.
“Living longer means you witness the daily onslaught of stupid and mean that passes for reality.
Living longer means you witness the toggle between progression and backlash, over and over like a tennis game from hell.
Living longer means you meet young people who are better or worse versions of who you once were.
Living longer means you draw the logic of your perspective into a latticework of meaning that purportedly helps you see patterns, something you might call “maturity.” But more often than not it feels like you’re just decorating a cage of your own design, rendering yourself unsupple and resistant to change.
Living longer means coming to terms with whether or not this is true, every day.”
- Miguel Gutierrez, Aging Awfully
,
April 16, 2024
April 11, 2024
Excerpt from the novel-in-progress now tentatively entitled The House of Climate Grief
.
It was around this time I was given a room at The House of Climate Grief. What exactly is this place? I would tell you if I knew but I really have no idea. Almost no idea. There are about a hundred of us here. Every few months someone leaves only to be quickly replaced.
There are classes, discussion groups, film screenings, walks in the surrounding grounds, music recitals, communal meals plus other things I might be forgetting. Despite the severity of the times the mood was often cordial.
When I arrived there was a mantra that often repeated in my head: I can’t cope. That was the rationale for coming here. To get some distance from my daily life in the hopes it might allow me to find a way forward. The fact that he died, and that I now heard people singing his praises so often, might have been a factor in this more recent inability to cope. But there were of course other factors. Everything was part of everything.
You could choose to participate in the activities or choose to keep to yourself. For the first few weeks I mostly kept to myself. Until one day there was a knock at my door from a carefully diplomatic employee who had been sent to explain that the organization would appreciate it if I were to participate in at least some of the activities. And if I continued to abstain I would eventually be asked to leave. It wasn’t yet clear to me if I wanted to stay, but the idea of being forced to leave also didn’t appeal to me, so the next morning I found myself carefully examining the weekly schedule, indecisive in some way that was exceptionally familiar to me, until finally I settled on a discussion group entitled Voting For The Thing You Don’t Want, a title which appealed to my contrary streak. It began in one hour, and I decided to fill that hour with a contemplative walk around the grounds, something I’d previously planned but had not yet got around too.
The grounds had clearly been rewilded. A chaotic tangle of plants, trees, and grasses everywhere you looked. I was later to learn that there was much food to be foraged in this tangle, but for now my perceptions had not yet been trained to identify any of it. I walked slowly, leaving space for observation and regret.
Being here reminds me of the movie Safe by Todd Haynes. A movie I saw when I was young.
Another thing about this time, I was thinking a great deal about conversion experiences. I wanted something along those lines for myself and I wanted to trigger something similar in others. Often what you want to do, or what you think you’re doing, is not what you’re actually doing. You’re doing something else. That something else might be what you actually want to do, rather than what you think you want to do. But these two possibilities need not be in opposition. My goal, in short, was to bring them closer together.
I’m the first to arrive at Voting For The Thing You Don’t Want. A circle of folding chairs in an otherwise empty room. I sit in one of the chairs and wait. There is so much to think about but instead I find myself barely thinking at all. It seems to make the time go more quickly, and I’m unsure how much time has passed before the first person arrives, who pauses at the doorway before asking me if I’m leading today’s workshop. I reply that I’m not, then ask them if they’re leading today’s workshop, which makes no sense. If they were leading today’s workshop they would have not asked me if I was. We immediately establish that neither of us is leading the workshop.
They sit in a chair across from me, on the other side of the circle. We both sit in silence. It is awkward. It grows more awkward over time, as no one else arrives. After a while I check the time. We’ve been waiting for thirty minutes. They see me looking at my watch and, I suppose, for that reason or some other, decide to break the ice: “What do you think that means: Voting For The Thing You Don’t Want?”
This is a perfectly reasonable question but I have to admit I haven’t given the matter much thought. If I were to take a literal approach, and consider what we might call a “normal election in a representative democracy,” it’s true that when I vote I always have the feeling that I’m voting for something I actually don’t want. But my first instinct is to interpret the title less literally. I start thinking about the difficulty of knowing what one wants, something that has always been a problem for me. By coming here, I was hoping to get away from mundane, everyday decisions. With those things taken care of, my hope was that I could then move on to more substantial questions. I was led to believe we have all come here with some sense of unspoken purpose. None of these thoughts feel like the right thing to say in this particular moment, so instead I decide to throw the question back at them: “I’m not sure. What do you think it means?”
For a long moment I’m worried they’ll reply with ‘I don’t know, what do you think it means?’ but this anxiety is unfounded. Nonetheless, just as moments ago I made them wait, now it is their turn to make me wait. (This also draws attention to the fact that we are probably no longer waiting for anyone else to attend or lead this session.) Finally, they begin to speak, and to the best of my recollection this is more or less what they say: “I’ve been here for about three weeks now. It’s a strange place. I can’t quite figure it out. There’s a schedule of activities but only some of the activities actually seem to happen. Some of the others don’t seem to be real. But I’m not even sure about that. Because the two of us are here, which is a situation that has a certain reality to it. Perhaps whatever you and I end up discussing is now the activity. You and I are Voting For The Thing We Don’t Want. This discussion we’re having right now is it. But that’s just a whimsical idea. I’ve always believed in making the best of any difficult situation. But in the past I’ve always been able to more or less identify what the situation was. Here I can’t even tell what exactly it is that I’m trying to make the best of.”
I admit to my companion that this is the first activity I’ve attended, so I have no point of comparison. I then recount the recent story of how I wasn’t participating in any of the activities, and was admonished by a staff member into doing so. So I speculate that perhaps many others here are also avoiding the activities, and the staff is concurrently working to rectify the situation. If one decides to come here, one is likely involved in a fairly high degree of despair and despair is not a state of mind that lends itself to participating in daily, poorly organized activities.
I pause as we both mull this over. Just then a third person enters the room. Unlike either of us, they begin by immediately introducing themselves. Their name is Lowen. I say “Hello Lowen,” but for some reason don’t offer up my name in return and neither does my companion on the other side of the circle, who instead says “Are you here to lead the workshop?” Unsurprisingly, Lowen is not here to lead the workshop, but nonetheless finds a seat and joins us in the circle.
Lowen apologizes for being late and explains the reason is that the previous workshop he’d attended ran over. They’re still trying to get his head around it all. It really stressed them out. The reason it ran over was the discussion at the end had transformed into a rather heated argument, stopping just short of physical violence, which I found surprising. Lowen worried that this session would also turn into a violent group argument and we both assured them it seemed unlikely.
Without prompting, Lowen goes on to describe the nature of the group argument. They were discussing stories. How important stories were for creating social change. And there seemed to be a general agreement in the room that stories were important. That stories shaped the way people think and changing people’s underlying assumptions was of the upmost importance.
But then someone said that, overall, this discussion was completely pissing them off. That all this emphasis on changing the stories that were the basis of our cultural norms were okay as far as they went, but in his opinion didn’t go anywhere near far enough. Because on top of all that we needed to blow up oil pipelines, assassinate fossil fuel CEOs and board members, blockade shipping ports, burn down police stations and break open prisons, and generally attack all physical infrastructure currently enforcing the status quo. Only then would there be enough room for the new stories and ways of thinking that seemed so important to everyone in this room. He took an aggressive approach to making these points, yet he was also concise, which was appreciated.
The first responses to his outburst were conciliatory. Of course one approach did not preclude the other. All approaches were necessary. This particular workshop focused on using stories to create change. If he wanted to lead one, or many, workshops that focused on strategies for direct action, he was both welcome and invited to do so.
All of this only made him angrier. Didn’t we all realize that the time for idle talk was done.
Someone replied that we could assassinate all the CEO’s we wanted, there would always be new assholes to take their place. If we didn’t change people’s stories, people’s understanding of the world, change them to the extent that people no longer wanted to be CEOs of anything, we would never be able to break the cycle.
“No,” the angry man shot back, “you don’t understand. It’s too late for all that. Everything’s collapsing. People won’t be able to become CEOs because all multinational corporations will have collapsed. You can’t become a CEO of a corporation that no longer exists. But we need to stop them before they drag everything else down with them.”
The arguments against such clear-eyed alarmism also grew more heated and soon half the room was working to shout him down. Lowen didn’t actually stay to the end, doesn’t know the full end of the story, slipped out when everyone was yelling. In general, their nervous system was not able to withstand that level of heated conflict.
There was a pause as I worked to process everything they’d just told us. This current session seemed much quieter than the one Lowen recounted. It seemed there were many different kinds of activities. Lowen did seem shaken. I wondered if I would have been shaken if I had been there. In general, I found many difficult situations fairly manageable, while also finding it difficult to predict which reasonable situations I might find challenging. I was rarely shy in the face of conflict, but nonetheless often avoided it. I tried to imagine myself blowing up a pipeline or setting a police station on fire. It was nice to imagine, but hard to believe I would have the nerve to actually do so. Maybe in the future that could change.
Lowen said: “So can someone tell me about Voting For The Thing You Don’t Want?” Neither of us could. So, following our previous pattern, we asked Lowen what they thought it meant. They didn’t hesitate: “People now live bombarded by false desires. Whatever you think you want is likely not going to work. I’m not just talking about consumerism. On every level we want what we don’t want and that’s what we get. I think both of you know what I mean.”
We both agreed that we knew what they meant. It was something about being a person. When you were a person you didn’t just make yourself. You were also made by your environment. And our environments were giving us false flags from the moment we were born.
This session was scheduled for one hour and my companion on the other side of the circle now mentioned the hour was almost up. Most of the activities were allotted two or three hours, but for some reason this one was shorter. Maybe the thing we were supposed to vote for, that we didn’t want, was a longer session. We politely said our goodbyes and a strange emptiness overcame me as I retraced my steps on the way back to my room. I now knew a little bit more about this place and, at the same time, also knew less than ever.
*
[I'm now realizing The House of Climate Grief (which also might be called Desire Without Expecation) might be the final part of a planned trilogy based loosely around questions concerning the desire for utopia.]
.
It was around this time I was given a room at The House of Climate Grief. What exactly is this place? I would tell you if I knew but I really have no idea. Almost no idea. There are about a hundred of us here. Every few months someone leaves only to be quickly replaced.
There are classes, discussion groups, film screenings, walks in the surrounding grounds, music recitals, communal meals plus other things I might be forgetting. Despite the severity of the times the mood was often cordial.
When I arrived there was a mantra that often repeated in my head: I can’t cope. That was the rationale for coming here. To get some distance from my daily life in the hopes it might allow me to find a way forward. The fact that he died, and that I now heard people singing his praises so often, might have been a factor in this more recent inability to cope. But there were of course other factors. Everything was part of everything.
You could choose to participate in the activities or choose to keep to yourself. For the first few weeks I mostly kept to myself. Until one day there was a knock at my door from a carefully diplomatic employee who had been sent to explain that the organization would appreciate it if I were to participate in at least some of the activities. And if I continued to abstain I would eventually be asked to leave. It wasn’t yet clear to me if I wanted to stay, but the idea of being forced to leave also didn’t appeal to me, so the next morning I found myself carefully examining the weekly schedule, indecisive in some way that was exceptionally familiar to me, until finally I settled on a discussion group entitled Voting For The Thing You Don’t Want, a title which appealed to my contrary streak. It began in one hour, and I decided to fill that hour with a contemplative walk around the grounds, something I’d previously planned but had not yet got around too.
The grounds had clearly been rewilded. A chaotic tangle of plants, trees, and grasses everywhere you looked. I was later to learn that there was much food to be foraged in this tangle, but for now my perceptions had not yet been trained to identify any of it. I walked slowly, leaving space for observation and regret.
Being here reminds me of the movie Safe by Todd Haynes. A movie I saw when I was young.
Another thing about this time, I was thinking a great deal about conversion experiences. I wanted something along those lines for myself and I wanted to trigger something similar in others. Often what you want to do, or what you think you’re doing, is not what you’re actually doing. You’re doing something else. That something else might be what you actually want to do, rather than what you think you want to do. But these two possibilities need not be in opposition. My goal, in short, was to bring them closer together.
I’m the first to arrive at Voting For The Thing You Don’t Want. A circle of folding chairs in an otherwise empty room. I sit in one of the chairs and wait. There is so much to think about but instead I find myself barely thinking at all. It seems to make the time go more quickly, and I’m unsure how much time has passed before the first person arrives, who pauses at the doorway before asking me if I’m leading today’s workshop. I reply that I’m not, then ask them if they’re leading today’s workshop, which makes no sense. If they were leading today’s workshop they would have not asked me if I was. We immediately establish that neither of us is leading the workshop.
They sit in a chair across from me, on the other side of the circle. We both sit in silence. It is awkward. It grows more awkward over time, as no one else arrives. After a while I check the time. We’ve been waiting for thirty minutes. They see me looking at my watch and, I suppose, for that reason or some other, decide to break the ice: “What do you think that means: Voting For The Thing You Don’t Want?”
This is a perfectly reasonable question but I have to admit I haven’t given the matter much thought. If I were to take a literal approach, and consider what we might call a “normal election in a representative democracy,” it’s true that when I vote I always have the feeling that I’m voting for something I actually don’t want. But my first instinct is to interpret the title less literally. I start thinking about the difficulty of knowing what one wants, something that has always been a problem for me. By coming here, I was hoping to get away from mundane, everyday decisions. With those things taken care of, my hope was that I could then move on to more substantial questions. I was led to believe we have all come here with some sense of unspoken purpose. None of these thoughts feel like the right thing to say in this particular moment, so instead I decide to throw the question back at them: “I’m not sure. What do you think it means?”
For a long moment I’m worried they’ll reply with ‘I don’t know, what do you think it means?’ but this anxiety is unfounded. Nonetheless, just as moments ago I made them wait, now it is their turn to make me wait. (This also draws attention to the fact that we are probably no longer waiting for anyone else to attend or lead this session.) Finally, they begin to speak, and to the best of my recollection this is more or less what they say: “I’ve been here for about three weeks now. It’s a strange place. I can’t quite figure it out. There’s a schedule of activities but only some of the activities actually seem to happen. Some of the others don’t seem to be real. But I’m not even sure about that. Because the two of us are here, which is a situation that has a certain reality to it. Perhaps whatever you and I end up discussing is now the activity. You and I are Voting For The Thing We Don’t Want. This discussion we’re having right now is it. But that’s just a whimsical idea. I’ve always believed in making the best of any difficult situation. But in the past I’ve always been able to more or less identify what the situation was. Here I can’t even tell what exactly it is that I’m trying to make the best of.”
I admit to my companion that this is the first activity I’ve attended, so I have no point of comparison. I then recount the recent story of how I wasn’t participating in any of the activities, and was admonished by a staff member into doing so. So I speculate that perhaps many others here are also avoiding the activities, and the staff is concurrently working to rectify the situation. If one decides to come here, one is likely involved in a fairly high degree of despair and despair is not a state of mind that lends itself to participating in daily, poorly organized activities.
I pause as we both mull this over. Just then a third person enters the room. Unlike either of us, they begin by immediately introducing themselves. Their name is Lowen. I say “Hello Lowen,” but for some reason don’t offer up my name in return and neither does my companion on the other side of the circle, who instead says “Are you here to lead the workshop?” Unsurprisingly, Lowen is not here to lead the workshop, but nonetheless finds a seat and joins us in the circle.
Lowen apologizes for being late and explains the reason is that the previous workshop he’d attended ran over. They’re still trying to get his head around it all. It really stressed them out. The reason it ran over was the discussion at the end had transformed into a rather heated argument, stopping just short of physical violence, which I found surprising. Lowen worried that this session would also turn into a violent group argument and we both assured them it seemed unlikely.
Without prompting, Lowen goes on to describe the nature of the group argument. They were discussing stories. How important stories were for creating social change. And there seemed to be a general agreement in the room that stories were important. That stories shaped the way people think and changing people’s underlying assumptions was of the upmost importance.
But then someone said that, overall, this discussion was completely pissing them off. That all this emphasis on changing the stories that were the basis of our cultural norms were okay as far as they went, but in his opinion didn’t go anywhere near far enough. Because on top of all that we needed to blow up oil pipelines, assassinate fossil fuel CEOs and board members, blockade shipping ports, burn down police stations and break open prisons, and generally attack all physical infrastructure currently enforcing the status quo. Only then would there be enough room for the new stories and ways of thinking that seemed so important to everyone in this room. He took an aggressive approach to making these points, yet he was also concise, which was appreciated.
The first responses to his outburst were conciliatory. Of course one approach did not preclude the other. All approaches were necessary. This particular workshop focused on using stories to create change. If he wanted to lead one, or many, workshops that focused on strategies for direct action, he was both welcome and invited to do so.
All of this only made him angrier. Didn’t we all realize that the time for idle talk was done.
Someone replied that we could assassinate all the CEO’s we wanted, there would always be new assholes to take their place. If we didn’t change people’s stories, people’s understanding of the world, change them to the extent that people no longer wanted to be CEOs of anything, we would never be able to break the cycle.
“No,” the angry man shot back, “you don’t understand. It’s too late for all that. Everything’s collapsing. People won’t be able to become CEOs because all multinational corporations will have collapsed. You can’t become a CEO of a corporation that no longer exists. But we need to stop them before they drag everything else down with them.”
The arguments against such clear-eyed alarmism also grew more heated and soon half the room was working to shout him down. Lowen didn’t actually stay to the end, doesn’t know the full end of the story, slipped out when everyone was yelling. In general, their nervous system was not able to withstand that level of heated conflict.
There was a pause as I worked to process everything they’d just told us. This current session seemed much quieter than the one Lowen recounted. It seemed there were many different kinds of activities. Lowen did seem shaken. I wondered if I would have been shaken if I had been there. In general, I found many difficult situations fairly manageable, while also finding it difficult to predict which reasonable situations I might find challenging. I was rarely shy in the face of conflict, but nonetheless often avoided it. I tried to imagine myself blowing up a pipeline or setting a police station on fire. It was nice to imagine, but hard to believe I would have the nerve to actually do so. Maybe in the future that could change.
Lowen said: “So can someone tell me about Voting For The Thing You Don’t Want?” Neither of us could. So, following our previous pattern, we asked Lowen what they thought it meant. They didn’t hesitate: “People now live bombarded by false desires. Whatever you think you want is likely not going to work. I’m not just talking about consumerism. On every level we want what we don’t want and that’s what we get. I think both of you know what I mean.”
We both agreed that we knew what they meant. It was something about being a person. When you were a person you didn’t just make yourself. You were also made by your environment. And our environments were giving us false flags from the moment we were born.
This session was scheduled for one hour and my companion on the other side of the circle now mentioned the hour was almost up. Most of the activities were allotted two or three hours, but for some reason this one was shorter. Maybe the thing we were supposed to vote for, that we didn’t want, was a longer session. We politely said our goodbyes and a strange emptiness overcame me as I retraced my steps on the way back to my room. I now knew a little bit more about this place and, at the same time, also knew less than ever.
*
[I'm now realizing The House of Climate Grief (which also might be called Desire Without Expecation) might be the final part of a planned trilogy based loosely around questions concerning the desire for utopia.]
.
April 4, 2024
Two Robert Wyatt Quotes
.
Ryan Dombal: “…your career is a good example of how being an underdog isn’t necessarily something to overcome.”
Robert Wyatt: “Well, that’s about the nicest thing anybody’s said to me in years. I hope that’s the truth. It’s not even a moral question. It’s a question of pride. You have to be able to look at yourself in the mirror, and I don’t know how some people do that. God knows I’ve been so wicked and selfish in the past, but nevertheless, I do really think the things I think and support the people I support. I would encourage people to realize that you don’t have to panic if you’re not part of a mainstream or if you find yourself outside the flow. If it doesn’t suit you, don’t go along with it. Just sit it out and get your stuff done. Don’t just sit moaning or getting drunk—I spent some years doing that. But if you can just come up with something of your own, however minor it is, that’s going to be easier to live with when you’re at the end of your life.”
– Robert Wyatt
From this piece: https://pitchfork.com/features/interview/9544-robert-wyatt/
*
“I kind of had nervous breakdown in ‘95. I felt burnt out before my time and just collapsed. I just didn’t want to be me anymore. I was tired of it, though not suicidal. A lot of the stuff we’re talking about is me attempting to find an identity outside of the given one, whether it’s listening to Spanish music or Russian communist music or black music. They’re all ways of getting out of the prison of self, really. But at that point, I couldn’t get out. I just felt trapped. Maybe that was a decade-late delay about the accident – at last, the difficulty I was in kicked in. Alfie and I spent most of our time in a sort of fancy wooden cabin on the coast at this point, half an hour away from where we lived in Lincolnshire, and there was no electricity. We didn’t even have records. We listened to stories you could get on cassette.
I got some treatment. I actually went to the doctor and went to anxiety management classes. Alfie said, “I can’t handle this at all,” because I’d gone mad. She’d dealt with everything up to that point, but not that. I came out of that and started working on a record, which became Shleep, and that’s really what took me out of it.
I’d been making records on my own, and somebody said, “Why don’t you get some other people in? You don’t have to marry them. They can just spend a couple of days at your house and do a song with you.” And I thought, "Why not?" From that point on, my records got more crowded. [laughs] It’s helped me. I made two or three records totally solo, and I was going mad in this musical isolation. I just felt so cut off from the world.”
– Robert Wyatt
From this piece: https://pitchfork.com/features/5-10-15-20/8776-robert-wyatt/
.
Ryan Dombal: “…your career is a good example of how being an underdog isn’t necessarily something to overcome.”
Robert Wyatt: “Well, that’s about the nicest thing anybody’s said to me in years. I hope that’s the truth. It’s not even a moral question. It’s a question of pride. You have to be able to look at yourself in the mirror, and I don’t know how some people do that. God knows I’ve been so wicked and selfish in the past, but nevertheless, I do really think the things I think and support the people I support. I would encourage people to realize that you don’t have to panic if you’re not part of a mainstream or if you find yourself outside the flow. If it doesn’t suit you, don’t go along with it. Just sit it out and get your stuff done. Don’t just sit moaning or getting drunk—I spent some years doing that. But if you can just come up with something of your own, however minor it is, that’s going to be easier to live with when you’re at the end of your life.”
– Robert Wyatt
From this piece: https://pitchfork.com/features/interview/9544-robert-wyatt/
*
“I kind of had nervous breakdown in ‘95. I felt burnt out before my time and just collapsed. I just didn’t want to be me anymore. I was tired of it, though not suicidal. A lot of the stuff we’re talking about is me attempting to find an identity outside of the given one, whether it’s listening to Spanish music or Russian communist music or black music. They’re all ways of getting out of the prison of self, really. But at that point, I couldn’t get out. I just felt trapped. Maybe that was a decade-late delay about the accident – at last, the difficulty I was in kicked in. Alfie and I spent most of our time in a sort of fancy wooden cabin on the coast at this point, half an hour away from where we lived in Lincolnshire, and there was no electricity. We didn’t even have records. We listened to stories you could get on cassette.
I got some treatment. I actually went to the doctor and went to anxiety management classes. Alfie said, “I can’t handle this at all,” because I’d gone mad. She’d dealt with everything up to that point, but not that. I came out of that and started working on a record, which became Shleep, and that’s really what took me out of it.
I’d been making records on my own, and somebody said, “Why don’t you get some other people in? You don’t have to marry them. They can just spend a couple of days at your house and do a song with you.” And I thought, "Why not?" From that point on, my records got more crowded. [laughs] It’s helped me. I made two or three records totally solo, and I was going mad in this musical isolation. I just felt so cut off from the world.”
– Robert Wyatt
From this piece: https://pitchfork.com/features/5-10-15-20/8776-robert-wyatt/
.
April 3, 2024
L’idealismo infranto di Jacob Wren di Manuela Pacella
.
Thank you to Manuela Pacella for this in depth and charming account of my work in the Italian version of Flash Art:
https://flash---art.it/2024/04/jacob-wren/
Here is a summary, in Italian, of Polyamorous Love Song:
Il cinema e il film sono molto presenti in questo libro. Un personaggio chiave è Filmmaker A. Nel 2002 viene invitata al New York Film Festival, la stessa edizione alla quale Abbas Kiarostami non poté prendere parte perché gli fu negato di entrare negli Stati Uniti. Questo evento la sconvolge e si ritrova a vagare per le strade della città ragionando su come poter realizzare film più veri e riflettendo su Close-Up (1990) di Kiarostami. Ha un’idea che diviene esplosiva e la rende famosa, creando seguaci in tutto il mondo: non si girano più i film; si fa in modo che la propria stessa vita diventi una sceneggiatura e, semplicemente, si agisce, riprendendo la vita ma senza il filtro della telecamera. Ad estrema applicazione del mentore Filmmaker A c’è un gruppo, The Centre for Productive Compromise, che di base usa il sesso libero come sceneggiatura. Per evitare estreme scene di gelosia si sono inventati una droga, insieme a quella che ha il potere di far ricordare i numeri di telefono ma, come effetto collaterale, anche quello delle persone con le quali si sta avendo un rapporto sessuale. C’è anche il Mascot Front, un gruppo di attivisti politici estremi che indossano pelose maschere da mascotte e c’è un artista visivo che un giorno le vede dalla sua finestra correre, armate, inseguite da uomini in divisa: prima un orso, poi un coniglio, poi un cono gelato, una tartaruga e un canguro. Durante questa visione surreale un colpo di pistola lo ferisce per sbaglio. Da quel momento diventa un’ossessione e ovviamente vuole farci un’opera d’arte ma finisce rapito dalle mascotte e da queste legato a un termosifone in una loro sede. Poi c’è l’amico dell’artista, l’artista vero, con molto potenziale che se ne esce con frasi illuminanti tipo: “Tu, i tuoi amici, l’intera cultura mondiale degli artisti e dei bohémien, è come se aveste una strana sorta di malattia. Tutto ciò che volete è che la gente vi guardi, che guardi ciò che fate e pensi che siete speciali e talentuosi. Lo desiderate così tanto da pensare che ci sia qualcosa di sbagliato in quelli di noi che non lo fanno (…) Credimi, non ho bisogno di lettere di ammiratori che mi dicano che i miei pensieri hanno valore. Sono sicuro di me… La mia vita ha il suo percorso… I miei pensieri sono la giusta e unica ricompensa” 14. Ma poi si e ci tradisce: diventa scrittore. E la sua compagna anche è scrittrice e sta scrivendo A Dream for the Future and a Dream for Now, titolo che si scopre poi essere lo stesso di altri libri scritti da diversi autori. Ma mentre quest’ultimi sembrano avere a che fare con un nuovo tipo di religione politica, il principale riguarda una società segreta scomparsa subito dopo la Grande Guerra e riapparsa nei tardi anni Quaranta a New York (ho un flash con Che la festa cominci di Gabriele Ammaniti del 2009). Lo scopo è di organizzare orge a larga scala per assassinare imprenditori e politici di Destra attraverso un’infezione virale a trasmissione sessuale che non infetta, invece, tutti gli altri. Nel capitolo apparentemente meno confuso di tutto il libro, Wren nei panni di Wren si sta facendo tagliare i capelli da un barbiere a Berlino e si immagina un altro barbiere, emigrato a causa delle leggi razziali dalla Germania a New York… Beh, è lui l’inventore del virus, come credo l’inventore della nuova religione politica. STOP. Lo so, è tanto. Ma aggiungo che tutto quello che ho scritto non è affatto in una sequenza che rispetta quella del testo di Wren nel quale, poi, ci sono talmente tanti io narranti da far venire il mal di testa.
Ma è onestamente un capolavoro e la cosa incredibile è che nasce dalla mente e dalle mani di un autore che si autodefinisce cinico ma, in fondo, non è il cinismo “sempre e solo una sorta di idealismo infranto?”15. Appunto, Wren. Non bisogna combattere contro i mulini a vento ma semplicemente, quotidianamente, desiderare qualcosa di diverso. Il desiderio. “Ma non il desiderio che è solo l’altra faccia dell’insicurezza: il desiderio come disperazione. Un vero desiderio, il desiderio di vivere e di essere vivi, di trovare un valore o un significato o una convinzione che possa riempire in modo convincente e dare un senso al nostro breve tempo su questo pianeta dimenticato da Dio”
.
Thank you to Manuela Pacella for this in depth and charming account of my work in the Italian version of Flash Art:
https://flash---art.it/2024/04/jacob-wren/
Here is a summary, in Italian, of Polyamorous Love Song:
Il cinema e il film sono molto presenti in questo libro. Un personaggio chiave è Filmmaker A. Nel 2002 viene invitata al New York Film Festival, la stessa edizione alla quale Abbas Kiarostami non poté prendere parte perché gli fu negato di entrare negli Stati Uniti. Questo evento la sconvolge e si ritrova a vagare per le strade della città ragionando su come poter realizzare film più veri e riflettendo su Close-Up (1990) di Kiarostami. Ha un’idea che diviene esplosiva e la rende famosa, creando seguaci in tutto il mondo: non si girano più i film; si fa in modo che la propria stessa vita diventi una sceneggiatura e, semplicemente, si agisce, riprendendo la vita ma senza il filtro della telecamera. Ad estrema applicazione del mentore Filmmaker A c’è un gruppo, The Centre for Productive Compromise, che di base usa il sesso libero come sceneggiatura. Per evitare estreme scene di gelosia si sono inventati una droga, insieme a quella che ha il potere di far ricordare i numeri di telefono ma, come effetto collaterale, anche quello delle persone con le quali si sta avendo un rapporto sessuale. C’è anche il Mascot Front, un gruppo di attivisti politici estremi che indossano pelose maschere da mascotte e c’è un artista visivo che un giorno le vede dalla sua finestra correre, armate, inseguite da uomini in divisa: prima un orso, poi un coniglio, poi un cono gelato, una tartaruga e un canguro. Durante questa visione surreale un colpo di pistola lo ferisce per sbaglio. Da quel momento diventa un’ossessione e ovviamente vuole farci un’opera d’arte ma finisce rapito dalle mascotte e da queste legato a un termosifone in una loro sede. Poi c’è l’amico dell’artista, l’artista vero, con molto potenziale che se ne esce con frasi illuminanti tipo: “Tu, i tuoi amici, l’intera cultura mondiale degli artisti e dei bohémien, è come se aveste una strana sorta di malattia. Tutto ciò che volete è che la gente vi guardi, che guardi ciò che fate e pensi che siete speciali e talentuosi. Lo desiderate così tanto da pensare che ci sia qualcosa di sbagliato in quelli di noi che non lo fanno (…) Credimi, non ho bisogno di lettere di ammiratori che mi dicano che i miei pensieri hanno valore. Sono sicuro di me… La mia vita ha il suo percorso… I miei pensieri sono la giusta e unica ricompensa” 14. Ma poi si e ci tradisce: diventa scrittore. E la sua compagna anche è scrittrice e sta scrivendo A Dream for the Future and a Dream for Now, titolo che si scopre poi essere lo stesso di altri libri scritti da diversi autori. Ma mentre quest’ultimi sembrano avere a che fare con un nuovo tipo di religione politica, il principale riguarda una società segreta scomparsa subito dopo la Grande Guerra e riapparsa nei tardi anni Quaranta a New York (ho un flash con Che la festa cominci di Gabriele Ammaniti del 2009). Lo scopo è di organizzare orge a larga scala per assassinare imprenditori e politici di Destra attraverso un’infezione virale a trasmissione sessuale che non infetta, invece, tutti gli altri. Nel capitolo apparentemente meno confuso di tutto il libro, Wren nei panni di Wren si sta facendo tagliare i capelli da un barbiere a Berlino e si immagina un altro barbiere, emigrato a causa delle leggi razziali dalla Germania a New York… Beh, è lui l’inventore del virus, come credo l’inventore della nuova religione politica. STOP. Lo so, è tanto. Ma aggiungo che tutto quello che ho scritto non è affatto in una sequenza che rispetta quella del testo di Wren nel quale, poi, ci sono talmente tanti io narranti da far venire il mal di testa.
Ma è onestamente un capolavoro e la cosa incredibile è che nasce dalla mente e dalle mani di un autore che si autodefinisce cinico ma, in fondo, non è il cinismo “sempre e solo una sorta di idealismo infranto?”15. Appunto, Wren. Non bisogna combattere contro i mulini a vento ma semplicemente, quotidianamente, desiderare qualcosa di diverso. Il desiderio. “Ma non il desiderio che è solo l’altra faccia dell’insicurezza: il desiderio come disperazione. Un vero desiderio, il desiderio di vivere e di essere vivi, di trovare un valore o un significato o una convinzione che possa riempire in modo convincente e dare un senso al nostro breve tempo su questo pianeta dimenticato da Dio”
.
March 20, 2024
Survival Technologies at FTA
.
PME-ART has been working on this for a long time and we're excited to finally be able to announce it:
Survival Technologies
by Kamissa Ma Koïta and Elena Stoodley
at FTA on May 30,31 & June 2,3, 2024
More info here: https://fta.ca/en/event/survival-technologies/
Image by Kamissa Ma Koïta.
PME-ART has been working on this for a long time and we're excited to finally be able to announce it:
Survival Technologies
by Kamissa Ma Koïta and Elena Stoodley
at FTA on May 30,31 & June 2,3, 2024
More info here: https://fta.ca/en/event/survival-technologies/
Image by Kamissa Ma Koïta.
March 15, 2024
Scrolling through Twitter...
.
Scrolling through Twitter and I randomly see that claire rousay is reading my book:
https://twitter.com/clairerousay/status/1769129525349368109
http://bookthug.ca/shop/books/authenticy-is-a-feeling-my-life-in-pme-art-by-jacob-wren/
Scrolling through Twitter and I randomly see that claire rousay is reading my book:
https://twitter.com/clairerousay/status/1769129525349368109
http://bookthug.ca/shop/books/authenticy-is-a-feeling-my-life-in-pme-art-by-jacob-wren/
March 14, 2024
New Jacob Wren chapbook: From Desire Without Expectation
.
From Desire Without Expectation
Jacob Wren
$5
"Writing comes easily to me, while I find most other things in life exceedingly difficult. This is often a problem with writers. The truth of what they write is deeply shaded by a writerly distance from life which is also often connected to various forms of loneliness. Writers are often not the best people when it comes to understanding either community or solidarity. Maybe I should only speak for myself. Certain kinds of religious conversions bring one directly into community with others who are similarly converted. As you might have already guessed, I lean rather heavily into not wanting to be part of any club that might have me as a member. Religion has always been one of the places people look to for community. As has often been noted, in our current world, community can be rather hard to come by and even harder to maintain. One of the many reasons religion hasn’t disappeared, as was not so long ago predicted, is it allows its adherents to mainline a sense of community. This is the reason I find easiest to understand."
published in Ottawa by above/ground press
March 2024
as the twenty-fourth title in above/ground’s prose/naut imprint
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy
This is Jacob Wren’s second chapbook with above/ground press, following Tributes To The Subtlety Of Matter (1996).
To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; in US, add $2; outside North America, add $5) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com
https://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com/2024/03/new-from-aboveground-press-press-from.html
.
From Desire Without Expectation
Jacob Wren
$5
"Writing comes easily to me, while I find most other things in life exceedingly difficult. This is often a problem with writers. The truth of what they write is deeply shaded by a writerly distance from life which is also often connected to various forms of loneliness. Writers are often not the best people when it comes to understanding either community or solidarity. Maybe I should only speak for myself. Certain kinds of religious conversions bring one directly into community with others who are similarly converted. As you might have already guessed, I lean rather heavily into not wanting to be part of any club that might have me as a member. Religion has always been one of the places people look to for community. As has often been noted, in our current world, community can be rather hard to come by and even harder to maintain. One of the many reasons religion hasn’t disappeared, as was not so long ago predicted, is it allows its adherents to mainline a sense of community. This is the reason I find easiest to understand."
published in Ottawa by above/ground press
March 2024
as the twenty-fourth title in above/ground’s prose/naut imprint
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy
This is Jacob Wren’s second chapbook with above/ground press, following Tributes To The Subtlety Of Matter (1996).
To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; in US, add $2; outside North America, add $5) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com
https://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com/2024/03/new-from-aboveground-press-press-from.html
.
March 5, 2024
some kind of mini-utopia
.
"I now find myself thinking of such conversion experiences as some kind of mini-utopia. Utopia reflecting a desire for the world to change and these personal experiences being evidence that an individual’s sense of purpose and action can shift – more, and more quickly, than one might at first suspect."
(From my current work-in-progress Desire Without Expectation. More and more it seems to be becoming a novel about political conversion experiences.)
.
"I now find myself thinking of such conversion experiences as some kind of mini-utopia. Utopia reflecting a desire for the world to change and these personal experiences being evidence that an individual’s sense of purpose and action can shift – more, and more quickly, than one might at first suspect."
(From my current work-in-progress Desire Without Expectation. More and more it seems to be becoming a novel about political conversion experiences.)
.
March 3, 2024
Possible opening (updated)...
.
Possible opening for a new book:
“Things are going badly. But not everything can go badly, or at least not all the time. On the other hand, no matter how bad things are, they can always get worse. For my entire life, for as long as I can remember, I have felt the world as a catastrophe. Perhaps all that's changed is that, in our current moment, considerably more people agree. The things that were once (somewhat) hidden, we’re no longer bothering to hide. When I was young, all of official culture seemed to enthusiastically endorse capitalism. Now the enthusiasm behind such endorsements feels weak at best. Increasing numbers of people can feel we’re reaching the end of something and, if anything comes next, it doesn’t look good. Or, at least, that’s how matters currently feel to me. But I’ve been wrong before.”
.
Possible opening for a new book:
“Things are going badly. But not everything can go badly, or at least not all the time. On the other hand, no matter how bad things are, they can always get worse. For my entire life, for as long as I can remember, I have felt the world as a catastrophe. Perhaps all that's changed is that, in our current moment, considerably more people agree. The things that were once (somewhat) hidden, we’re no longer bothering to hide. When I was young, all of official culture seemed to enthusiastically endorse capitalism. Now the enthusiasm behind such endorsements feels weak at best. Increasing numbers of people can feel we’re reaching the end of something and, if anything comes next, it doesn’t look good. Or, at least, that’s how matters currently feel to me. But I’ve been wrong before.”
.
February 26, 2024
Final Words
.
“My name is Aaron Bushnell, I am an active duty member of the US airforce, and I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I’m about to engage in an extreme act of protest, but compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers it’s not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal. Free Palestine!”
.
“My name is Aaron Bushnell, I am an active duty member of the US airforce, and I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I’m about to engage in an extreme act of protest, but compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers it’s not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal. Free Palestine!”
.
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