Walking and talking is a reference to those scenes in movies, where the characters actually have a conversation. (It was also a terrific 1996 film by Nicole Holofcener).  Maybe this blog can be the digital equivalent of walking and talking, just a little bit. I was an entertainment reporter at the Calgary Herald for 10 years and a theatre critic as well, and my life was pretty full of walking and talking about the sorts of stuff I hope to write about here: theatre, sports, running, books, culture, performing arts,  travel, media, business, politics – and other stuff. (How do you draw a line between entertainment and politics when the presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump is expected to attract 100 million viewers?)

If that makes thehalfstep.live a bit of a mashup, so be it! My brain is a bit of one, these days. It has so many little channels in it, it’s in constant rotation between a dozen different subject – although maybe channels is the wrong word for the 21st century. Tabs. It has so many tabs open, sometimes my brain makes like my Google Chromebook and freezes!

Some of those other tabs include: teaching playwriting at the University of British Columbia’s MFA Program in Creative Writing since 2007; being the author of a book, a play and an unproduced TV comedy pilot about being a white guy; being a runner of uncertain form but undeniable determination; and being a traveller who, as (I think it was) Thoreau once said, suffers the  perpetual unhappiness of someone who wishes he was anywhere but here.

There’s a whole lot of walking and talking that could be said about the crisis in cultural criticism as well, and that’s a large part of what I hope to talk about in thehalfstep.live and elsewhere – and if all goes well, maybe it will eventually include a bunch of critical voices, and we can turn this (so-far) solo walk and talk into a party.

Stephen Hunt

stephenbhunt@gmail.com