Ending The Year with Intention

Here I am sitting on my couch in December of 2023. Another year come and gone. Highlights and low lights and more behind me and a whole future of tomorrows ahead of us all.

Like many, I wonder what the future holds.

Unlike many, I think I know what I no longer want it to hold.

I want it to hold less uncertainty. Less self-doubt and recriminations. Less fear.

The last 2 years have been full of personal loss, life changes and other emotional turmoil. I've been so hard on myself in ways and have done everything I can to be a better person, to do more things to make me a better me.

Yeah. Sounds selfish. And it is.

But I want to be a better man. A better father. Better partner. Better wrestler / writer / author.

The trick is, I've been trying to do all of those things at once. And its not easy.

So... the time is now to narrow my focus for a bit. to streamline my online presence. to focus in on the areas that I find the most fulfillment. the areas that I will be the most committed to. 

Because those are the paths that will bring me joy. 

And with joy, will come its own reward.

I'm gonna do my best to be more diligent with my posting. To ignore the noise and to focus on what matters.

At the end of the day, that's all any of us can do.

Stay Tuned for more

Please check the links along the side for my Books and PWTees page. I appreciate all the eyeballs and attention you give me. 

AK

Power of the Light Side

So our friends over at the ForceCenter Podcast have put out a call for those of us within the community to share their thoughts and ideas of how Star Wars has brought the Light Side into our lives. Or how it has  elevated our understanding of things in life via the space fantasy / melodramatic metaphors we find from the stories told in a galaxy far, far away.

Given the things happening in my life right now, it's probably not surprising this is what's on my mind:

Sometime in the winter of 1983 my dad surprised me one evening and said "We're going to go to the movies." While I'd certainly watched movies with Dad before hand - usually whatever happened to be playing on one of the 5 channels available to us over the Winnipeg airwave rebroadcasts -  this was a special thing. We were going out to the theatres! A special trip, just me and my dad to the (locally) famous Metropolitan Theatre in the heart of downtown.

Turns out (spoiler alert), it was a double feature of Star Wars and the Empire Strikes Back. 

Watching on the big screen the adventures, the fun, the fear and the tragedy of those first 2 life-changing movies not only left an indelible mark on the way I look at the world, but created a real bond between myself and my dad. 

It's not an uncommon thing for sons to have trouble connecting with their parents, clearly. My father's upbringing was rougher than mine from a different era. And while he always treated me fairly and with love, I often grew up feeling like he and I were different. That we were interested in different things and didn't have very much in common.

Turns out - naturally - that as I gained life experience of my own that obviously we are very similar. We have shared interests, ideas, perspectives and are undeniably bonded in ways that go beyond our love of "westerns in space that tell family dramas in a succinct, spiritual format."

As such, being able to introduce my dad to the Mandalorian while I was recovering from a minor procedure took me back to being (almost) 7 years old. Watching his eyes light up and his smile broaden as Din Djarin and IG-11 mowed down that town of Child Rustlers in the most sci-fi realization of a classic western shootout I've ever seen committed to digital film was simply magical. Seeing him relive his own childhood in that moment, seeing his mind expand and his imagination awaken because of Star Wars rekindled the bond between us that honestly never left, but ebbed and flowed over time as everything does. 

That afternoon with him was one of the best times of my life.

As I write this my father is nearing the end of his time with us. No bacta tank or teched out mod will be able to keep him from passing on into the Force. But through the tears I am smiling. Because we are meant to grow beyond the paths they lay for us, as my daughter one day will do to me. Obviously there are many other important things that Dad gave and taught me beyond our oftentimes silly space shows, but being able to revisit something he'd shared with me that meant so much to the both of us ... well, it's just another way of knowing that "No one's ever really gone."

Thank you for reading. If my words today have moved you in any way please consider supporting a local Cancer Care Charity of your choosing. For example the good people at the Canadian Cancer Society are doing tremendous work in difficult times to provide help to as many suffering people as possible.

#MTFBWY

AK

The Power of Music

There’s a reason why “Music Composers” is a category that get thoroughly study-session by those who compete in the Movie Trivia Schmoedown. Primarily because in any visual medium no matter how good your storytelling is everything just clicks when the right music is played in the proper manner to elicit a greater response from the viewing public.

Often times this can be accused of being a crutch or a manipulation in order to bolster a tale that isn’t quite connecting. And to that I say “So fucking what?” If the goal at the end of any project is to make an emotional connection between your story and your audience you would be an idiot to not collaborate with as many other artists as possible in order to best achieve the desired result.

In fact the biggest challenge I have as a novelist is trying to find the right mood to better enhance the scene I am creating with my characters. Nothing would make me happier than to be able to underlay a soundtrack on all my eBooks or have a note in all the margins suggesting the songs I had on in the background while I crafted this chapter.

One of the most creative releases I have outside of writing and wrestling is video editing, and cutting images to music is one of the most enjoyable practices I engage in and certainly the one I would love to spend more of my time doing. Maybe that’ll be my Xmas present to myself, an updated desktop solely for videos. Hmmm…

Regardless; this topics comes to mind for two recent reasons.

The first came as a question from one of the wrestlers who for some Godforsaken reason has chosen me to mentor him. Among one of the many questions I get fielded on a semi-regular basis came the all important “What do you think of such and such song for my walk out music?” And boy, after 25 years of independent wrestling and seeing all kinds of bonkers trends, musical tastes and more I have witnessed some disastrous examples of dumb-fuckery for those making a key first impression upon their audience.

The first thing to remember in this case, is that the music should reflect not only who you are trying to portray, but who you actually ARE. I mean, I really like listening to the Beastie Boys, but under no circumstances should I have ever walked out to “No Sleep til Brooklyn.” And yet, that mistake I did make. Several times.

Nothing turns an audience off more than someone whose walk out music just doesn’t fit what they end up seeing. Perception truly is everything. So no matter how deeply you might like the hardest of hardcore death metal, if you walk through that curtain and don’t look like a bad ass shit-kicking machine the climb to having your audience respect the match you’re going to provide for them just got a lot steeper.

This isn’t to say “Pick something generic or bland.” Just pick something that suits you. Something that genuinely works with your presentation and mood. Being a “Try Hard” is fine, but people see right through that shit. So don’t get discouraged, play around with a few things until the right one sticks. You’ll know it when it happens.

The second reason I wanted to talk about this came as I was watching Episode 15 of “The Bad Batch” on the Disney-Plus.  This might be slightly spoilery but by this point you’re either in on the show or you’re judging me for watching a Star Wars cartoon on a Friday night. Either way, too bad.

In the penultimate episode of this season we have the pseudo reunion of the team with their estranged member Crosshair who has been ostensibly hunting them down since the pilot episode. After having the kind of dialogue and emotional discussion not normally found in most “cartoons for kids” we find the main characters suddenly surrounded by battle droids, expounding upon the original reason for which the Clones were all created. As the fight begins and things look lost we are treated to not only Crosshair joining in the fight and once again making the Bad Batch whole, we have the swelling of the shows main theme. But this time, composer Kevin Kiner changes the tone perfectly, making it less of an action march and into something triumphant and exultant. An audible cue that finally the team is back together and that all is as it should be. Even if only for a moment.

That moment brought literal chills to me. True story, I ain’t afraid of my emotions. That was a powerful moment in the show and the music helped the audience understand that it was important for us too.

Storytelling is rarely ever one thing. And while some people get bogged down in plot and minutiae, I think it’s important to remember the things that make us feel. And so long as you’re feeling things, the story is working.

 

AK

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