Pearls

May 1, 2023 ~ Will Forrest ~ Leave a comment

I stock up on dopamine* in the mornings by dancing, sometimes singing to my favorite songs. These range from So Whatcha Want by The Beastie Boys to the opening of the 2013 Tony Awards as sung by Neil Patrick Harris (thanks, internet, for all your flaws, for bringing me this ode to excess.)

Being a stage performer, particularly in musical theatre where you might have to be singing, dancing, and acting all at the same time, is tremendously hard work. It is physically demanding, often debilitating. Lots of musicians bring the same energy to the concert stage, not just in rock but across the board (it’s Britney, bitch.)

It’s not just the dopamine I’m chasing but the calorie burn. So I’m not ashamed to say I had to bail out about two minutes into the Talking Heads’ performance of the song Life During Wartime in the seminal concert film Stop Making Sense.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVHNwBbkSj4

IDK what David Byrne was eating those days (looks like nothing) but he never stops moving and neither do the rest of the band. If you don’t regularly exercise, you’d never keep up, because they are beasts. MF, they are playing their instruments while running in place and has Gen Z seen this shit yet? This is a TikTok challenge waiting to happen, amirite?

So I thought, what a great candidate for a stupid goal. To be able to do David Byrne’s bit in Life During Wartime.

Get delusional, isn’t that what the kids say? This is a theme for me right now, after a post I made about impossible goals to a lively group of professional writers blew up, getting a few hundred comments from writers at every stage of their career. Why not carry this energy into everything I do?

I need delusional goals. Ordinary ones don’t seem to motivate me. So why not try something ridiculous? Absurd and not wholly useful except that it spurs me to be more active. A chance to score a symbolic victory over my human tendencies—taking the easy way out, hoarding calories in case of famine, anxiety about my appearance and social rank.

We have so little time on earth, and there’s so much that we might do that we’ll never have the time to even read about in someone else’s words. We’re dying the minute we’re born and I think if more people understood that we might as individuals and as a civilization use our time better.

I’m old enough to feel this in my bones. They say youth is wasted on the young because it’s only the accumulation of years that make you understand time at the cellular level. There is no solution to death. I don’t know that I’d choose eternal life even if it was offered. All we have is today, this hour, this second, this heartbeat, this blink of the cosmic eye, our every breath one more pearl strung on a thread that grows shorter and shorter.

Do it now. The thing you always wanted. Do it now because there is only now. Only this moment, this breath. This.

Manifesting despite yourself

February 4, 2023 ~ Will Forrest ~ Leave a comment

I’m not one of those meek, retiring kinds of ADHD. I’m of the “you wanna start some shit?” variety, with high scores for Defiance Disorder and Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, meaning I’m always on the hunt for a bridge to burn. I’ve quit jobs to make sure I had the weekend off.

I also think magic is in a way very real. Not that handwavium, turn you into a frog/newt/beddable-monster movie type of magic, but the kind where you deliberately reprogram your own brain to perceive reality in a different way. Practitioners might believe they’re reprograming everyone’s reality as well, but as the only reality you have access to is the one that your brain creates inside itself, I find this a bridge too far for even me to burn (see above.) Let’s just say that the world contains more information than any brain can compute, and if you point yourself at different parts of it, your experience is often that of having created something from nothing. The opportunities were always there, you just maybe weren’t looking directly at them.

So when I see the rise in popularity of “manifesting” to reach one’s goals, I suppress my inner cynic who says it’s a bunch of neo-hippy woo. As a pantheistic pragmatist with a taste for Spinoza, why should I care how people do their magic, as long as they’re getting results? The crystals, the candles, the Burning Man vibes, the binaural beats: my only objection is aesthetic, as in I don’t like cottagecore and my high flicker rate ADHD has *issues* with delta drone.

I’d be a sorry sort of Discordian if I gave anyone lip over how they conducted their spiritual business. Heck, I routinely beg my deity NOT to intervene: “lemme have this one, ‘kay? You can do what you want with me after.”

This never works, by the way. What we want and what The Universe wants often has nothing to do with each other. I find myself infested with its merciless directives, seething with manifestation, which in my case takes the form of my favourite characters from my books taking up permanent residence in my head. I can’t complain, because (ahem) I get results. Their energy, their imaginary love for me sustains me as if they were real people standing beside me, even when I’m at my worst. They both are and are not real. What matters is that it works.

So I will gleefully cling to my belief that no sane person holding a quartz while they meditate seriously thinks the rock is doing anything other than being something to pay attention to. That’s all magick is. Paying attention like never before. Paying so much attention to some stupid shiny rock in your hand, glowing in the flicker of beeswax candles, that you don’t notice everything you’ve ever wanted sneaking up behind you, waiting for you to properly open your eyes.

I’M BACK, BABY

January 9, 2023 ~ Will Forrest ~ Leave a comment

That’s it. That’s the post. I have finally shed the post-Covid brain fog. And to anyone suffering from “long Covid”: I have tasted a tiny bit of your pain and I offer every bit of sympathy and funding you require to navigate this blameless nightmare.

Ok, here’s the rest of the post, because AS IF that’s all I’ve got to say.

I have hated writing this book. Every word, every freaking *keystroke* was a gargantuan effort requiring all my will. Up until the last week. Now it’s a dream come true, the chapters falling together like someone else wrote them for me and I just have to fit them together. A perfect side character stepped fully formed out of my brain and performed a key role in the story while earning himself a lead role in a future book.

People…this is going to work.

“This” being my delusional but totally achievable dream of making a living from writing what I want. I’m releasing six books this year, not counting the short stories and re-launches. I’m writing at least four, one of which is going to be done by the end of the week. I have never felt more engaged with my writing career.

2023 is my year. Yeah, right, we’re not supposed to say that anymore. This is supposed to be a year for heaving a sigh of relief. As a card-carrying Discordian (look it up yourself, ‘kay? Providing succinct answers is as close as we get to a mortal sin) I’ve waited my entire life for this numerological opportunity. Me and the goddess, we’re lighting this year up like you’ve never seen.

the soundtrack to my revival: Bop x Subwave’s set from the release party for their album “Renaissance.’ I have listened to this slapper of a set twice a day, every day since it dropped last month. Tell me you’re a 90’s kid…