🌿 Dispatches from the Jungle 🌿

A Queer Expat Blog for the Bold, the Curious, and the Deeply Alive

Welcome to Dispatches from the Jungle — a lifestyle blog at the intersection of queer identity, creative freedom, and midlife reinvention. I’m Waymon Hudson: a late-deafened writer, Broadway musical creator, and marketing futurist living loud in the jungles of Costa Rica.

This isn’t just a blog. It’s a digital campfire — a place for stories about joy, grief, surf sessions, messy growth, and gorgeous resistance. Whether I’m writing about life as a queer expat, the behind-the-scenes of building a Broadway show, or what it’s like to rewire your life at 45, you’ll find it all here. Raw, real, and radically hopeful.

Subscribe to read about:

🌈 LGBTQ+ life in Costa Rica and beyond

📖 Memoir-style reflections on healing, identity & reinvention

🧠 Marketing insights and brand storytelling with soul

🏄 Jungle living, dogs, and imperfect adventures

✨ The creative chaos of art, activism, and starting over

Ready for a blog that doesn’t just inform — but connects, uplifts, and sparks something real?

👉 Subscribe on Substack or explore the latest dispatches below.

🌟 Featured Posts🌟

Miss Addie stands center stage in the Velvet Boot nightclub set, hands raised as she sings with power and vulnerability, surrounded by the queer community she is finally stepping into.

I Carried the Sound: When Broadway Passes the Torch of Legacy

How Miss Addie becomes the Velvet Boot’s new heartbeat... and how queer survival becomes triumph in Broadway's Speakeasy: A New Musical.

Close-up portrait of Waymon Hudson with soft snowflakes in his hair, looking off-camera with a calm, introspective expression. Shot outdoors in winter. Image highlights the emotional, intimate tone of his holiday single “Christmas in the Quiet,” an orchestral ballad about grief and quiet Christmas moments.

🎶 Christmas in the Quiet: The Holiday Song for the Empty Chair

“Christmas in the Quiet” is the holiday song for the years we don’t talk about—the ones filled with memory, grief, and the ache of an empty chair. Here’s the intimate story behind Waymon Hudson’s newest winter ballad.

The Watchers: Broadway’s Anthems of Witness

“The Watchers” is the queer spiritual core of Speakeasy — a sacred Broadway anthem about survival, chosen family, and the power of witnessing each other.

I Carried the Sound: When Broadway Passes the Torch of Legacy

How Miss Addie becomes the Velvet Boot’s new heartbeat... and how queer survival becomes triumph in Broadway's Speakeasy: A New Musical.

🎭 Broadway & Musical Storytelling

Waymon Hudson

Nov 296 min read

A performer in La Cage aux Folles stands in a spotlight wearing a sparkling gown with purple sleeves, arms raised mid-belting the defiant finale “I Am What I Am.”

All That I Am: When Queer Broadway Characters Refuse to Stay Supporting

When Queer Broadway characters stop hiding behind the jokes and start demanding to be seen, the result is electric. In Speakeasy, Merc’s “All That I Am” turns vulnerability into power — and the supporting character into the soul of the story.

🎭 Broadway & Musical Storytelling

Waymon Hudson

Nov 85 min read

The original Broadway cast of Rent raises their fists in unity during “La Vie Bohème.” The diverse ensemble celebrates chosen family, queer identity, and resistance during the height of the AIDS crisis — symbolizing how Broadway turned pain into protest.

Broadway's Hidden Ones — Queer Survival in Plain Sight

Speakeasy: A New Musical captures what Broadway has always known: queer survival is defiance in disguise. From drag bans to police raids, this is how we keep singing.

🎭 Broadway & Musical Storytelling

Waymon Hudson

Nov 16 min read

Broadway Confrontation Songs: Rage, Grief, and the Ghost of the Soft Boy

Broadway’s confrontation songs show the fight between who we were and who we become. In Speakeasy, Rome’s “Last Call” carries the heartbreak and fury of a man torn between vengeance and love.

🎭 Broadway & Musical Storytelling

Waymon Hudson

Oct 124 min read

🎶 Before I Go by Waymon Hudson — A Quiet Goodbye That Comes Back Louder

He whispered goodbye every morning before his feet hit the floor. Before I Go is a breakup song about soft strength, quiet endings, and learning to love yourself more than the silence.

My Music: Through My Skin

Waymon Hudson

Oct 53 min read