Alas we have returned from the Isle of Emeralds. We had an unbelievable time, we photographed a LOT of things, worked our butts to the bones, and washed up on the shores of our Montana bed beyond worn out, but filled with a serious and enduring warmth. What a trip.

Today for your little Matchbook post, I thought I could show you some cool stuff that my weird brain found interesting, exciting, beautiful, odd, or whatever else it found. My love language is, and always has been, “LOOK AT THIS!” so that’s what I’m doing for you here again today.

A quick reminder, these Matchbook posts, and my Sunday Editions, are literally made possible because I have a few paid members that help keep me financially Able to write for you. Without them, I simply would not be able to devote the time and energy required to keep Signal Fire alive. IF you want to pay it back, pay it forward, and help keep this place humming, we’d love to have you join our family.

Join The Signal Fire Family!

Onto the Randomities!

• GENER8ION - STORM featuring Yung Lean - Everyone and their brother is probably already talking about this bizarre, beautiful, unbelievably unique song and short film and mix of choreography, music, and art, but who cares, so am I. This combines so many things I love, This Is England vibe with the raw and gritty and film grain look I work with, music, and mesmerizing dance that combine to create something so, so, so much bigger than the sum of its parts. The slightly off-key singing, the slightly gross toxic masculinity that opens the film, and then the complete tonal shift at the end all make this magic. Just watch it, and watch it ALL, even if you don’t like the debauchery and shenanigans at the start. I promise, it’s worth it.

• Puma HardChorus - Similar vibe as above, but I stumbled on this (now 16 year old) video of Tottenham fans getting together for a Puma ad. Hard-scrabble football fans (the real football, not our American nonsense) that absolutely do NOT look like they’d be able to combine voices for something strangely beautiful, doing exactly that. There’s a bleakness to a lot of depictions of the UK in pop-culture, from the darkness it’s often shot in, to the lack of color worn by so many people in those depictions, and so when they lend their voices to one another to make art, it’s magical in a really goosebumpy way. Maybe more so because it’s not perfect. Perfectly imperfect, and I live for that shit.

• Beef Season 2 - I loved, mostly, the first season of the Netflix original Beef, and so far (we have a few episodes left) season 2 has been equally as great. What a strange depiction of what I fear is the common reality for so very, very many relationships in this modern adult world. The delicate art of settling, and the energy required to choose anything but. It’s hard to admit when things are inadequate for what your heart demands, it’s hard to take the steps to change your life when you hit those points, and this show is demonstrating that in every episode. We get comfortable, we get complacent, we change and forget to tell one another, and with that comes the consequences. Add onto all that the insane income inequality that this show highlights, and you’ve got a powerful message wrapped in a very pretty container. Absolutely worth a watch, but don’t expect to feel real good whilst doing so.

• The Antidote by Karen Russell - Just started this, so I cannot fully speak, but it’s absolutely been distracting me. I love the writing, I love the creation of such an intense sense of place, you can feel the sand and grit and ache and forlorn world that the Prairie Witch of this story inhabits. The opening prologue is maybe one of the most beautiful and intensely brutal bits of writing I’ve read in a long while, and it was really, really hard for me to get through because of it, but I’m glad it’s there, as it sets the tone immediately. Excited to read this in full and report back once I’m done.

  

• Chasers of the Light Bespoke Elopements - Self-promotion here, for one reason and one reason only…we just got back from shooting not one but TWO bespoke elopements in Ireland, and I have to just say this: THEY ARE ABSOLUTELY MAGICAL AND EVERYONE WHO IS THINKING OF GETTING MARRIED SHOULD CONTACT US AND WORK WITH US. That’s how strongly I feel. Get this for a stat: In 2026, the average cost for a wedding in the United States has ballooned to a staggering $36,000. That’s average. AVERAGE when you take into consideration all the costs at the end of the (one) day. Insane, and you don’t even get your honeymoon. What we do is different, we literally plan and curate not only your wedding/elopement itself, including me writing you a custom wedding ceremony, me officiating it, and Sarah and I photographing the entire thing, we also make you a full itinerary for your whole wedding trip and honeymoon. We do this wherever you wish to go, not just overseas, and we really, really want to do more in the United States (Hello Route 66 elopement anyone? hello New Orleans, hello Savannah, GA, hello National Park elopements!?) and not just in Ireland, Scotland, England, and Wales. We map it out, provide perfect lodging/food/experience suggestions, driving routes, and basically make it a dream trip that will stay with you forever at a FRACTION of the price. We’ll get some testimonials from our clients put together, but yeah, I LOVE this, it’s life-changing, and it’s beautiful, and I really love the pivot we’re making towards more of this. Sorry, just really, really passionate about this.

  

• Fade Into You (cover) by Gregory Alan Isakov and Sylvan Esso - My best good buddy in all the land just released a cover of one of my favorite old songs, Fade into You by Mazzy Star. It’s gorgeous, and the combo of his voice with Sylvan Esso is lovely as hell and just fits perfectly into a slightly cloudy and stormy Spring Day. I love my friend, love his art, and love that I’m alive while he’s making it. Give it a spin.

Hope these tickled your fancies.

I Love you all.

Be good.

Back in the saddle of things, or at least trying to be. Here are some random little updates from our simple little lives, with a very special guest, Gilly (the dog).

Also, as promised, below are the photos of my absolutely ridiculous driver’s license renewal appointment that had Sarah and Addie almost peeing their pants laughing so hard. It’s a tradition, what can I say.

I love you all.

Be good.

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One of my best friends in the world, the incredibly talented musician Gregory Alan Isakov, and I have long had something in common that fuels so much of our art, something we only found one name for:

Window starin’.

We find ourselves, often, sitting, staring out a window, and letting our brains completely go. Where they go, we don’t really know, but when they come back I believe they carry with them the answers we were seeking, the words we were needing, the music we were always making.

Today I wanna play with that. Let’s do this…

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I’ve got a thing for ancient places.

Old staircases, worn in the middles from a thousand thousand feet descending, ascending, carrying trays of food, old books leather wrapped, candles dripping thick wax to throw light on stone walls. I’ve got a thing for ruins, for rubble where walls once stood, for light pouring through paneless windows, casting streaks of shine onto the cobbles below.

It’s time, really, time and its inevitable passing that keeps me in love with these magic places, that keeps me returning to them, seeking them all around the world when we wander.

A thousand lives lived in these spots, a thousand different souls wearing away solid rock to something smooth. It’s hand-carved banisters now in decay, it’s the view that shines through the holes where windows once filled. It’s all that cannot, that should not, be renovated. It’s the reminder that no matter what we make, no matter what we try to re-make, to fix, to destroy in order to make room for the progress we convince ourselves we need, there is one thing we cannot ever get back, one thing that will always be irreplaceable. One thing, only:

Time.

I think I’ve got a thing for seeing time’s passing, be it in face of hand-stacked rock walls, the weathering of wood, or the wrinkling of human faces. I think I worry when that display is threatened, when people seek to renovate away the evidence that endurance grants, when they Botox or cheek-implant or lip-fill away the laugh lines and crows feet that came from so many hours laughing, so many others wiping away tears.

There’s a rule in design, and I think it should apply to just about everything in life: “Never remove what you cannot put back.” We’ve gotten so convinced these days that everything can be improved, optimized, rolled back, that we tear down all that was to make room for all that we’re so damn convinced will be better. Will be new, right?

I just want soul. I just want a reminder of our ephemerality, I just want to remember that our stay here is so short, so fleeting, and so much more beautiful for it. I want to see the slow erosion of all things, be they hard as granite or as soft as skin. Show me what once was in the patina of what is now. What a gift this existence here, what an absolute honor to walk this world for a time, to see what was built by hands not our own, to witness the artistry of stone masons who etched their symbols into the walls they set, or those who laid the roofing tiles, the carpenters who made doors and floors of mahogany and oak. You can make something newer, you can lay carpet atop it all, but you cannot buy the soul once you’ve stolen it. You cannot put it back.

In truth though, this isn’t about houses, it’s not about ruins or stones or cobbles or mason marks in window sills. It’s about us, it’s about love, it’s about humanity, it’s about our own relationship to our own bodies. This is about this strange and morbid tendency we have adopted as a species to always believe, truly believe at a deep and fundamental level, that what’s new is best, and that we should be pursuing that, no matter the cost.

We seek the fire of the beginning in our relationships, convincing ourselves that once those flames turn to embers (though they burn hotter) that we’ve done something wrong, we’ve lost something along the way. New, we think, we gotta find something new, those first kiss goosebumps, that electricity we swear is worth more.

We allow needles into our foreheads, into the soft skin above our lips, we slice the delicate bits beneath our ears and allow it all to be stretched taught and then fastened somewhere the scar will never be seen. We iron flat the wrinkles we’ve earned through surviving a world built to undo us. What of all we found hilarious, what of the proof that we found joy? What of the tears we cried at beauty or betrayal, what of the hands held then dropped, and what of all that furrowed our brow and left quotation marks between our eyebrows? What of the parentheses of our smiles?

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These are those purchased with time. These are those paid for with the only currency we can never earn, steal, or even counterfeit more of—the hours and minutes, the seconds and years, of our tiny little lives.

Still we burn things down and throw them away when they show signs of their aging, when they no longer carry that brand-new scent. All these houses sit in ashes after we chase so many new sparks, all the creaks and stains of what was once solid oak. Still we weep when we realize far too late that we cannot grow a new oak tree in a weekend, we cannot undo what was done.

Give me the historical features of this human condition, of this human life. Give me the wrinkles, the scars, the geological signs of grief or giddiness. Give me the face stained by memory, give me the house that took its time to become the home it became.

I ramble when I am weary, and I am wearier than I’ve been in so long with the way things go these days.

I think I’m tired of the great big push for the next big thing. I think I’m tired of the “then I’ll be” mentality. “If I can lose 10 more pounds, then I’ll be happy.” “If I just got that raise, then I’ll be less stressed.” I think I’m just tired of the treadmill we’ve all been cattle prodded onto, the endless treadmill that keeps us buying and wanting and “needing” and comparing and forgetting. Mostly forgetting.

I think we forget what we’re here for, I think we forget what matters. I think we forget that it all comes back to time, in the end, it always has. We wake and we choose, every single day, what we’ll invest our energy, our soul, our love, into. We have so little time, why do we waste it on all that never matters? Why do we worry so much of what we look like, of what pieces of ourselves show the devastatingly lovely passage through a lifetime? Why do we destroy what was, aim for such horrifically triumphant renovation, instead of realizing that we cannot buy back what we have lost, we cannot, we cannot, we cannot.

It’s just time, in the end, and I’m here to shout about it a spell, I guess. If you’re tired of a world that keeps trying to convince you to delete, to replace, to upgrade, to refresh, to renovate, your home, your car, your hair, your skin, your life, your SOUL every few months, I suppose I will say you are welcome here. I keep the old wood, I cherish your cracks.

I wish for you such perfect understanding of the fleeting fury of this brief blip here, I wish for you the clarity to see through the haze of it all into what matters. Just love, really. Just love, and just time.

Time.

I love you all.

Be good.

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Last I left you, we were at Sarah getting ready to photograph what is absolutely, positively, the rainiest, wettest, most insanely gorgeous Bespoke Elopement of all time.

Quite simply, IT POURED ALL DAY. Alana and Jake were drenched to the very bone, as were we, but the images were just beyond beautiful. I’ll pop a few below for those who want a very, very brief flavor of them!

Onward to the images of the rest of March!

Click on the first and it’ll let you see them bigger and scroll through each one :)

We returned from our Cannon Beach adventure to a March filled with the most unbelievably inconsistent weather I think we’ve ever had. It’d be 70 degrees one day, then 30 the next, bright sun and stunning clouds, then high winds and even, as you can see, massive snowfalls that had me shoveling 9 times in 15 hours. We did our best to navigate it with grace. We captured bird prints in snowfall, the shadow of snow falling from our pine trees, sunsets galore, and the strange way blue skies look behind bright white on green trees.

Then, oh baby then, Addie had 4 friends over on Prom night to get ready ALL day long, which man, I didn’t realize just how big a deal it’s gotten haha. Sarah made the most ridiculous charcuterie board I’ve ever seen using tips we learned from our friends who own a catering company in Ireland (Hello salami roses! hahaha) and it went off like she was basically a genius. Which she is. Duh.

Prom was amazing, the girls seemed to have had a splendid time, everyone looked amazing, and Sarah got emotional. Shocking turn of events on that one. :) The next day, we were so excited that our dear friend Gilly BERTO was home from Cal Poly for Spring Break so we got to hang out and hike and even see a sign that said GOLDEN RETRIEVER PUPPIES in a parking lot. Clearly we stopped, held and snuggled them, and really really wanted to come home with one. Alas, Gilly (the dog) would have been sad and pouty, so we did not. The week that was wrapped up with a drive to Missoula, where I went to college, to watch Henry run in his very first collegiate track and field meet. He ran the 1500 smokin’ fast, well under 4 minutes, and that kinda speed just blows my socks off. I could never. Would never. But still, awe.

The March of Strangest Weather ended with what most months here do, jaw-dropping, breathtaking sunsets of all kinds and calibers. We get it all here, and not a day goes by that we don’t feel monumentally lucky.

I adore the little details of a little life, the feathers left on wet ground, the moon peaking out behind them. The storms in the far off valley, the ravens that play in the failing light. I love this life, and I am so blown away by all the spectacular beauty that hides inside it.

I hope you are too, and if you’re not, I hope you reach out and I’ll try my best to help you find it again.

I love you all.

Be good.

Pretty Please, Join The Family

Shorter one but packs a punch with an exciting announcement for our dear B Nana.

More soon. Poem below.

I love you all.

Be good.

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I’m not going to mince words here: The current administration, the current political climate, is doing more to undermine, reverse, and threaten every single bit of progress we’ve made on conservation, than any before it. These are facts, not debatable, these are truths.

Earth Day is tomorrow, and more than all things, I just feel sad. I feel sad for what’s happening, what’s being sold off, damaged, ruined, and ignored. I want to celebrate this Mother Earth, but I more feel like mourning it.

Anyway, apologies for the downer nature of this, let’s try to turn it around.

Let’s do this…

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It’s 2am and you are an illuminated thing in an otherwise dark room. You sit at the edge of the bed, and Doctor Google or ChatGPT MD just told you 17 different ways that you’re probably going to die. You hear a sound, faintly, and can’t quite place it…

Three dots blink on the screen of your last text message, they’ve seen what you said and now you wait for them to respond. The dots blink, and blink, and blink, and with every passing second you’re more convinced you’ve upset them, you’ve f’d up, you’ve ruined everything. There’s that sound again, louder now, it sounds like hoofbeats, like they are running…

The phone rings, it’s the dermatologist and you’ve been waiting a week for the results from your tiny little biopsied spot she carved out of your skin. Immediately your heart races, and you hear it again. It’s hoofbeats for certain, and dammit, it must be a Zebra. It has to be. There’s no other possibility.

Except, it’s probably not. Except, it’s probably a horse.

Dr. Theodore Woodward, an American medical researcher at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, once delivered a wollop of wisdom in a single sentence to his students and fellow doctors, a piece of advice that is applicable to so much more than medicine. He said:

Horses, not zebras. But not this time, say we, not us. It’s gotta be a zebra, it’s gotta be.

We hear those hoofbeats all the time in our lives, always at different volumes, and almost always we begin preparing ourselves for the worst. For extinction. After all, we think, it’s probably worst case scenario this time around.

Every headache could be a tumor, every bout of fatigue a sign of cancer that must be spreading through our body. Every bit of criticism at work could be a sign of our impending firing, every mistake we make whilst raising our children will surely cause permanent damage. One bad day in a relationship probably means we’re going to break up, right? Divorce right around the corner. These are the zebras we swear we see out of the corners of our eyes, the stripes racing past just on the periphery.

These are the wild creatures, untamed and still roaming the plains of our mental health. These are the feral cousins that refuse to be reigned, that trample the grasses and wreak havoc on our emotional property. These are the rare creatures that come so seldom we can nearly say never, that we convince ourselves must be racing towards us every single time we hear the sound of these metaphorical hooves.

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Only we’re almost always wrong. I know not always, but damn near. There will certainly be times when the thundering sound in the back of our mind really might be a zebra, hell, might be an entire dazzle (did you know a group of zebras is often called a dazzle, or a zeal?!) of them racing our way and in that case, please do seek the help required, but mostly, almost always, it’s a horse. It’s just a horse.

Horses are ordinary, we think, while zebras rare. Horses are indeed ordinary, but they are also strong, they are also able to be led. Horses, we can gently rope and walk back through the gate. Horses, we can tame.

Tame we shall. Or should, at least. If zebras are chaos, if they are rarity, spectacle, and the worst case scenario we swear is upon us, horses are the opposite. Horses are familiarity, they are stewardship, they are hope, and they are the good news (or less bad, sometimes) in the face of what could be disaster.

I saw an interview with Jeff Bridges, THE DUDE, the other day, and he said something so simple and beautiful, it resonated enough to find its way into this post today. It was his advice on how to stay positive during tough times, when we’re waiting for that test result, when we’re watching those dots on that text message blink and blink, when it all seems to be falling apart. He said:

We must battle this certainty, because he’s right, we never ever know what’s going to come. We have a choice, and it is gifted to us every single time anything arises. We can assume the worst, we can imagine every single hoofbeat is another zebra charging directly at us, or we can hope for the best. We can wait, we can recognize that hope is not blind and naive optimism, but it is actionable. It’s a tangible decision that requires effort, and that effort is transformative.

We humans are built to expect the zebras, to arm ourselves against the worst that could be cresting the horizons of our days. In all aspects of our lives we ready ourselves for this false inevitability. We are so good at catastrophizing, but so innately horrible at going the other way, at falling on the side of hope. We have this bizarre tendency to hear these hoofbeats and convince ourselves of these zebras, these dazzles of stripes, and yes, sometimes they may well be. But. But. Mostly, they are horses, only horses, and those horses can be tamed, they can be reigned, and they can be brought back inside our gates.

Jeff Bridges got it right, we don’t ever know what’s gonna happen (man), and in this is freedom, not failure. Freedom, not fear. Certainty is what fear offers, it’s the make-believe answer to the question we don’t even need to ask. Fear shouts “I know exactly how this will end.” Hope instead whispers, “I don’t, but I’ll keep showing up anyway.” Hope is not denial. It’s not false positivity. It’s not even pretending. Hope is understanding that the vast majority of the time it IS horses and not zebras. It’s checking the facts, asking the second questions, waiting a bit longer to react. It’s tossing a lasso out over the necks of those horses, and gently walking them back inside the fenceline.

Most things are not catastrophic, friends. Most things are not worst case scenario. Fear loves certainty because it hates our patience in the unknowing.

Hope is not, and never has been, the belief that we’ll never hear the sounds of hoofbeats getting closer and closer. Hope is not the misconception that we’ll never see stripes at all. Hope is the understanding and overwhelming realization that they were probably just horses all along.

All the “zebras” you’re hearing right now, all the hoofbeats in the back of your brain, what are they really if you stop and look hard enough? Maybe we’re not meant to only seek silence in this life, only look for the moments without that thundering roar. Maybe, we are just supposed to notice the music their legs can make, feel it vibrate through to the center of us, and wait.

Just wait, to see what animal is actually coming our way.

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Another month passes, another simple life captured in photographs. The little Fuji hangs around my neck more often than it does not, and because of this, I’m able to chronicle our routines, our tiny adventures, our wanderings, our love.

I love this.

March was full, only this time we got to leave Montana after a long time of stillness and remaining stationary. One of our special Bespoke Elopements, in which we plan the adventure, officiate the wedding with a custom-written ceremony, make the flowers, and photograph it all, took place in one of our favorite spots in the world: Cannon Beach, Oregon. That spot holds extra special value to Lady G and I, as that’s where I proposed all the way back in 2017. Ahh.

The month was SO full that this little Fuji Roundup has to span TWO posts, so tune in next week to catch Part 2 and the stories that accompany the images!

Click on the first and it’ll let you see them bigger and scroll through each one :)

We kicked things off only a few days into March by first driving to Bozeman (as Helena’s airport sucks and got rid of almost every flight) to take a quick hop over the Rocky Mountains to Portland, before driving through the late darkness to Cannon Beach. We had to stop to grab dinner to avoid traffic, as of course we landed at 5pm, just in time for rush hour traffic to spill from the city like a flood. We got in too late to see ANYTHING, but we could hear the sound of waves washing up onto the shoreline, and instantly our hearts felt calm.

Woke the next morning to wander early on the beach, say hello to our old friend Haystack Rock, and of course get Lady G her much needed coffee and me a tea. It was quite literally the worst tea I’ve ever had, as there were these weird floating bits of somewhat burned brown rice in the bag, and it was also like $7. Insane. When the barista asked Sarah if it was “Sarah with an H?” she said yes. Somehow, she thought that meant the H went before the R. That’s a first. Wandered to Arcadia Beach, and started scouting locations for the Elopement ceremony that was to come the next day.

Scouting, for us, means investigating almost every corner of the places we’re going to be shooting. We really want every experience to be unique, and filled with as much beauty, intimacy, and f’ing splendor as possible. We found amazing shells, stunning sea stones, ferns, insane forests, sea stacks, and lots of Sarah just being so sillily gorgeous I can’t understand what she sees in me. I love her in light, I love her in silhouette. Yep.

So much wildlife surrounded us on this particular trip, a nod from the universe I think, as I’ve always believed animals are our spirit guides through whatever we’re doing. Go the right way, the animals show up and tell you this, deviate from the path you’re supposed to be on for the serenity of your own little soul, you’ll find a startling lack of them. We saw elk, eagles, sea birds, squirrels, strange little jellyfish type creatures called By-the-wind-sailors, and more. Spent the rest of our first day wandering Cannon Beach, not buying a single thing other than some lunch fixings, and just fell into the slow and familiar rhythm that the sea seems to always want to provide. So many little moments snuck in, more than I can fit here, but it felt so good to be away from home again with Sarah. I love our bizarre wandering life.

Wrapped up our time before the big Elopement with a sunset walk in the birds and orange glow, and snuggled into bed watching “My Lady Jane” that was on Amazon Prime. We weirdly loved it and I’m not super bummed they aren’t making another season it seems. Lame how shows you randomly stumble on and begin to love just cannot survive the onslaught that is the streaming wars.

We woke the next day and spent it leisurely eating a breakfast I cooked us, popping out to the ocean, and then coming back in to rest and stay dry before the wedding festivities with our (now) dear friends Alana and Jake, who were so lovely to trust us with their entire wedding elopement extravaganza. I also snuck this photo of Sarah getting ready because I LOVED the light around her. Like I said…Stunner.

This was just the first bit of March, and so much more happened after. SO, next week, stay tuned for the second half of the month that was, the things that filled our goofy little lives together.

I love you all.

Be good.

Join The Family, Keep Signal Fire Alive!

Quick little dispatch from the road today, and a small mini tour of a monastic site over 1100 years old. Holy moly.

More soon my dear friends.

I love you all.

Be good.

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You know what they say, no sense is more tied to memory than that of smell. Scent carries memory, that memory carries the stories of our lives. I love this, and I am obsessed with not only finding new scents, but categorizing them in my mind, in finding what they remind me Of.

I love scents, but more, I Love how they transport me to somewhere else, to somewhen else.

Let’s do this…

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Here’s a bit of uncomfy truth to kick off your Sunday:

You probably don’t know you’re doing it, but you’re feeding your monsters. You’re watering your weeds.

We’re just wrapping up the first season of this new year, just tipping out of Winter and into the second quarter of 2026, and as such we’re probably collectively looking at a mental discard pile of a whole slew of things we promised ourselves we’d do, resolutions we swore we’d keep this time around. It happens, I get it.

Saying that, I think it’s time we had a little check-in, a little revisit, and I thought I’d speak to you by speaking to myself and those I love by mentioning a habit I see repeated over and again. I thought I’d bring up the consequence of that habit, and see if we can’t do something about it.

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To put it in simple terms, what I see all around me is people rewarding so many of the destructive behaviors they most wish to stop.

I read an article awhile ago called “Things That Don’t Work” that had a list of 43 things that have been proven to Not work, and most had the proof linked to just how they don’t actually do what they claim to do. Everything from Acupuncture arguing with people to trying to explain the rules to board games, all the way down to my aforementioned Quality over Quantity (see the article I wrote by clicking below) fallacy.

One of the items on the list, however, really struck my interest and made me want to write today. Number 18 said this:

I will say, I’ll always give money to people that ask for it in the street, because I’m entirely positively they don’t want to be asking for money in the middle of that metaphorical intersection, but it’s the underlying and overarching point he was making I wanted to address today. Subsidizing undesired behavior. Or, simply, watering our weeds, or, poetically, feeding our monsters. We do this all the time, almost constantly, and then we wonder and fret about how tired we all feel, how burned out, how over it we have collectively become. All these things we claim to hate, we know we want to avoid, somehow seem to persevere or often even multiply. We stand back, we wonder why.

“Where?!” you ask, as you are like me and desire example instead of abstraction. We claim to hate the constancy of negativity bombarding us from the news cycles. We claim to hate the rage bait, the misinformation, the extremism from trolls that seems never-ending. Then we share them, we retweet, quote, repost their hateful videos. Then we argue with them, shout back on online forums or comment threads. Every single interaction is a donation, a drop of water to these weeds, a giant bite for the monster to consume. We are the oxygen to the exact fires we wish to put out.

Politically we speak about wanting integrity and accountability in our elected offices, we want leadership, we want decency and humanity. We watch in horror then send the clips of our administration to our friends and family, “Look how bad THIS is,” we text, and in doing so transform ourselves into the marketing department of our own worst enemies. We want all these things, these traits that should be inherent into our highest positions of power, but instead we reward fanatical performance, cruelty, absolute outrage. We reduce ourselves to the sordid soundbites and the spectacle of it all.

Share Signal Fire by Tyler Knott Gregson

It does not stop here, and never has. We all agree that corporate behemoths like Amazon and Apple are creating monopolies on our consumer culture, we complain about surveillance taking over capitalism as ads for products we mention in the “privacy” of our living rooms or dining room tables somehow find their way onto our social media feeds. We look out windows at a rapidly warming planet and an environment being destroyed and we feel the fear rise in the pits of our stomach. Then what? We buy the product on PRIME DAY DEALS because it was 45% off, we click AGREE on the terms and services without bothering to read, we welcome Alexa and Siri and Google Assistant into our homes because it makes it easier than having to manually turn up the volume or turn off the lights at night.

We know this, but we push it away, we don’t feel like its personal, we don’t feel like it’s really touching us. But it is friends. It is.

What of the “friends” who drain us, and leave us feeling more empty than when we began spending time with them? What of the family member that manipulates every situation to somehow seem like you’re the villain and they’re the victim? What of coworkers that make each room a bit more toxic, but somehow that it’s not their fault? What of all the Yes when what we truly want to shout is a No? What of work emails that come in at 9pm and that creeping obligation to respond, even though we’re at home, even though we shouldn’t?

We keep showing up, we keep answering, we keep allowing, we keep saying “Sure” and then feel miserable inside. We keep accommodating, more than anything else. It’s loyalty, say we, but really, it’s just constant permission given freely to all that holds us back, holds us down, wears us out.

Bottom line, we complain, we recognize the problems, we call them out, but then we fund them daily with our time, our money, our energy, our sense of calm, our lives.

We “good” people are subsidizing the “bad” behaviors of so many because so often we don’t want to be rude, we don’t want to ruffle feathers, hurt feelings. We let people cut in line and stay silent though we might be stewing inside. We let the arrogant and crass command a room, we let ourselves be walked on. By doing this, we’re paying the tax, by being nice, I argue we’re actually being more cruel to the whole, to the collective. We are directly incentivizing the actual breakdown of the system we’re trying so hard to uphold.

We’re feeding the monsters, be they giant and casting shadows unimaginably large over the whole of this country, or parasitically small and infecting the minutiae of our daily lives. We’re watering the weeds then we’re standing in dusty gardens, holding the soil we once knew as loamy and alive as dust, and we’re weeping at what once was. We’re protesting this by marching, by shouting, by posting, by arguing, by throwing our voices into the echo chambers we’re all surrounded by, and then being confused as it feeds the monster, as it satiates their ego, their aggression, their power.

What we need is refusal, what we require is disengagement. We have to stop feeding them, we have to stop participating in and inadvertently aiding their growth.

Mumford and Sons once sang: “In these bodies we will live, in these bodies we will die, And where you invest your love, you invest your life.” Now is our time to choose where we do that investing, now is the time to refuse to give it away to all that hurts us.

We must choose:

• Where our energy goes, and who deserves it.

• What we amplify with our own voices.

• What we normalize, and let ourselves grow accustomed to.

• What we tolerate.

• What we allow to continue.

Every system runs on consent, some given, some taken, some ignored, even those most broken. We cannot give ours any longer, we cannot abide ours stolen anymore.

In the end, when the dust of our garden settles, the world we live in is the one we pay for with our choices, with the food from within us. It’s the one funded by our money, our attention, our silence, our tolerance.

In the end, what you water grows.

Choose wisely.

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A few short days from now, the lovely Lady G and I will be once again on the Emerald Isle. We’ll be staring down vistas like this, we’ll be photographing not one, but two wonderful elopements, and we’ll be sharing time with one of my BFFs in the world, Anna “B Nana” and her handsome fella, Danny.

I cannot wait.

In the meantime, you goobers need some Brain Rain, and it’s time I distract you with things that have been distracting ME lately. Randomities (not a word but I think it is), things I read, watched, whatever.

Just a reminder, these Matchbook posts are provided free for everyone literally due to the generosity and patronage of our beautiful paid family. They keep this place alive for all of us, and I’d love if you joined us.

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• A Framework For Letting It Go (Whatever “It” Is) - Whatever “it” is is the key signifier here, and the reason I love this little article. I’m not sure if I’ve shared it before here, and if I have that’s fine it just means it’s rad. This article has a simple 14 point, step-by-step process on how we, all of we, can start letting more go that we needn’t hang onto. We all hold on, so tightly, to so much, and it’s time we released that weight. #11: Reclaim YOUR Power. Yeah. Read this one friends.

• The Madison - Ok, I’m just gonna be blunt…I am NOT a Taylor Sheridan (of Yellowstone/Lioness/Landman) fame. I think he promotes a strange view of toxic masculinity, and I think he has done a lot to make Montana seem like something very specific that it very much is not, and it’s caused a lot of issues for those of us who ARE from here, and still live here. Saying that, my Mom had been insisting we try his new show, The Madison, and we were very reluctant. We shouldn’t have been. I’m not at all ashamed to say it’s pretty f’ing great, from top to bottom, and while it does have some funny little stereotypically “Montana” things it might get a bit wrong, the acting Michelle Pfieffer is doing is out of this world, the scenery is stunning, and it’s presenting such a gorgeous, nuanced look at grief, and what it is to live a meaningful life. I have a feeling a lot more people from New York and California are going to once again move here after seeing this, because dammit, Montana is special. Yeah. Watch this one.

• 1000 True Fans - I’ve spoken about this before, but never in great detail. Stumbled across this article again and was once again blown away by how simple success in a world like the one I have to inhabit can look. I don’t need a million fans, I don’t need a million followers. I need 1,000 true fans willing to say, with their voice and their wallet, that the art I’ve spent the last 20 years making is valuable. Is worth something. 1000. Full disclosure, the very small income I generate from this Signal Fire is one very big part of the income I need to support my family and my life, and without the paid community, I wouldn’t be able to keep this place alive at all. I’ve lost A LOT of paid subscribers from this beautiful family over the year, and it is making it a lot more difficult. SO, read this article, figure out what your niche is (and if I can help you find YOUR 1000 fans, I will!) and then see if you’re able to join our family. We’d all love to have you!

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• The Weight of the Woods - Dermot Kennedy - New record for one of our favorite Irish recording artists! It’s been quite awhile since he’s released anything new, and so this was a welcome little gift from the universe, especially as we’re leaving for Ireland on Monday! I love his music, though I will admit, sometimes each song kinda sounds a lot like the song before it, but I love hearing his accent, and I Love the roots in Irish storytelling. How can you not? Give it a listen, you might just love it.

• EVERYTHING ARTEMIS II - I’m a massive, MASSIVE space nerd. I always have been, since the day I met Sonny Carter, an Astronaut who became a family friend, and who actually flew ON the Space Shuttle Discovery and made 79 orbits of our beautiful Earth. He tragically passed away after his mission (and was already assigned onto a 2nd mission) in a commercial plane crash, which is just the ultimate unfair irony…he goes all the way to space safely, but cannot make it on a simple domestic flight. That said, watching these brave souls venture further than any humans in the history of our planet, seeing the images they have captured, and hearing their wisdom about a world without division has been a stunning and gorgeous reprieve from the horrors of our world right now. I sob every single time I see any update. I cannot help it. We can be so much more than we’re being allowed to be, and dammit, I want that hope to spread. Some of my favorite images NASA has shared, below, as well as the official Mission photograph from Sonny’s mission. I still have the sticker he sent me that’s shown in the top right.

  

  

  

  

  

  That’s all I’ve got for now dear Friday friends. I hope something in there struck your fancy, or lit your candle. I really do.

I also hope you have a beautiful weekend, and I hope you find that all you need is what you have and all you have is more than you could have ever imagined.

I Love you all.

Be good.

Some fun little updates today, another poem from my original book read, and a special guest from Gilly.

Also, next week we’ll be in Ireland on Wednesday and so, internet connection allowing, we’ll be broadcasting from the Emerald Isle for our Fireside. Won’t wanna miss that one!

Keep scrolling to see the poem I read today!

I love you all.

Be good.

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This one might be hard for some people, hell, I know quite a few in my own personal life that will struggle with it. Let’s face it, we’re our own worst, loudest, and most cruel critics sometimes. It’s always been this way.

What if it didn’t have to be? What if we had another choice? What if instead of picking ourselves apart, we could do something different, we could celebrate what we once shied from?

Let’s do this…

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If I hadn’t been tipped off to it, I don’t know if I would ever truly noticed.

Sure, I’d paid attention whilst wandering at night through dozens of strange cities, both foreign and domestic. Sure I’d seen the floor to ceiling windows fronting a house or apartment, but I don’t know if I ever registered the lack of curtains, the lack of closed blinds.

Walk around enough cities at the blue hour and beyond and you’ll become a connoisseur of a million lives you’re not living, you’ll grow accustomed to looking in and feeling your mind wander off, imagining what it’d be to call that place home. I’ve played this game with myself all my life when in places unfamiliar, looking up, looking over, seeing the warm yellow light pouring from the windows above or across from me, seeing the furniture placed, the art on the walls, the bits and bobs that live on the shelves, little tchotchkes worthy enough to be bought or saved. Until I read a certain article though, I don’t know if I thought much beyond that.

The Atlantic ran an article two years ago called “Why Rich People Don’t Cover Their Windows,” and it was one of those bizarre “ah-ha” moments after I finished it. I’d never made the correlation I don’t think, never found the strange connection between all those houses I could see in, and all those I could not. I believe location is a huge part of it, as most of the uncovered windows I’d experienced were not, in fact, American. Still, I imagine if I could travel back inside my memory to all that warm light in all those unblinded windows, who knows, maybe they would be the same there too.

The article talks about how a fixture of “high-end” homes in America seems to be, wherever you happen to live, uncovered windows. The trend has been studied, it seems, and the results are overwhelmingly clear: the decision to close, or not close, your curtains or blinds, is partly driven by class. One major study from 2013 showed that “Americans who earn more than $150,000 are almost twice as likely to leave windows uncovered as those making $20,000 to $29,000.” How bizarre.

The reasons for this are plentiful, and they are oft debated. Everything from the idea of safety for those rich enough to afford it, to the idea of exhibitionism, and the truth is the use of window coverings, curtains, and blinds, has shifted and evolved more than once over the centuries, but it all reduces down for me to something much simpler, something much harder to debate at all:

“Pride” has become a status symbol, a luxury that some struggle so much harder to afford.

What happens to a society that evolves thus? What happens when shame becomes somewhat architectural, when privacy becomes a choice dictated by privilege? What happens when wealth buys visibility, poverty invisibility, and that visibility is a flex to the world around you? What happens when we pretend it’s about security at all?

People do not leave their windows open because they feel safe, they leave them uncovered because they feel untouchable, because feeling anything other than that never even occurred to them, at all.

Walk around neighborhoods in your cities, or on your next trip through the urban environments in these United States and see for yourselves. Wealthy neighborhoods, and perhaps you didn’t even know them to be so before now, have homes designed to be seen, to be peered into. Here are the windows as tall as the walls, the soft light pouring out, the lamps in the dormers, the globe light glow. Wander through a low-income counterpart now, so often it’s heavy curtains, it’s boards over the glass, bars over that. Lights low, blinds drawn. What happens when one home becomes a stage, while the other stays a shelter?

I’ve been bothered beyond measure over the year and a few months since things changed at a governmental level in this country, I’ve been struggling with the juxtaposition between opulence and poverty that exist so close in proximity to one another. The article, which I stumbled upon again recently, brought all this to the surface once more, and I was disturbed enough to write this piece as a testimony against it. This be but little, but it’s something.

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I thought of these homes as more than just houses, but statements. I thought of what they represented. I thought about how they teach us of wealth and its lack, that having wealth teaches people to expand in all ways. Bigger homes, louder voices, brighter rooms bathed in natural light with no regard to the rising costs to heat, or cool, those spaces. I thought of these open windows and how they are a trend of this affluence.

Poverty, however, teaches the opposite, doesn’t it? Poverty asks for a smaller presence, for a quieter existence. Poverty asks for windows covered, not because they are protecting prying eyes from all they have, but because they are hiding the absences, the lacks where uncovered windows show excesses. Here are the dimmed lights, if they come on at all outside.

I follow the trickle down of this, too. I follow where the uncovered windows leads my brain to travel, the truths it uncovers. I think of how wealth and poverty are always teaching lessons, though they be not the same. I thought too of Pride, in what we have, sure, but more, in what we are. Or at the very least, what we tell ourselves we are. I thought of the pairing of attributes when set on either side of the wealth scale, and I realized how far the trickle trickles.

Confidence on the side of wealth, we call charisma. Place it with poverty, we call it arrogance, we call it aggression. The rich opt for minimalism, sparse walls and few pieces of decor or art, we call it elevated aesthetic. The poor do it, and it’s deprivation, it’s lack. What of privacy when handed to the privileged? Mystique, we call it, that old movie-star charm. What when held by those afflicted by poverty? Shame, most likely.

Still it trickles, still we feel it seep. Social media, so far from being immune it actually acts as perpetuator. Instagram somehow transformed itself into the un-curtained windows of the world wide webs. We curate, we hide our messiness, be it literal or metaphorical, we mask our struggle. No smallness here, we say, no clutter, no need for bars over windows. Look here, say many, we’ve no need for the crop of poverty, the filter of shame, look here, see our success?

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I don’t know where I wanted this to go when I began writing it, I don’t know what I was even truly trying to say. Sometimes, I write what I feel and I feel what I feel because I’m bombarded by the great big everything around me. I thought of the windows I’d looked into on the trips I’d taken, then asked myself truly, if I noticed the neighborhoods those uncovered windows were in. Not then, said I to I, but now I see. Now I know. I think sometimes I write these pieces as a mirror to our society, but also as a reminder to myself.

I wrote this because I thought of the staggering inequity in this country, now, then, and the indefinacy (I know, it’s indefiniteness but I think this sounds prettier so deal with it) of always as long as we allow people to become trillionaires whilst others are starving to death in tent camps only blocks from one another, and I felt sick. It’s not about the houses, it’s not about the windows, it’s not about if you have curtains or not. It’s about what those choices say, what they stand for, what they mean and it’s about how I want so desperately to do something about it.

In the end, I’m largely impotent to any kind of change at all. I can donate to the food shares, I can beg you all to upgrade your subscriptions because I so desperately need the help, I can hold up the mirrors, but I can’t fix it. Not really. The rich might leave their windows totally open because they’re not afraid of being seen, the poor might close them because they’re secretly afraid of being judged, and a million reasons in between.

I still believe, as I watch the news and see billionaires made daily, that pride has become a status symbol, that in a world where so many risks have been vanquished, we no longer hide from danger, but from shame.

Where we go from here, I don’t know, but I think conversations like this have to happen, and I think we have to ask the questions that have answers that make us uncomfortable.

What say you? What are your answers to the many questions I asked in this piece? What now, what next, what other indicators exist beyond the windows without blinds stretching from floor to roof, have you noticed? This community is built for and on questions like these, or people like You, and I think together we can make a difference, however small.

I look up, and I look in when I wonder. I imagine a life inside the homes I see. I know now, it won’t just be the uncovered windows I allow myself to play make-believe with, but all of them.

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It’s been a bit since I’ve shared a poem with you, which is silly and stupid of me probably because that’s most likely how 97% of you came to find me.

I’m really good at the business side of all this crap, as you can tell. REALLY good at knowing precisely what it is you kind folks actually want to see here hahaha. No. I’m not. But you can tell me in the comments if you’d like, what’d you like to see more of on The Matchbook posts! I’m all ears, and comments are open on this to EVERYONE. So tell me:

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That said, today I wanted to share with you a poem that exploded out of me in a fit of something that felt like a combination of rage at the way the creative world has evolved, of deep and aching nostalgia for the simplicity of what was, the irritation of what is, and how I think the pursuit of perfection, or maybe Curation, is ruining so much of how things felt a decade or so ago.

Honestly, it’s hard to not get discouraged. A friend with a beautiful newsletter here messaged me the other day and told me he was done. He gave it a year to see what he could build and, of course, got discouraged. Here’s the truth he uncovered, and why it’s SO hard to stick, when everything is making you feel like sticking it out is a waste of time:

It’s really, really HARD to keep going when there’s so little response now to the things we make. It’s REALLY hard to keep writing, when you’re barely making ends meet doing so. He found what most all of us here find. Sure, there are some newsletters that pay the writer enough to feel completely comfortable, to pay the bills, to support a family. But most of us? We spend the hours of a full-time job, (or far, far more) and then make probably a quarter of minimum wage to do so. IF That. For him, it’s not sustainable, and so he’s done, and I’m heartbroken for it. For me, it’s not either, but I just cannot help it. I stay because I love it. Because I love all of you. I’m sick of begging for upgraded subscriptions or offering discounts on doing so, because dammit, I know I’m worth it, but I also understand that times are hard for a lot of us, and so I keep on. I love you too much to stop.

So yeah, upgrades keep me doing this, but I am tired of asking for them. I wanted this place to inspire, to create a community, and I Hoped that it would grow and grow and encompass so many more of you, but like my friend found, it hasn’t. There are plateaus we hit, and I’ve been on this one for years. But still, I cannot stop. But man, that’s where poems like these are born from, from all that wishing, all that missing.

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I miss the early days of social media, when everyone was just figuring it out and everyone had access to everything everyone shared. I miss stupid photos of mundane things, that somehow felt like art. I miss the community of people that actually got to read every poem I shared because they chose to follow me, to support me. I miss posting about a print sale and having people want that art on their walls, not the algorithm hiding it and having to pay Mark Zuckerberg to allow people to see what they already said they wanted to see.

I miss the messiness before the perfection of digital, I miss the rough edges, the stuff that might be mostly shit but it doesn’t matter. I miss all the things that came from so many people who felt like they were bursting with so much they couldn’t fit inside them.

I just want simpler, I just want to go back to where we’re allowed to support who we want to support and see what we want to see and not have our entire stupid online life curated by some robotic-AI bit of code that dictates what, when, how, and if. We’re all becoming the same now, and it makes me crazy, from the songs we play because TikTok makes them viral to the memes we are subjected to from every single level of our lives starting with our family and friends and ending with the unhinged and abjectly hateful president in the White House.

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That’s what this poem is, that’s where it started, that’s where it went, and it came out in one breath, starting with the first line, which is rare for me.

OH TO FEEL AGAIN

and the whole poem was born.

I’ve been stripping it away, all the silly excess, all the nonsense I never needed. I’m going back to what I was, what I am, what I know to be, though I don’t think I ever really left. Maybe it’s just more of me in order to be less of whatever things have become. Pure personality as rebellious defiance.

I wonder if you feel the same, I wonder if you want it too.

Here’s the audio version for all those who don’t get the ICK from my voice reading my poems:

I love you all.

Be good.

As usual, here’s the poem I read from my first book, Chasers of the Light. Also you can still buy SIGNED COPIES of this beauty in my shop if you want. Cool.

SIGNED COPIES?! F yeah.

I Love you all.

Be good.

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I don’t know if you’ve noticed or not, but we’re quite literally almost always surrounded by strangers. Unless you’re me, then the vast majority of the time you’re just at home (until I’m not), but most people, most of the time, strangers.

I love this, and actually I love strangers for all they teach us. All the weird, new, bizarre beauty they possess just by being.

What a gift. Anyhow, let’s do this…

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I thought I owed it all to Typewriter Series #1.

It began there, really, this wild life, this strange wandering existence meeting more people, in more places, than I could have ever imagined meeting. It began with the writing of a single poem in a small antique store, pecking it out on a mostly-broken but still functioning typewriter that was built sometime in the 1920s.

Step back though, just a bit back, and I see something else, I see a truth bigger than the rest. I see, with unflinching certainty, that it all began because of her.

The other day, I somehow stumbled onto an old familiar internet haunt, the still beautiful (if extremely random) Tumblr.com and I found a post that immediately made me stop, ponder, and then say “Huh, exactly!” The post basically said, that if you go back and look at any great artist—be they writer, filmmaker, painter, whatever—and then somehow also cross-reference that to the presence of someone they loved desperately, the quality and potency of the work almost always corresponds. Almost exactly. Basically, and I’m sure there are exceptions here, somewhere in their orbit, all artists have a muse that is more than just a little responsible for the beauty in their work.

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I’ve always written, always had words inside me that needed to find their way out, but I know now, it was never like this. Not really.

Meeting Sarah changed everything. It didn’t just plant more words inside that would one day blossom big enough to need sunlight on the exterior of me, it did much more. In truth, it was the impetus to open the strange conduit in my soul to the great big everything. It was a bore hole six thousand times bigger than any I’d ever had, the diameter of that conduit growing to black hole scale, pulling in everything within a grabbable distance to my gravity and transforming it into poetry. Into art.

I think great love, great loss, great adventure create great art. I think there’s always a muse behind the scenes of things, and it’s not always what we imagine it will be. Sometimes it is a person, sometimes it is a place, sometimes it is a tragedy, sometimes it is a journey taken, but always simmering beneath the surface there is a quiet metronome to the process of all that creation.

My prolific explosion began with this soft ticking, the sound of a voice I didn’t know my ears had been waiting to hear. It began with being seen, truly, for the first time, because I was loved as I was, precisely, and knew that I would be safe there. Finally safe.

The Tumblr post was a bit more pointed than this essay, saying that in particular there exists a pattern in the lives of male creatives. They believed there was a rhythm to it, that could almost always be stripped back to the presence of a powerful woman in their orbit. They believed their great art was great because it was being edited, touched, transformed behind the scenes by these women who these men loved. They pointed at Tim Burton, at George Lucas and the re-edit of the Star Wars trilogy that may have saved it before it even began, and while I do agree, I think it also misses the bigger picture: That all great art has invisible hands behind it, that all great works are not solely coming from within the artist, but through someone else, too.

I think of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, I think of John Steinbeck and his third wife Elaine, I think of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, of so many who have created so many works we all cherish and still adore, and I see a thread common and enduring:

The art we create is shaped by those who shape our souls.

We cannot create in total isolation, we cannot create as islands. We create through the love we feel, the solidity we find, through the wounds we incur and tend to, the people who touch our lives. The closest relationships, the muses we are graced with, do not just influence what we make, they directly shape why we’re making it in the first place.

For longer than I haven’t I’ve known this, though I think sitting here and typing today, I understand it in a way I previously was incapable of, to a degree I couldn’t quite reach. I think I see that it’s not just the art, it’s not just the output or the final product, it’s more, and it always has been.

I think it’s not the art we create that is shaped by the muses in our lives, it’s our souls themselves, and the art is only a byproduct, only a side-effect, a consequence of their presence. We create because we are, and what we are comes so much more from who and what we love than anything else.

I’ve long said, we’re here to love, nothing more, and I stand by this. All else comes from it, all else always will.

You being here today, reading these words, engaging with this beautiful community, is not because I wrote Typewriter Series #1. It’s not because of the years and years of Daily Haiku on Love that preceded it, not because of The Never Was after it all. You’re here because I found someone that made me feel alive, feel seen, feel safe, appreciated for being this me, and only this me. You’re here because of her, really, and I’ve no problem admitting this. I’ve always called myself a conduit, not a conductor, that I channel what comes into what it will be, so this realization, this leap forward is a simple one.

I just know now, the conduit I am was shaped, carved out, created, by the love I found, embraced, believed in.

By her.

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