons, you'll be getting some full-length vlogs and photo posts from me about the rehearsal process leading up to this 2024 VACUUM revival, as well as access to a full video of the number (currently waiting on my files from the videographer.

I found some new shapes; the piece has evolved in ways I'm excited about; and I'm looking forward to showing you!

I'm feeling invigorated and inspired to chase down (or make) some more chances at putting this work on stage. It might have taken four years, but I feel proud of this in a way I didn't when it first emerged in 2020, wobbly-legged and slick, from whatever weird corner of my brain these ideas gestate in.

In the meantime, here's a little treat-peek at the incongruity of rehearsals in my cramped living-room-turned-circus-studio at the start of the month (above) , vs. the incredible vibes of the show night itself at Parkdale Hall (below):

BOOKS, BOOKS, BOOKS / ZINES, ZINES, ZINES

The SLOW CIRCUS: BARBETTE book pre-orders have all entered the postal service! HUZZAH!

I've become fast friends with with my neighbourhood Canada Post desk worker, Dev [wrist & hand cameo below], who laughs nervously each time he sees me roll up with four giant hauler bags overflowing with 40+ book boxes. (I want to say it's less nervously now that it's been a few rounds of this 😅)

I've become a pro at calculating postage rates, at sourcing the right size boxes and packing materials, and at the most efficient ways to seal a 12" x 9" x 2" cardboard box with packing tape.

There was some messiness there for a hot second (*eye twitch*) with a new shipping program I was recommended which kept almost a third of the books stranded in my living room, awaiting a postage-fee-error resolution –– but I have emerged victorious.


[tired but not defeated! lol]

Since I'm in Montréal for the summer, I've moved my shipping operation to my parents house. They have bravely volunteered to be my shipping minions for the next wave of orders.

My next shipment of Barbette book boxes has just arrived from the printer, and I'll be re-stocking my online store come June 1st! BEHOLD!

[bit tough to get a sense of the scale here, but you're looking at about 600 books here, folks! Was I grossly ambitious in ordering that much backstock? Maybe. Will I sell them all somehow, someday? Maybe. Or, when I die, will whoever has to clean out my apartment find a big old stack of these boxes and have to lug them out of there, one at a time? Also maybe. But that's enough morbid ideation for now.]

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Finally – 

Thanks everyone who has been sending me messages or notes about the book, or sharing your Barbette parcel arrivals on social media ❤️

I wanted to let you know I did  see most of them, and wanted to say a quick apology for not re-sharing all of them the way I normally would, and have in the past. It's something I was honestly looking forward to.

No matter how exhausted or overwhelmed I was feeling, it would bring a warm feeling in my chest when I thought about how it wouldn't be long before I'd start to see your excited Instagram stories about getting your books, and get to share in the joy and excitement again with you, in the moment, as you  got to see and hold it for the first time. After I started bringing the first batches of taped-up book boxes to my post office, I was anticipating those bright spots showing up soon. But ... I ended up missing a lot of you guys.

After my 4 months off social media this winter/spring, I was mentally back on board and imagining myself being regularly present, digitally, from there on out this year. Instead, I've found myself sliding offline again over the last several weeks.

I'm training a lot. But I don't think I can blame it on that.

I'm pretty sure it's more the heavy blanket of existential dread and anger and grief that's been settling around me, as the glow of my phone screen bathes my eyeballs in the awful things happening around the world with every third swipe of my thumb. I've been writing about this. You can expect to see posts on this soon.

But back to you –

Your messages have been sparks of excitement and pride in my day each time one pops up in my world. Thank you for making my days brighter, and know that I saw them. And I'm so, so, so proud and happy to be reading the things you're thinking and feeling about it. Thank you.

If you haven't received your book yet (well ... not counting you lovely Australian or ground-shipment European readers -- sorry! 😅), please drop me a line and let me help look into that for you!

And if you're a patron who didn't order a book in the pre-order, OR you were waiting for softcovers to arrive, you can head on over to the Strange Wonderful Bookshop tomorrow (Saturday) after 5pm EST to get a copy. Keep your eye out for a "re-stock" post from me tomorrow that will include your a freshly baked patron-thank-you discount code 🥐📗

I'll leave it there for now. There's only 13 minutes left in the month of May for me – but it still counts ;)

Here's to the skin of our teeth, the nick of time, the razor's edge.
Stay extra strange & wonderful until June – 

XO ess