Welcome back to Queeries! I happen to find myself surrounded by wonderful people with the work I do and want to keep track of that here. Every once in a while, a cute lil interview will find its way into your inbox! Somewhere above this text, you can find the taping of our actual conversation, and somewhere below this text you’ll find my article-blog-post take on it. Enjoy!
Oh, how I remember the warm weather. On this hot day, I find myself on Will Watt’s roof. I’m a little worried about the audio quality, but the vibes are great! Will is a dear friend, as well as being an actor, audiobook narrator, sound designer, gardener and huge sweetheart. There’s a gorgeous greenhouse on top of the building, where you can find all kinds of plants! There’s citrus, there’s wisteria, there’s a great deal of them silly greens as well ;). It’s a picturesque setting for this interview.
I ask about the creative spirit, I see the gears turning. Will tells me he grew up in a quite creative household. Growing up, his father was a doctor, and did photography semi-professionally to remain fulfilled. His mum went to art college. Creativity was ever-present, but not in any pressurized way, simply available. He describes loving theatre growing up, and being in dance classes starting with ballet at the age of three. He was also in music programs from a very young age. “You know how you hear about like the Victorian era, the Victorians were all into their arts and crafts and… being creative in their way…. It’s healthy for one to have a creative pursuit.” he says.
I wonder if that’s the general European attitude, and ask if thats been his experience. “The European approach to leisure is a lot different than the North American one. It is more common, I think, for people in the UK to go out and do things together on weekends, and to have these things we do in our spare time, mostly because we have a bit more of it…”. There’s a familiar urge to romanticize the UK, perhaps remnants of some colonization rhetoric, but also a result of the shit show our country has become recently.
Aaaaaanyway. I ask about the monetizing of creativity. He really ponders this one. He then tells me that when he started, it was only with the intention of having a hobby. His approach to narrating audiobooks started from the perspective of voice acting. “I had my little crappy Skype headset microphone and I had little online communities…” Wether he was dubbing an anime episode or working on someone’s original content, he expresses that he never felt pressure to monetize it. In those early days, he approached this work as more of a fun outlet. “I think there’s this weird misconception that a lot of people have about artists… If you’re an artist you’re born with this inherent set of skills and qualities that mean that you are uniquely capable of drawing that picture or singing that song or dancing that dance.” Perhaps there may be a certain enthusiasm for a certain thing, but as anyone working in the arts will tell you, creating a living out of art requires much more than a proclivity.
I volunteer the term ‘patience’, as I am learning the meaning of the word daily. “A lot of not being as good as you want to be” Will says. I myself often feel the dissonance between the idea of progress and the reality of what progress feels like. “And I think having that hobby-ist approach really allowed me to not write myself off at an early stage”. It makes sense. Pursuit of something for joy is much different than pursuit of something for ‘success’, whatever that means.
I shift gears rather abruptly, as I tend to do, and give Will an opportunity to gush about how much he loves Ableton. Ableton Live is a music production software suite that is the apple of Will’s eye, among other production geeks I know. “I use it for bloody everything.” (Not sponsored. As if.) Everything from audiobook work, sound in theatre, writing his own music, etc. Apparently “It allows you to bypass all of the nonsense that a mixer involves”. You can do all of that in the software suite. I know not a damn thing about Ableton or any similar software, but I love to let him gush. I haven’t typed it all out, but it’s so very endearing to hear.
Then there’s a very dramatic interruption. Squirrel friends are on the scene.
Will’s apartment is the top floor of his building, connected to the greenhouse we’re sat outside of. Shortly after a previous roommate(with a dog) moved out, Will discovered a wee squirrel was seeking out some birdseed. After several attempts to prevent it from getting in, the household finally decided to leave some birdseed outside. But of course, the seed ran out, and the squirrel was searching in the apartment again. After reaching an impasse, Will decided to start leaving out nuts and did some research about squirrels. Turns out certain nuts are better than others, hazelnuts over peanuts, for example. Then there came another. The two seemed to be mating? The original squirrel was given the name Bandit and her lover was given the name Scandal. They became pseudo-pets, receiving de-worm meds and an endless supply of hazelnuts. Shortly after mating season, Scandal disappeared, and Bandit seemed to be pregnant. One fateful day, they encountered the baby on their roof. He was a teeny tiny lil nervous guy. They named him Rocky. He seemed rather sickly and so they took extra care to make sure he had nuts. Rocky very quickly learned that Will’s household was to be trusted. He’'ll jump on Will’s shoulder to get a nut. Nowadays, a new squirrel has entered the villa, the very squirrel we just spotted. Her name is Big Ears, and she’s a bully. There’s been a rivalry between Big Ears and Rocky, which seems to be turning into a romance as the mating season comes around again? The Squilliad continues to this day, a very heartwarming tale. Tail?
Aaaaaaanyway. Before Big Ears appeared, I was about to ask Will to gush about his top three favorite gadgets.
The first is a hardware controller by Ableton called The Push. “You can basically control pretty much everything in Ableton that you could from a computer, just from this controller.” Great for moving around a space, great for sketching out ideas, etc. It’s also extremely satisfying to have the textile experience of pressing an actual button.
The second is a gadget Will discovered when working on the sound design of The Bottom of the Ocean, an immersive theatre piece in Brooklyn. He needed to create a “multi-room sound system” that had something different going on in each room of the space being used. It also needed to be able to be manipulated by the actors in the space. Enter Widi by CME. “It’s basically wireless midi.” Anyone who has worked with Midi knows that the cables used need to be rather short to carry the signal effectively. Widi allows for everything to be more spaced out if needs be, a similar range as Bluetooth. After using it in two shows, Will now uses it in his home setup for music and radio purposes.
The third one is “a little bit pedestrian”. The Google home system. Will hates silence, and so he has speakers planted all around the house preset to play at certain times. The automated setup has made the ambience streamlined.
I’m always more than happy to hear my friends gush about the things they’re passionate about, even if it goes over my head. It’s a constant reminder that it’s okay to not know everything, and actually it’s an asset.
I ask about advice for past Will? “Trust yourself, if you wanna do it, go and do it. It’s not the lottery. If you want to go out and work in an industry go out and work in an industry.” And Future Will? “Oof, sorry about that. Keep on keeping on, I guess.” Ah, the charming self deprecation. He gives himself much less credit than is deserved.
Thank you, thank you to Will for sitting and chatting with me nearly six months ago. You can find Will on Instagram at willmwatt and at www.willmwatt.com. If you find yourself on Audible, any audiobooks narrated by Will are under the same name.
Talk Soon!
