The Ask

Feature 1

It can’t be all bad, now can it?

It’s not, it truly isn’t. Even thought I’ve omitted some of the darker details of what happened that day, and the following months and years, there has been a tremendous amount of joy in getting a second shot at life. “Even on my worst days”, I’d say, “it beats the alternative - being dead” - still a touch heavy, but honestly, a beautiful perspective as I awake every morning.

Though my near-death stabbing and the mental, emotional, spiritual implications of it will forever be a part of me and my story, onward and upward in the continual hope in my heart. For my mom, who gave up so much to raise me, for my brother, who held my hand at what felt like the end, for my dear friends, some of who have suffered more and complained less, for the 2nd chance I was given, that my friend Jackson wasn’t that same year. For a belief that things will one day be made right, and that we are made for a purpose, and that we can lead with love in a broken world.

Feature 2

I left court with a big loss. But I left court on my own two feet - I had kept my leg, I had kept my life. I’m now seeking redemption in a new way.

I signed up for the 2025 Chicago Marathon - I hate running (if it’s not chasing a ball or a disc), I’ve never run a marathon, I was late and most of the spots were closed. My achilles is nagging me, my lower back hurts, sleep is still hard. But I’m alive, and my legs have been good to me. I’m gonna run, and feel every ounce of blood coursing through my veins, every ache and pain in my body, every muscle fiber twitch. We owe it to ourselves to do hard things, and laugh and cry through it all.

Feature 3

I’m also developing a book. This book was a book of poems I had written, largely in 2020 when I retreated from Film Production, from social media, from the bustle of every-day life. My dear friend put me up in his cottage. I woke up to the chickens crowing, I made my food from scratch, I pulled weeds from the ground by hand, I chopped wood to make bonfires. It was healing, and in that healing, I found a way to be honest and vulnerable, to let my guard down.

The book is very special to me. It not about the stabbing. I had a tumultuous upbringing before all of this. The stabbing was an opening, an undoing, the “knife that broken the camel’s back” if you will - it’s me being very honest about things that I had kept in for so long, me being honest about the some of the difficulties I had in my childhood, and because of that, later in my adult life. Accompanying the writings are photos I’ve taken, all around the world, of people, places, beauty. Things I’m really proud to have captured on camera.

Perhaps the most interesting portion of the book is a series of photos I created with my dear friends Evan, as the photographer, and Dan, the lighting director. They’re nudes, inspired by some combination of “ESPN’s The Body Issue”, the type of art I consumed, a conversation with director Sam Cannon. The photos take my scar, privately and intimately hidden on the inside of my thigh near my groin, and share the experience in a way I struggle have put words to. They capture a disheveled haircut and an overgrown beard, a man broken but hoping to rebuild. The series strips away all things, and leaves the viewer with a man, his mind, and his body. Nothing we have can we take with us, no amount of money or things matter when laying in a pool of your own blood, a front-row seat to your own funeral. My only hope was to live again. And living is so often as simple as who we are and how we move. The series aims to put aside anything that’s a distraction, any item that might get in the way, and pursues the fall, and the triumph, of the human body and spirit.

It was a big step, creating a nude photoshoot. It’s full of emotion, it raw, it’s heavy, it’s cathartic. It’s also really special to me, and something I want to be able to share with you in a book, in a moment of quiet when the phone is off and you have time to think and reflect. Evan, Dan, and I are really proud of the piece, and I’m hoping you can see what I saw when creating the project.