None of us really know our fathers
For this week, a story. It’s a WIP and I’ll be workshopping it soon!
A dozen children softened his mitts, shin-kicking runts blunted his blade, but granted a father's patience. He found his bane and sits and waits.
You can read the rest here.
and this is where I’d put an upcoming event. IF I HAD ONE
Misc. Stuff I’m Into:
Movies:
To Live and Die in L.A. [1985, dir. William Friedkin]. Simply one of the wildest and best movie theater experiences I’ve had this year. Immediately one of my favorite films of all time. Here’s me yapping about it (some minor spoilers), please get in touch with me if you watch it.
Sentimental Value [2025, dir. Joachim Trier]. Stellen my GOAT. None of us really know our fathers. Score, excellent. Sentiment, valuable. Watching this last night inspired what is to come below.
Why Harper [2025, dir. Nico]. My friend Nico made a whole ass short film, it was their first time doing most of the things that a short film involves, and it’s good? God damn. It’s a film about interviewing your exes and someone who ghosted me somehow showed up to this extremely private twenty person screening, so I got the 4DX experience.
Music:
Danny Brown’s Stardust. So excited to see him at the Warsaw next month, easy album of the year contender. Do yourself the favor.
FKA twigs’ EUSEXUA Afterglow. Wasn’t crazy about it at first, was worried about my GOAT, but it’s growing on me.
Billy Joel’s Songs in the Attic. We all know and love Billy Joel from Oysta Bay but the rasp and passion in his voice in this recording is just stellar.
Orville Peck’s Appaloosa. No I’m not bitter to have missed his performance as the MC in Cabaret on Broadway that clearly informed the themes of this EP. Why do you ask?
Hannah Frances’s Nested in Tangles. No one should be allowed to be this talented and clean with their singer-songwriter freak folk.
ROTHALÍA’s LUX. Album so good it ended my beef with her for her attempts to colonize urbano.
Rafael Toral’s Traveling Light. Starts off a little skronky, but evolves into this lush, beautiful soundscape that had me hypnotized on my walk to the voting booth a few weeks back.
Games:
(I’ve also been playing the Kirby Air Riders Global Test Ride and Pokémon Legends: Z-A and both are really good)
Books:
Beowulf is kinda good y’all? Is anyone talking about this? That and Grendel in tandem inspired the story I wrote for the website.
Other stuff:
congrats to my close personal friend and now mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani.
Mostly botanical words from a visit to the Cloisters with Em recently:
“Madder”
“Cochineal”
“Galls”
“Woad” (my favorite)
“Safflower”
“Weld”
“Espaliered”
“Spurge”
“Alecost”
“Costmary”
“Cowslip”
“Rampion”
I.
A man sits cross-legged on the subway platform. His hair is a mess, his eyes look dead. He’s shaking his head about, left and right, front to back, as if about to fall into epilepsy. My father pulls the brakes on the 2 train and opens up the conductor’s window. He shouts my name. Apparently this man on the subway platform looks just like me, enough for my father to interrupt service. This man does not respond, continues to shake and twist. My father gets over his panic and keeps on driving the train.
II.
My father holds me hostage at the computer while he shows me David Byrne doing the dance from Life During Wartime in the concert film Stop Making Sense. I wonder why my dad waited until I was 22 to try to introduce me to Talking Heads, a band I had long since sourced the entire discography of via illicit means. Years later, I would get to see Stop Making Sense in its entirety for the first time, in theaters. I text him excitedly about it, how it reframed how I view performance and approach concerts, how live music can be religious, be spectacle. He replies: “great movie.“
III.
After my father threatens us all with whatever utensil he could find in a drawer, I pick up Rico and we leave the house. He sits alone at home. His mother comes by after a bit and takes him for a drive. They talk. After we spend the day at my uncle’s, my father lets us come home. I still have no idea what he and his mom talked about.
IV.
I come home from college to see a Dobro Hound Dog resonator on my bed. My father got it for me from his friend Gil, an employee at Mandolin Bros. I bring it with me everywhere, until one day the headstock snaps in a freak accident almost exactly 8 years later. I don’t know if my father knows it’s broken.
V.
My mother, my father and I are sitting at a restaurant by the water in Puerto Rico, same one we went to fifteen years earlier, somehow still standing. My dad says “this drink is just a little too sweet. I like it more bitter.” We talk a bit about our drinks, how we like them. A few moments pass. My dad says “this drink is just a little too sweet. I like it more bitter.” My mother and I remind him that he literally just said that. He says “no I didn’t.” My mother and I look at each other quizzically. We inform him that we both heard him say that exact sentence twice. He says “sure, but I didn’t.”
“…Alright, man.”
VI.
We’re living in Manhattan, and my favorite pastime as a two-year old is throwing shit out the window of our sixth floor apartment. A VHS of Oliver & Company. Car keys. House keys. Pennies. My bobo (pacifier), that I am probably too old to still be depending on. He tells me later in life that he’d go down to the lower roof of the neighboring building and find a pile of busted VHS’s, dirt-covered bobos, keys long since replaced. At two in the morning I’d wake up desperate for a bobo, crying, and my dad would go to the store and get a new one. I’d throw that one out the window the next day.
VII.
After watching Sinners, my father calls me, presumably to talk about the movie. The guise of talking about the movie quickly falls away into hearing about a lucid dream he had before watching. His grandmother, my great grandmother Toya, visits him, dressed in a tribal garb. In real life, she passed away after complications from a stroke when I was about 13. She’s surrounded by witch doctors and wise men, who keep repeating, “you have to tell him.” Every time they say that, she says, “he wouldn’t understand.” Eventually, she relents and opens a sinkhole in the ground. The sinkhole is pitch black and my dad climbs in, but can’t see anything. “I told you he wouldn’t understand.” “You have to tell him.” “Look deeper.” His uncle Rafi appears and opens a new hole, thinking maybe a second one will grant that understanding. My dad climbs into that one, also sees nothing. His uncle smiles, and everyone disappears. I don’t understand.
VIII.
“That’s my favorite picture of you.”
“Wow, mom said it was her favorite too”
“No, she only said that because I said it.”
“You know, you two can have the same favorite picture. That’s allowed.”
“Trust me, William. I know her.”
“…Alright, man.”
IX.
Erin confronts me. She says “No matter what, I’m going to meet your dad.” My parents come to the Overheard album release show, and my dad struggles as always in larger social situations, remaining quiet and reserved in the corner. Meanwhile, Em, Callie, and my mother stand behind the merch booth, openly weeping together throughout the entire set. Afterwards, Erin all but bounds toward my father while we’re talking, and he shakes her hand. He says “Hi, I’m William’s father,” which is how he has introduced himself to all ten or so of the friends of mine he’s met over the course of my entire life. Erin is nothing but her most trademark self, gushing about how happy she is that I showed up in her life and how wonderful it is to share a band with me (likewise, pal). He smirks, mumbles some niceties, and gets out of there as quickly as possible. We had played “Freckles” that night, and I wonder if he knows what it’s about.
X.
After working a double shift at whatever job he had at the time, my father finally lays down on the couch at about 4 in the morning. He drifts off to sleep. Seconds later, my mom wakes him up. She just went into labor. My dad tells me this story on my birthday every single year, always as if for the first time. This year, though, he added something new: the sky was as beautiful, crisp, and blue on my birthday this year as he remembers it on the day I was born.
It was my father’s birthday this past Thursday, the day after my nephew/his grandson Logan’s. I told my father over the phone that 61 is a prime number. I hope he makes it to the next one.
-Will