And everybody who's somebody is out enjoying the balmy weather.

And then, there is the poetry. Aphoristic. Precise. Concise. Honest. Fleeting. I resonate. Deeply:

A few paces later. The rhythm of it.

Neighborhood life. It's exactly where the cultural vanguard is operating. As you can see from this anonymous sidewalk installation.

So many ways to think it through:

I like cheese. Cheese.

Or, I like cheese… cheese!

Or, I like cheese: cheese….

I know kid. Me too. Me too.

And I remember that feeling, the getting it out with chalk. Wondering if someone else would think it’s funny. Or edgy. How is the hand writing coming across? Zero time left to think it through because it’s almost dusk. Will they recognize that the yellow is the same as the cheese? Maybe it’s not for anyone. It’s about the moment. That’s all. Or maybe this is against the rules, this bending of the landscape…. an agitator in the making. Yes, cheese can be against the rules. In many ways. A lot to think about.

The ephemeral chalk art may be washed away by time. But I know, somewhere, not too far from me, someone else, feels the same.

I see you.

Thanks for setting up the day.

By the way, I think it’s:

I like Cheese. cheese.

Installation by

Anon Chalk Child

This particular thing strikes me as odd.

One, I can’t remember when I first grabbed it. Two, I find its contents striking.

It’s an issue of Heavy Metal magazine. July 1990.

The cover is a decade-turning bikini illustration, with tribal body paint and a cut that could easily pass for a now-modern festival fashion pull.

That alone is great. And as you flip through, you find…

Future-leaning, dystopian robot love.

And other worlds.

A rougher New York.

A Nebraska frontier.

Then, ‘The Wall.’ On the first page, we find ourselves back in New York, during the first wave of the 1990s opioid epidemic. The ‘undesirables’ are huddled against a wall that divides them from a richer, manicured zone. But this was the past.

How did we get here? The story goes… Decent people had been harassed and made uncomfortable by the poor, the beggars and the inebriated.

So, to solve the problem, enter, on page 72, Donald Trump.

He solves the problem with Harry Helmsley by building a wall. Yes, a wall. In 1990.

They met with little dissent. And the two worlds were divided by a checkpoint.

The party lasted for years.

Until the two titans had a falling out.

And Trump was forced underground on the Westside.

Where he joined the populace that had been forced into the dilapidated world and made them his ‘guardian demons.’

He formed alliances with figures like Mike Tyson and made Helmsley the people’s enemy.

Helmsley had grown complacent, and Trump’s allies took back the land, crossing the line as a hero, stating, “that has brought we the people to this glorious moment!”

“Have a hat.” Upper right-hand corner, above, page 77. It’s so specific. Eerily so?

He promises the people a monument.

Until one day, the youth who don’t remember the past declare ‘Dump Trump’ on the wall, their monument.

So, that’s the story, but only part of it.

Because it evokes a few questions about creativity and where the impetus comes from to tell a story, or make any kind of art, especially the kind that feels like it’s peering through a premonition glass.

As if the ideas already exist somewhere, and we catch them when they pass close enough.

Where do your ideas come from?

Still can’t say I’m great at turning it into a ball.
But it baked into something… actually good.

Not a rock-hard pancake. Progress.

It’s better to try and fail.
(And then try again from a different angle.)

There’s something about baking (sewing, painting, anything hands-on, or even a walk) that opens up the flow.
Busy hands, and then the bigger picture opens up.

Clear, goal-focused action, and discipline is good, but if you force it, sometimes you can drain yourself or hit blockages, and it all starts to feel too serious; then there goes the creative impulse and enthusiasm, and progress goes down the tubes…

I looked it up and found this:

…It’s often referred to as “flow state” (from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi) and overlaps with diffuse thinking. The brain mode where stepping away from focused effort actually helps solve bigger problems. There’s also research showing repetitive, tactile tasks reduce cortisol and increase creative problem-solving.

A lot of high-level thinkers and creators had “side rituals” that looked unproductive on the surface but were essential to how they got their best ideas.

Albert Einstein was famous for playing the violin when stuck on a problem. He was also known for long walks and pipe smoking. He wasn’t grinding equations nonstop. He stepped away and let ideas arrive. This is basically “diffuse thinking” in action before it had a name.

Dwight D. Eisenhower was known for golfing constantly while making major decisions. It wasn’t laziness. This was how he processed pressure and complexity. Movement and repetition helps clearer thinking.

Steve Jobs was famous for walking meetings. He believed walking helped unlock better ideas and conversations.

Agatha Christie came up with plot ideas while sitting in the bath eating apples. Not at a desk, not forcing it. Ideas show up when you’re not gripping them too tightly.

David Lynch practices Transcendental Meditation daily and credits it with accessing deeper creative ideas. Stillness as a gateway, not force.

It isn’t a waste of time to pursue the things that feel good. You get a great hit of dopamine.

You just need dough, or thread, or paint…
And a little patience.

These things that also feel like,
basic survival instincts…

Making something real,

Like woodwork, metalsmithing, or gardening,
Something you can touch or that feeds you,

Feel grounded and satisfying,

Especially in a city.

Or in phases where things feel a little out of sync.

Or the bigger questions make one feel untethered.

I kept going with it this a.m., and put it in the oven. The bread feels like it belongs on an old countryside table somewhere on a hill in 1592 CE, rather than immortalized online. But, not bad.

More to come.
Things are in the oven.

Dense, in a good way. Grainy, slightly sweet. The kind of bread where a little goes a long way.

So, how we arrive at the tapes… I had an invisible friend named Andre that I would walk to school with. I had the sense I probably shouldn’t be talking to him, but he made the walk easier. He was also, in my mind, kind of my boyfriend.

I only lived around the block from my grammar school. We had moved from Beachwood Drive to Chula Vista Way. I liked Beachwood better, but we (my real friends, and sometimes Andre) had a secret passageway from Cheremoya Avenue that connected back to Beachwood. Bikes included.

I hung out with the stoner/skater/punks because they were the ones that just accepted me and I felt the closest to. Back then, you had to choose. They were a bit faster than me, but I just looked away when it got too racey. We took the bus, rode bikes, skateboards, to secondhand clothing shops, record stores, each other’s houses, and there were never any adults around. We were mostly in charge of ourselves. (I did act and take ballet between all of this somehow, and I took the bus to get there too. Totally inexplicable.)

And we’d explore all of Hollywood just until the streetlights came on.

But I spent a lot of time alone. At night, I used to dance in my bedroom to albums and demo tapes that my mom brought home on my big boombox or record player. These were part of my sacred time. And this is sort of like opening up a time capsule to that sacred time now.

These are most of the favorites tapes that I saved, save for one by a guy named Eddie Jobson that I can’t find.

I used to like to count the odd rhythmic changes in Eddie’s music, and try to match my body to it. I would ask my mom when his album would come out because he was so great, and she would tell me that the label wasn’t pushing him. It was a bummer because I remember sitting with her when she listened to the demo for the first time and decided that he should be signed. It was my first inkling that in the arts, it’s not always quite fair. I thought if something was good, it would win. That seemed obvious to me then.

I really cared about him. I was part of the voting process when she listened to his tape (or at least she let me think I was), and I wanted him to be a huge star.

I want to share more about that time in another post. (I kind of parented myself. They were wild days; the Troubadour at night with my mom in A&R, partying with the adults, going to concerts. Watching my step-dad’s all-Black hard rock band …a struggle back then… rehearse and finally open for Fishbone. And party too.)

But mostly, for now, I want to hear these tapes. One of the things she told me was that there was a meeting (a secret one?) that the label had about CDs. That they were “bad” for the brain. Because the mind had to connect between the 0’s and 1’s versus the analog signal, which is already connected… and actually a more natural and soothing (and better) sound.

I don’t know if that’s true. I don’t know if the brain really strains to connect the 0’s and 1’s. But I want to hear it again and see if I remember something differently.

I bought this little cassette player from Amazon to try to play them back.

I’m slightly afraid they’ll get eaten. They’re old. But I want to hear them. I want to hear who I was listening to before I knew what any of it meant.

I’ll report back, and maybe I’ll share what’s actually on them. We can listen together, see if it’s true. That is, if they survive.

Wardrobe fitting, Coyote Ugly (2000). Dance doubling Tyra Banks

When you see the fast-cuts dancing, that’s me.
The tight shot of the buns under the stage lights? Also me.
And when she falls backward off the bar into a crowd of stuntmen, that’s me too.

I was Tyra Banks’ dance double in Coyote Ugly. The shoot stretched into months of pickup shots. I was still dancing then, moving between acting, writing, and short films, building what would later become my career as a filmmaker and actress. Dance was one of the doorways.

I spent nearly nine months with her, almost every day. Long days.

So watching the current wave of criticism, especially around the recent documentary, has felt disorienting. Not just personally, but in the way many of us have felt in recent years: realizing how incomplete our understanding of people, systems and stories can be.

I’m not here to invalidate anyone else’s experience. I can’t speak to what happened on other sets, or inside other dynamics. I can only speak to mine.

She was kind to me. Consistently. Grounded. Considerate.

Years later, she brought me onto American Dreams to dance beside her, not as a double that time. Just for a short run. It was another great day. She was relaxed, curious about how I was doing, generous in a way that didn’t feel performative. No cameras, no audience, no reason to “be on.”

That was my experience and she could have absolutely been a terror if she wanted to. What would I have done about it?

Which is why it’s strange to watch someone you knew in one way be flattened into something else entirely. It’s a particular kind of dissonance; when private memory collides with public framing.

I’ve been in entertainment since I was seven. I’m not naïve about power. I’ve experienced my share of injustices, some small, some not small at all. I’m not interested in protecting systems that deserve scrutiny. If there’s an actual reckoning happening, good. I’ll be watching like everyone else.

But I also think about how reality television was structured in that era. Drama was the engine. Producers shaped arcs. Characters were built in the edit. A friend of mine was once told to cry through an entire season of a show, so she did. When it aired, she looked unhinged. That wasn’t the whole person. It was a storyline. Storytelling has always had more authors framing the narrative than we tend to notice.

I remember watching Tyra’s talk show back then and feeling confused. The person on screen felt amplified, exaggerated, almost theatrical. It didn’t match the woman I saw every day on set. It was night and day.

Two things can be true.

Someone can have harmed others.
And someone can have been kind to you.

Maybe that’s why these reckonings take time.
Nuance slows things down. It asks more of us. In a moment where reactions are instant and narratives harden quickly, temperance can feel almost superhuman.

Holding complexity isn’t easy. The answer is rarely, “all of those people over there are the problem.” Collective blame has never led us anywhere good.

The industry has been going through necessary reckonings for years now… conversations about power, exploitation, and who gets protected. I don’t take that lightly. I think we’re just at the beginning.

Within that larger conversation, this was mine.

I’m not here to rewrite history. Or to defend her, she doesn’t need my defending. Just to add my lived experience to the record.

Deep down, I know, you know, the trajectory.
We do it when we get there.

So instead, I will focus on the things I am grateful for.

I’m grateful for my breath.
And the present moment.

Those two things, in that stillness,
are where the vastness and the nothingness happens.

That’s where it’s profound.
That’s also where there is emptiness.

In that space, the Divine exists.
In that space, you and I, no matter what you call it, are never alone.
And all is good.

All is amazing, beyond words.

That we get to experience this together.
This journey.

I’m grateful for the growth.
The ones I am close to.
The passersby.
The kindness.

The roof over my head.
Food.
My health.
My opportunities.
The possibilities.

For the inspiration and hope that never dies inside me.
For the creativity and visions that are the fire that keeps my lifeblood hot,
that come from some place in the beautiful ethers… home.

My fur baby.
For all fur babies.

For the balance in nature.
The birds.
The rain.
The sun we can count on.

For the chance to reflect for as long as I need.

For the friends who have resurfaced and returned,
or who have always been there.

For the grace that has been bestowed upon me.

The Sheen…
who has brought so much laughter,
taught me so much about who I am right now,
and challenges me in the best ways possible.

And I’m grateful for you.

You are doing your best.

Sending love your way,
and so much gratitude
for all the good that is on its way.

Over twenty-five years ago, I had one of those downloads, one that feels ripe now for reflection, finally caught up to itself. It’s a good time, because the melanated collective is beginning to explore more of its psychic self, more outwardly. Oddly, this voice, the boho, awakened, tapped-in, dreaming, questioning, spiritual Black voice, has long been side-eyed. It was a no-go. Strange. Even edgy. Still is, a bit?? We seem to have, what, one or two of us visible in the mainstream? Otherwise it feels like: “Shut up, and shake your booty,” or “recount your suffering,” right? And in the spaces where it could be embraced, the response feels like the 2025 version of “disco sucks,” one narrow expression amplified to the heavens, while everything outside that box goes unseen. Maybe, just maybe, Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix, or Alice Coltrane are examples of those who’ve crossed that bridge.

That’s not a reflection of how common it is, but of how accepted it is. It’s there, faint, misread, or buried beneath other narratives, or in television shows, an element in a feature like Black Panther or Get Out, but it comes and goes. Still many of us keep that part hidden, because, well… it’s just been that way.

(A note to the future: it’s not that we weren’t here and perhaps we’re dead stop in the middle of that change? I just saw an ad on YouTube where two brothers on a train were speaking telepathically to one another about their sneakers.)

And so, as we enter the Age of Aquarius, the time feels right for my twenty-five-year-old download to touch base. Her name? Karmateer.

(The original Karmateer zine (2000) can be read in its entirety below)

©©©©©©©© A really fun, no brainer, Right?! ©©©©©©©©

“Yes, great! I’m with you!” you say.
Well, not so fast.

She’s been stolen. Years and years of development, taken. The concept, the artwork, the essence. For the full story of how we arrived here, stolen artistic property about a Black female superhero, now co-opted and owned by someone outside the melanated community who refuses to let go, see this piece.

To be clear, this isn’t about division or excluding anyone from collaboration or creativity. I’ve had meaningful creative exchanges across every kind of background, and I am mixed myself. Collaboration is part of how stories evolve, it’s how we grow, how we make art that reflects the full spectrum of experience. What this is about, is inequity. The ways creative ownership has too often been stripped from those of us whose stories were already marginalized. Naming it is part of balancing the scales. This story, Karmateer, is for everyone.

Now, let me ask you something.
Have you ever had anything stolen?

Ever been ripped off, in big ways, or small? Had your credit card stolen? Your house broken into? Your ideas copied? An odd human getting some kind of thrill out of holding on to someone else’s work?

I imagine everyone has faced some kind of theft in their life. How did it feel? Violating, right?

But when it’s art, how do we define that violation? How does it echo through time and space? What does healing even look like? How long should it take? As long as the idea took to form?

Maybe healing comes in the form of a rewrite. A resurrection. A new incarnation. Because when the skies change and galaxies turn, that art still lives in your heart, tapping at the door, then it’s ready to download again.

And until then… here she is. Or was…

The download came to me twenty-five years ago, when I was a film, TV, and stage actress-dancer living in Venice. It landed out of nowhere, right in my proverbial artistic lap.

“Karmateer! Yes! I relate, I relate!” Because honestly, I’ve always felt like people create karma for themselves by messing with people. I’ve always felt tapped in, intuiting things that don’t seem immediately apparent, and it can be alienating, throw one off, when reality doesn’t quite match the inner knowing.

I can get behind a flawed, toxic-vibe-fighting superhero called Karmateer. It just makes sense.

She can’t exactly tell people, “Hey, um, I wouldn’t do that if I were you. I have a bad feeling about it… for you… I just know.” Generally, one has to observe more than share.

I guess that’s the definition of karma, isn’t it? We live in a slow-moving, dense reality. If we could see, right away, like touching a hot flame, that our actions would have consequences, we probably wouldn’t do half the things we do. But then again… what kind of lesson would that be?

I loved it. I ran with it. I even traded my posing services (not nude, by the way) to an artist for the first zine rendition of Karmateer. That was the plan: start with a zine, then a graphic novel, and maybe, eventually… a movie? A series?

I wanted her to have trouble articulating her voice, but she’d always try to reason first. Then she’d have to kick ass, resisting the whole way through. She’s a lover, not a fighter. A quiet one.

(What kind of idiot comes for the sweet, slightly odd, quiet one? Our antagonists, of course.)

But people come for her anyway. She reads a little “off”… soft, underestimated, overlooked, and for them, it’s a no-brainer. So they find out the hard way.

In this way, she’s walking karma. And I suppose karma wouldn’t be karma if it were as easy to spot as an open flame. 🔥

Yes. Karma. Karmateer.

Karmateer, or KT (short for “Katie,” when she’s in disguise), has a backstory that’s stayed almost unchanged since the original zine, circa 2000.

She’s a mixed child whose white mother, afraid her family wouldn’t accept the baby, left KT in a birdbath outside the old hospital on Sunset Blvd, the one that later became the infamous blue Scientology building.

From there, she bounced from foster home to foster home. She was a cute kid, but she did strange things that made people uneasy: scribbling symbols and words on walls, which were actually downloads from the universe. To the untrained eye, they looked like vandalism, but she was transcribing cosmic language.

It was hard for KT to fit in. She babbled in ways that made no sense to others, lost track of time and space, which can happen when you can see across both, as we’ll later find out. Things escalated until she ended up in a mental hospital, where she met the love of her life. For a while, things got better, as good as they could. He taught her martial arts and never judged her strange words or prophecies.

But the good times didn’t last. One night, she heard them dragging him away. In terror and tears, and with a surge of strength she didn’t know she had, she escaped over the barbed-wire wall.

She wandered the streets, stealing food and shelter, until she met her best friend: a marmoset. Together they survived until they reached the pre-gentrified, Dogtown-Breakwater Venice Beach, where she encountered a surfer. He took her to the shore, and there she was stung by a stingray, the final spark that transformed the already-super KT into something more.

The sting was her initiation, the moment she became Karmateer.

In a later rendition, still before the writing partner and ownership dispute, more detail found its way in. (Check out the circa 2011 pitch from this phase below.)

KT drives a 1969 Chevy Malibu and finds her way to a strangely idyllic town called, “Happy.”

She shares her life (and pizza) with her marmoset, trying to keep to herself and maybe live something resembling a normal life.

She means well, but karma tends to leak out of her, she doles it out accidentally, like cosmic static. The residents give off a friendly and progressive vibe that should be the kind of town that forgives that, but she’s a bit of a shut-in, and something is very “off” here.

In the most recent version, the one that further developed with the writing partner, (view the reimagined origin sequence from the second pitch phase, developed with a writing partner here)

KT gets a job as a remote viewer for the CIA. She’d been tracked since childhood, probably through those “special classes” and her stints in and out of the ward. That part came straight from my own fascination with the real, now-closed program and the story of Ingo Swann.

The amnesia, I honestly feel that she narrowed KT’s memory problems, her struggle with time and space, into something concrete: amnesia. And she definitely contributed to the outer structure, the supporting characters, influenced the dialogue, the psychological tension around her paranoia, giving form to that sense that people are after her, though she doesn’t know why, can’t remember that she’s psychic, or that she ever worked as a remote viewer.

She ends up in a similar idyllic town with Stepford-wife vibes, the kind of place that could hold an entire universe of episodes, pages, or scenes, depending on which form Karmateer decides to take.

Do those contributions warrant forever ownership? Or blocking the story from evolving further?

I suppose this “theft phenomenon,” the surfer story, this one, and (though I won’t get into it here) the Children’s Garden series that was also lost in the same way, are all a kind of record, a filing of sorts. This happened. And maybe that’s enough. Writing it down gives it form, gives it somewhere to live outside my head, somewhere it has a chance to move forward, to take on whatever shape it needs next.

As James Baldwin said,

“History is not the past. It is the present.

We carry our history with us. We are our history.”

Maybe Karmateer still has life, a separate one. The key is separating the parts, disentangling the work, remembering who did what during that strange, inspired stretch of collaboration. Like any creative partnership, it’s part memory, part archaeology, not unlike a quiet divorce, dividing the assets of imagination.

Regrown from her origins, reshaped by karma, the old seeds scattered, taking root somewhere new.

Maybe she’ll let go, and let the formal credit for her contributions happen naturally.

Maybe one day, in another time and space.

∞

Artwork by Basak Demir

See the original 2000 Karmateer zine here

Read the full story and creative history behind Karmateer here

Original Illustrations for this version of Karmateer by Lauren Over

Original 2000 zine can be found here

Read the full story and creative history behind Karmateer below

here

This is the original Karmateer zine, created in 2000.
Written by me, Jessica Delila Vallot (aka Delila Vallot).
The illustrations were done by an artist I collaborated with at the time, I’m still trying to locate their name for proper credit.

Read the full story and creative history behind Karmateer below

here

“Ms. Vallot… If I do not hear from you by Monday, February 28th [2022], then I will report back to [producers] that I am unable to provide mutual agreement, and we will begin exploring other opportunities for the production of the screenplay…”

Other opportunities. For a story based on my life.

That moment captures something larger about the fragility of creative work, especially for women of color in independent film. Ideas can be nurtured, documented, registered, and still held hostage.

The Water That Raised Me

My relationship with the ocean began in childhood.

My mother enrolled me in swim lessons as a baby. She took me into the surf and I was sure mermaids carried me when I floated past the waves. I was a ballerina, a child actor, a Black and Jewish water baby who scribbled poems into a Little Twin Stars notebook.

Later, I moved to Venice Beach, when it was still dangerous and scrappy. I learned to surf. I also learned I was often the only woman of color in the lineup. That absence was palpable.

When I joined the Black Surfers Association, everything shifted. Surfing became communal, ancestral, transformative. We surfed San O, Topanga, Mexico. I nearly drowned once in a rip, clawing my way out just in time. It was terror and revelation.

This wasn’t just recreation. It was reclamation.

A Film Dream, and the Numbers That Fueled It

After my 2015 documentary Can You Dig This premiered, Disney came calling. They were looking for diverse, holistic Black girl stories. I had one: a surf-and-dance story based on my life.

The urgency was real. Black and Brown children are three times more likely to drown than white children. According to the CDC, 70% of Black children and 60% of Hispanic children cannot swim proficiently. These numbers aren’t accidents. They are the legacies of segregation, exclusion, and fear tied to water.

I wanted to show another narrative: joy, strength, belonging. A story where Black girls surfed. And beyond that, I wanted to expand cultural awareness around water itself, to make surfing a point of exposure, a bridge, an entryway into reclaiming safety, skill, and freedom in the water.

The Unraveling

I partnered with a writer. There were early red flags, resistance to collaboration, undermining me in meetings, but I pushed forward. Everybody has a shadow side, including me. At the time, I believed we could work through it, that the story mattered more than the friction.

But some of that friction was already showing. The Disney executive who had first reached out eventually drifted away, in part because the script wasn’t landing. And that, too, was a red flag I didn’t want to see.

So I decided to show, not just tell. David Auerbach, my cinematographer, used his ARRI grant.

Dancers, actors, and friends rallied. Homes and gear were donated. We made a sizzle, a long-form pitch trailer I directed to capture the vision. It was alive. A community lifted this project because they believed in it, and in me as its director.

And that community wasn’t one-dimensional. The people who came together were from all backgrounds, all genders, united by a belief that this story mattered. (The sizzle reel is embedded above, worth watching start to finish.)

Dancers, actors, and fellow surfers appear in the trailer, including some cultural figures who believed in the project and lent their time.

And then, my co-writer effectively stepped back. Messages trickled in, but the follow-through was gone. The weight of moving the project forward landed on me.

Even so, I kept building. I worked to cultivate relationships with major water advocacy groups, one focused on protecting the ocean, another on increasing swimming access in Black communities, and began shaping a larger plan. They believed this story could shift something important.

I found producers. I continued working with her, and together we went through nearly a year of rewrites. But the script still wasn’t landing. The producers suggested bringing in a more seasoned writer, a woman of color who could co-write with me and help the story reflect its full depth.

It wasn’t about erasing her. Anything we kept of hers, she would be credited and compensated for under WGA standards. I even offered her half of any of my future earnings, even if her material wasn’t used.

From my proposed quitclaim: I offered half of any future earnings, plus proper credit under WGA rules. A fair compromise. It wasn’t about erasure, it was about keeping the project alive.

But she refused. She wouldn’t let go.

That’s when the lawyer letters began. Stalling. Draining. Collapsing momentum. Control mattered more than the story.

Today, she still holds that script. And two other diaspora stories that originated with me.

What’s at Stake

This isn’t just my personal fallout. It reveals a deeper problem in the creative economy: Who gets to tell stories rooted in Black experience? Who gets to profit from them? And who feels entitled to block them altogether?

It also raises another question: who decides which stories move forward? Too often, projects can stall if they don’t fit familiar expectations. It’s something people talk about quietly, but rarely name outright.

And within Black communities, there’s a growing fatigue with what gets repeated. The same versions of ourselves surface again and again, shaped to fit what’s marketable rather than what’s true. That narrowing doesn’t just affect filmmakers, it limits what audiences get to see, too.

And it’s not only about race. Independent film as a whole isn’t thriving the way it once did. Budgets have shrunk, mid-level films struggle to get made, and many projects, of all kinds, are stalled. My story sits inside that larger picture too.

Collaboration is supposed to grow stories. Instead, mine became an example of how fragile independent projects are, how easily they can be trapped, derailed, or diluted. Years of my time were lost, and the downloads, the lifeblood of the work, came from me.

And it didn’t stop here. The script is still locked away, along with two other projects I originated: a children’s garden series born from my documentary Can You Dig This, and a female psychic action-hero story I began in 2000. These too remain stalled, held hostage.

Reclamation

I don’t believe artists have to be the same race or culture to tell a story. The history of cinema is full of examples of artists creating across lines of identity, and sometimes those works open entirely new worlds. But it is complicated. Some stories carry legacies, weight, and lived truths that can’t be detached from who tells them, and this was one of those stories.

I never wanted this to be about her. It’s about the ocean, the joy and terror, the survival and freedom it represents.

So I’m releasing the sizzle, a longer-form pitch piece we built for producers. It wasn’t made for the public, and it was self-funded: friends, dancers, actors, and I all poured our time, money, and energy into it. Maybe this is the only official release the film will ever get.

But the story isn’t gone. It’s ongoing. Because I am living it.

Because at the end of the day, everybody has a water story. And when we look at the ocean, we don’t see color first. We see blue.

What This Means for All of Us

Current Landscape (vs. when the project began in 2016–2017)

Rising Rates Among Black People

• From 2019 to 2021, drowning deaths among Black individuals climbed by 28 percent, more than any other group (CDC).

• Black youth still drown at rates up to 3.6 times higher than White youth in certain age groups, particularly ages 10 –14 (Stop Drowning Now; CDC).

Disparities Persist

• Among Black adults, roughly 37 percent lack basic swim skills, and about 63 percent have never taken a swim lesson, compared to just 15 percent and 48 percent among all adults (CBS News; CDC; The Journalist’s Resource).

• Hispanic adults report even lower rates of swimming instruction: about 72 percent have never learned to swim (CDC; The Journalist’s Resource).

Why the Disparity Still Matters

• Overall drowning deaths rose nationally, more than 4,500 annually from 2020 to 2022, with the steepest increases among young children, older adults, and Black people of all ages (CDC Foundation).

• Drowning remains the leading cause of death for U.S. children ages 1–4, and the second leading cause of injury death for ages 5–14 (CDC Foundation; American Institute for Boys and Men).

What This Means for the Project
The inequities I set out to address in 2016 are not only still here, they’ve deepened. The problem worsened during the pandemic and beyond.

This wasn’t just a story. It was a warning, and a wish. And it turns out, we’re still drowning.

The full story lives on paper, too. A few more excerpts are below if you’d like to see them…

Even in my proposed terms, I split revenue 50/50 and ensured transparency through audit rights. The goal was fairness and accountability, not exclusion.

Credits were never the issue. I outlined that any material she contributed would be honored with “written by” or “co-written by” credit, consistent with WGA standards.

This is just one version of a larger story I’m still living. If it resonates with you, I’d love to hear your thoughts, but even if you just carry it with you quietly, that’s enough.

The windows face east, so I get a brilliant show of bright morning light
it commands the space.
The spectrum made revelatory, announces itself across white walls.
A show to sit and watch.
And feel good.

And the green that makes up my view, my artwork for now,
carries on the show after the light has gone.

I haven’t ventured out much in the last 30 days, though I haven’t really wanted to.
It’s so serene here, a haven.
But mostly because there are still boxes, and real-world things to contend with.

Speaking of shows, I did go to see ABT’s Giselle with my almost-childhood friend, Kiva.

She and I both trained in ballet here in Los Angeles,
though we’re different: she’s a Westside Ballet (Royal Ballet) girl,
and I’m a Lichine Ballet (Vaganova) girl.

Still, our ballet lives, our people and styles, crossed paths along the way,
in a way that’s less linear than it sounds.
And having that in common is a kind of enduring thread that remains.

But Giselle... beautiful choreography, music and costumes, but… just,
the ballerina who danced the principal role, Skylar Brandt…

her performance will stay with me forever,
by the way she embodied the character and took up space.
What she expressed went beyond her mastery and technique,
her formidable presence and grace.

We were up in the center balcony, and during the mad scene,
you could feel the entire theater shift.
It was in the stillness between the movement,
something unspoken, and completely chilling.

Watching it, will break you, or a part of you, if you let it.

Kiva explained the story to me before the show,
and then reread it to me from the program in the car….

It was first performed in 1841, in Paris.

Giselle, having given her heart to a nobleman,
finds that he is about to marry up.
And her gentle soul can’t bear the betrayal.
Her heart gives out, and she leaves this plane.

That’s all before the intermission.
Watch out, not-so-noble man.
Act II.

In this ballet, good sir... there be ghosts.

Mon dieu.
Mon dieu!

No little goodbye chirps. No rustle of wings.
Just stillness, and a little bit of June gloom.

The mini-universe that once held the scene together, the watching, the waiting, gone quietly, like it was never there.

Just the sacred little empty nest.

It’s messy.

This was the fourth time they came back to make babies on my balcony.
And this iteration is done, because I too am moving from here.
So, unless it happens by some wild chance in my new place, the cycle is truly done.

Hummingbirds’ wings beat 70 times per second.
They bring so much magic and medicine. Joy.
They remind us to open our hearts.
To remember that the impossible is possible.

They made it! What a true miracle it is. Life created on that tiny swinging rope.

And not gonna lie… I miss them.

But I think I’ll see them again.
Somehow.
Or maybe just their cousins, somewhere out in the wild.

#sodade

The chirping started early this afternoon and hasn’t stopped since. I can hear her from the other room, practically yelling her own name, staking her claim.
She is so loud, and honestly? It’s definitely joy. I can only imagine what that may feel like, to all of a sudden have wings? To realize you can actually take flight?

I tried to catch it on camera, sliding the screen door open like I was sneaking up on magic.
The good camera was too far. The iPhone did its best.

But even if nothing came out clear, I was lucky enough to witness it.

She found her wings.

Only a matter of days? A week before they both venture out and away?

And I?
I held time for her mid-air celebration… it only happens, once?!
and, it felt like she wanted me to see her. Do you pick up on that energy in the video?
Like her first flight wasn’t just hers, it was ours.

Bonus crooked cam shot: momma clocks the cam

They were just about at this stage when momma was feeding them on this day

This isn’t Part 3. It’s not even really a full Part 2.5. Let’s call it 2.2… a small interlude of chaos and clarity.

Everything was quiet. The babies had stirred. The camera was rolling. I thought maybe, just maybe, this would be the day I captured her, momma hummingbird, returning.

So I went out there. Just to adjust the Wyze cam because it was alerting me every time my fern blew in the wind.
Just a tiny nudge.
Just a small, respectful realignment in the name of documentation.
(You know, like, if I don’t see her, do I need to call wildlife now? Or later? Tomorrow morning? Oh go-osssssh.)

And then:
BzzzzzzzzCHIRPCHIRPCHIRP.

I froze, scrunched down, bowed over, and then backward-stumbled out of my clogs, through the blinds and out the patio doors, like I had just been caught stealing, while saying, “Oh! Sorry, sorry…”

She weaved back and forth and made it very clear:
“I see you. Nice cam. Now scram.”

And I did.

In the chaos of my humble retreat, the camera ended up... in a tree.
Sideways.
Cradled in a branch, most likely going to end up in a pile of broken plastic and regret before I return (too scared to get scolded again to try to save it).

So now I have a sideways camera cradled in a branch, two baby birds who are very much alive and growing, and a fierce, tiny mother who reminds me of every boundary I’ve ever needed to set in my own life. I have been officially humbled by a bird queen as big as my thumb.

She’s here. She’s been here.
And she’s got this.

I may fix the camera tomorrow.
Or I may leave it right where it is.
Either way, she knows where to find them.

(2.3 coming soon, when I try to get the plant babies some water… sigh, that is assuming I’m allowed back on the balcony. And… I know she hasn’t forgiven the surveillance attempt, but she did let me live, so… )
“Nice cam. Now scram.”

Technically still operational.

• #SheLetMeLive

• #NiceCamNowScram

• #BirdQueenChronicles

• #TechnicallyStillOperational

• #FieldNotesFromTheFeatheredFront

• #SuburbanSafari

She’s still here, although now I hardly see her

and here she is, a rare sighting, a hurried, through the screen shot

I water the plants only when she’s gone, still
but the intensity of her absence finds me
in strange communion with Mother Nature.

A witness, with stakes now:
two pieces of precious nature I check on daily, just in case.
In case of what? I’m not sure.
Loss? Change? A quiet unraveling? She doesn’t return?

There are two now.

Two tiny thorns rising toward the Northern Star when she’s away.
That must mean they’re okay.
And I adjust to that trust, and faith in the natural order of things.

We’ve become a small, shared ecosystem.
My role: reverent witness, steward
A host of good energy, I suppose,
no, for sure… that I can do…
so they know the world is going to be amazing
and somehow, maybe… they’ll remember me.

The string of bulbs bows a little deeper each day
another small miracle of nature
and still, somehow… the little nest
wrapped around a little string, holds.

Incredible.

She arrived like this: settled, certain. A queen on a soft throne of bark and web, paying swinging rope, humans, my dog and the wind, little mind.

The balcony is hers now.
I water the plants like a guest,
but only if she’s flown off in search of food.
My plants, somehow, have managed to acclimate.
An unspoken network of accommodations… the plants adjust, I adjust, she reigns.

Sometimes, before she lands,
she hovers like a tiny pendulum, swaying side to side.
A kind of ritual hello. A dance of recognition.
She won’t stop until I say, “Hi! Hiee! Hieeeeyah!”
And I mean it every time.
(I captured the end of the dance during my sourdough-making shoot.)
It’s pure joy, unfettered, nerdy happiness.

In some stories, hummingbirds are messengers of joy.
In others, they stitch the spirit world to the earth with invisible thread.
Sometimes, they show up when kind people need a friend.
Perhaps sent by ancestors.
Or maybe just curious.

I’ve seen this before a few times now.
Past nests tucked into the vines.
Tiny twin beaks once rose over the rim like pins in a pincushion,
but that’s a story for another time.

For now, it’s just her. (And perhaps the eggs I can’t see?)
Just the weaving.
Just the swinging on solar lights.
Just the lights.
Just the light ✨

Existential reverence.
Not yet the visceral version of itself it will become.
It’s going to get beautifully messy.

I’ve been learning to make sourdough lately.
I know, a little late to the party.

A friend of mine, who quietly liked my last post, told me it’s better for you.
Slower. More natural.
I always wondered why food feels easier to digest in Europe.
I think this is why.

The post she liked,
Miss Yana Bene and the Blood Moon Eclipse,
for me, the process was a little less about getting it out there,
and more about actually finishing the thing.
It’s long.
And I didn’t expect to feel relief.
And I didn’t.
If anything, it reminded me that I have to do it again.

So, anyway, I bought a little jar, made a bit of a mess,
and now I’m here, between folds, writing this.

I started baking with a 900-year-old Dutch starter.
It came to life in a jar by the window.

A living archive.
It has weathered plagues, winters, heartbreaks, and harvests.

I'm joining an unbroken thread.
So I’m not just a little late to the party,
I’m really late.
The earliest evidence of sourdough-making is from 3700 BCE Switzerland.
But bread making traces further back: ancient Egypt,
then to the Mediterranean, the Middle East...
And now to me.
And to you.

Lately, the world feels divided in stranger and stranger ways.
As if the split between what can be measured
and what can only be felt is widening.

There’s a pressure to prove everything.
To hold the line of what’s “real.”
But story, myth, and dream,
they’ve always been part of what makes us human.
Fairy tales, science fiction, ancient epics,
we use them to say the unsayable.

Back to the dough,
mixing. Stirring.

This is all a break from doing, sort of. Drishti meets Komorebi, but eyes resting on oranges on the counter instead of light through the trees. Conjuring up nirvana.

Just above them
out the window

a hummingbird.
She’s been coming around a lot lately. (You can see her if you look carefully in the photo.)

I think I know why...

Nature can be so visceral sometimes.

I’ve shaped the loaf. It’s tucked in cloth now, resting.
The counter’s a bit of a mess.
But the kitchen smells like something good is about to happen.

Bread’s rising.

We can’t always understand what’s real for someone else.
But we can listen.
And maybe that’s enough.

I think it’s ready to go in.

That voice we all carry
the one that gets buried between tasks and doubts and noise
the birdsong,

it’s still there.

So, the Yana Bene poem, was a lot of fun to write. It’s in iambic pentameter,
a rhythm and a tuning fork
for anyone who feels quieted
for anyone who’s watched their imagination get repackaged, watered down,
sold back to them, or stolen.

The oven’s preheating.
Almost there.
Coming in hot.

You don’t need permission to start.
To write. To speak.
To bake.
To make something with your hands or your heart.

Just feed it.
Let it rise.
You’ll know when it’s ready to share.

She was right.
This is good.

You never know until you try.

Meanwhile, just a little something for later.
More is marinating.

Red onions, dreaming in vinegar. Pretty in pink.