Will Millar

2 weeks ago | willmillar-1461.medium.com | Will Millar

We start with a can of peaches at the Dawn of the 20 Century…Before he became one of the most singular and uncanny voices in all of American Literature, Charles Fort stocked the shelves in his family’s grocery store. His relationship with both authority figures in general, and his abusive father in particular, led to Fort’s early obsession with labels. In the young writer’s mind, labels were slippery, distrustful things.

3 weeks ago | willmillar-1461.medium.com | Will Millar

“May you live in interesting times.”It’s a curse. Maybe French. Maybe Chinese. Probably invented by a British diplomat after watching one too many empires collapse over sherry and cigars. Whoever said it, they were onto something. The real danger isn’t war or famine or plague — it’s when everything happens at once. Historians call those moments annus mirabilis — years of wonders. But the wonders are rarely gentle. They arrive in smoke and whispers, draped in miracle and misery alike. Cities burn.

3 weeks ago | willmillar-1461.medium.com | Will Millar

Let’s start here: I do not have an answer, and this question is more of a riddle anyway. Complexity by its very nature isn’t a bad thing. However, when something is neither bad nor good, it exists on an entirely separate continent from that which is entirely good for us. Still, as a species, we seek to be more attracted to ambivalence than that which is purely good. Weird, right? Complex societies allow for peaceful solutions to larger problems.

4 weeks ago | willmillar-1461.medium.com | Will Millar

They say he died in a bar fight, of all things. A dispute over a bill in a Deptford tavern and bam! Knife in the eye. That’s how the official story ends for Christopher Marlowe — playwright, heretic, spy, queer icon, and author of Doctor Faustus. But the story of Marlowe, just like the one he wrote, resists neat conclusions. You can’t kill the real Trickster. You can only invite him to dance with you. Marlowe didn’t just write about summoning devils. He wrote as if the devil had already summoned him.

1 month ago | willmillar-1461.medium.com | Will Millar

“There are two Rob Roys. One lived and breathed. The other is a good story, a lively tale set in the past. Both may be accepted as ‘valid,’ but they serve different needs and interests.” —David Stevenson, The Hunt for Rob RoyLet me start with something simple: we’ve been swapped. Not literally. Not all of us, anyway. But some part of how we see the world — how we think we know ourselves — has been replaced. Silently. Enchantingly. And as if in a collective trance, we all sort of went along with it.