.
After lunch we all file into the auditorium for the next presentation. There is a long introduction about how the next person who will take the stage is the reason we’re all here. How when, years ago, he was fired from the university, it created a rupture, an opening through which so much of our current thinking so actively flowed. He’s been abroad all of these years, in some sense in exile, and it was difficult to convince him to return, even for this relatively brief yet important gathering. For obvious reasons, he no longer wants anything to do with this country, so this is likely the last time we’ll see him on these shores. Other than that he needs no introduction. We wouldn’t all be here if we didn’t already know the contours of his essential project. As he walks on stage to generous applause, Mousy whispers to me: “That’s our professor.” And I realize I had thought we were gathering here in memoriam to this esteemed professor, but he appears to be very much alive. And I realize I am here and I don’t already know the contours of his essential project, but that most likely makes me an exception in this crowd.
He starts right in, without preamble: “As we already know, money is not a simple unit of exchange. Money is a weapon, most often wielded by the nation state.”
I thought it was a strong opening: punchy, intriguing. I was immediately curious where he would take it next. At the same time, I couldn’t get over the fact that just a few minutes ago I was relatively certain he was dead. That this was a gathering in his memory.
“The nation state is necessary to create a stable base upon which capitalism can operate. But capitalism seems not to fully know this, and continuously drives toward actions that destabilize this necessary base. It is the nature of capitalism to destabilize itself, to generate cycles of destabilization, and it is often only forces of opposition – socialism, regulation, trade unions, protest, counter-culture – that manage to temporarily restabilize it, allowing the next cycle to continue. Nonetheless, we must work and build on the premise that capitalism will not be able to prolong this bad relationship with human and non-human existence forever, that eventually something is going to give.”
There was a sense of gentle agreement in the room. A quality of agreement I couldn’t recall having experienced in other settings. But there was also another feeling, something more unnerving, that I wasn’t able to fully identify until much later.
“If capitalism does eventually collapse under the weight of its own contradictions, it is our job to provide a model for what could replace it, a model that must be open enough to grow and change with our ever-shifting world. And I would like to propose that we give this model the name of economics, a different kind of economics, an economics dedicated to making life livable for all beings, in which I believe we should include, at the very least, the air, soil, spirit and waters. Claiming that economics only concerns finance, interest rates, markets and self-interest is like saying that eating only consists of raw ingredients (which economics refers to as commodities) and leaving out farming, cooking, socializing over food, or the prayer of gratitude that begins the meal. Everything that makes the ingredients worthwhile is set off to one side. The economics I’m proposing would turn the official discourse inside out. It would be an economic system that would make it impossible for anyone to get rich.”
I was skeptical, but felt a desire to be less skeptical, since I found his tone and general approach quite likable. And it occurred to me that he wasn’t speaking of reality but rather about a model. A model might be like an ideal or it might be like a blueprint.
“Economics is culture. Culture is the habits, institutions, stories and rituals that underlie and create our daily actions. Economics can be renewed – if we have the tenacity and panache to do so – to create a culture in our image, a culture that makes life worth living, a culture full of value, depth and reciprocity. Those of us who study and practice radical economics already have the tools and permission to push for those necessary changes. And know that anything less only perpetuates the current status quo: an economics that does little more than oil the gears of our societies ever-accelerating death drive. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I realize I am feeling quite tired. I will take a short rest before we continue on with our next session.”
Mousy is still standing beside me. I look over, her expression difficult to read. What was she thinking about her professor’s presentation, which seemed to end just as it was getting started.
Mousy says: “He seems so much older since the last time I heard him speak. We used to joke that he was our young professor, even though he was so much older than us, but he felt young. He treated us a equals and that made us feel he was closer to us in age. But I also feel a lot older than I did back then. In fact, listening to him, hearing him again after such a long time, was like realizing how different everything feels today. You can just be living your life and the whole world changes around you and you barely even notice it happening. That was all before I started working for the enemy, which I’m also now realizing how deeply it changed me, how deeply that decision changed me, so it wasn’t just the world changing around me, at the same time I was also changing.”
As Mousy’s talking, her professor continues to push his way through the audience, stopping to chat with a few acolytes on the way but also focused on getting out of the room as quickly as possible. As he passes I momentarily think Mousy is going to stop him to say something, but then she decides to let him go.
I say: “When you first told me about him I somehow imagined him differently.”
Mousy says: “How did you imagine him?”
I say: “I don’t know. Like a historical figure. Like a colorful story from your past. When I see him now he seems almost too real. Just a person. A person who’s struggling. Who’s maybe no longer doing so well.”
By the time I finish my thought her professor has already made it out the door. The room seems a little bit more empty without him. Yet, I don’t quite know how to explain it, but it also feels like a relief that he is gone. That there’s no longer a focus for all of our attention.
Mailman comes overt to join us and says: “It’s beautiful so many people have gathered to pay their last respects.” For a long moment I don’t quite understand. Then I somehow do, he’s saying the professor is once again dead and we are here to gather in his memory. Since we all just, moments ago, saw him on stage in front of us, speaking, this makes absolutely no sense. But what I have to admit is most strange is that, in another way, it makes almost perfect sense. I’m not quite sure how to explain it.
I say: “I have the feeling so many people here were changed by their experiences at his school.”
Mailman says: “Why else would they be here?”
Mousy says: “But you have to understand, that only partly had to do with him. What was so amazing about it was how much we were learning from each other. In some ways he was only a pretext for us to gather. When he was fired from the university it suddenly gave us a cause to gather around, a cause that was immediate, so close to our immediate experience. Something we could do right away. And then we were the ones who organized it all. There were ideas we were learning and proposing, but then there was the proactive learning of figuring out how to organize it all as we went. When we were fighting with each other and had to consciously decide to stop fighting long enough to get things done. Because there was always so much to do. Our professor was there for maybe one hour each weekday to give his lecture and then the rest of the time we were on our own. It was our school even though we would say it was his. Now that I think about it, it even makes me a little mad. How we did the work and he took the credit.”
Mailman says: “I think if you would have asked him at the time he would have said the credit belongs to everyone.”
Mousy says: “You weren’t there, how would you know?”
Mailman says: “I’ve read about it.”
I say: “You’re comparing Mousy’s first-hand experience to your reading about it?”
Mailman says: “It’s perhaps not the same level of knowledge. But it’s still knowledge.”
Mousy says: “How do you two know each other again?”
I say: “We wandered together. That was a long time ago.”
Mailman says: “I pretended not to know him when he tried to join our spiritual retreat. I was doing the work of a charlatan.”
Mousy says: “I have also, up until recently, been working for a charlatan.”
I say: “There’s so many of them around. And they have all the money. It’s hard to avoid working for them.”
Mailman says: “Have you ever worked for anyone?”
I say: “That’s a story for another time.”
An announcement is made. We’re going to take a forty-five-minute break before the next presentation. There seems to be some difficulties occurring behind the scenes but here in the audience no one seems especially bothered as we all quietly file out of the room. The three of us end up in the backyard, a well manicured lawn that stretched out in every direction. There are a few empty chairs in a circle of people talking, so as we sit down we join a conversation already under way. It takes me a while to figure out the topic, but eventually I realize they’re debating whether the professor had died of “natural causes” or whether he’s been assassinated, and if so by who. There were many different kinds of capitalists who might have liked to see him dead. And then it hit me all over again only this time much harder. Just moments ago we were all listening to him speak, listening to his coherent arguments pertinent to the field of radical economics, and now we were spending our break considering who might have killed him. No one knew who, but at least two in our circle were clear that if he had been killed the method had to have been poisoning.
“People always say his speeches weren’t popular enough to be a real threat. Certainly not enough of a threat for anyone to kill him. But that doesn’t take into account how potent he could be. Even if only a few dozen people heard him each year, he often changed those people’s lives. They went back to their economics classrooms and taught differently, taught different material, his vision of economics was spreading.”
“He was a very old man. I don’t think there’s any surprise in the fact that he died, or any need to resort to conspiracy theories to explain the causes. Wanting to believe someone killed him certainly gives him a greater importance, and he’s an extremely important thinker for all of us, so I can understand why we’d want to further increase his importance. But his thinking remains just as essential if he died quietly in his sleep of old age.”
It occurs to me to ask the group if we’re sure the professor is dead, how we know he’s dead, what proof do we have. But everyone seems so certain. I feel they’d think me insane if I were to begin to question the basic facts of the situation. I try to think of something else I can contribute, then I notice Mousy and Mailman also aren’t saying anything. Maybe, for now, it’s more interesting to listen. Lately I’ve been worried that I’ve been talking too much anyway, taking up too much space.
“The fact that they haven’t released the autopsy is the main reason we all continue to speculate. There’s this feeling that surrounds his death, a feeling that something is being suppressed. But maybe in the next few weeks they will release the autopsy and then at least some of this speculation might stop. I came here because I wanted to be around other people who were thinking deeply about radical economics, not to speculate whether or not there was a third poisoner on the grassy knoll.”
“I also wonder what it matters. If someone poisoned him, what can we do about it anyway. All we can do is continue to disseminate his ideas. Continue to develop them. Continue to figure out how to make those concepts most rhetorically effective. How to make them attractive for our students and colleagues. Because economics departments could be a place that triggers change. It seems farfetched. And I haven’t yet seen it happen. But the fact that we’re all here makes me believe that there’s people who want it. The question is how many of us are there and how tenacious can we be.”
It occurs to me that maybe I don’t have anything to say because I’m not a radical economist. In fact, I’m not an economist of any kind. And yet I’ve ended up here. I’ve ended up here because I’m searching for something. Might the lost masterpiece be a work of radical economics? Of course it might be, it could be anything, that’s the magic of it. I’m here because a series of random events led one into the next, some of which weren’t so random. And I’m here because wandering was the decisive event of my recent past, and the school of radical economics was the decisive event of Mousy’s recent past, and in that sense it reflects something we have in common.
“I guess if we discover he was murdered, if we find the smoking gun so to speak, none of us holds any real hope that we’ll manage to hold the person responsible accountable. Because we also all basically think we know who did it. And that person is too powerful. That person is not someone any of us would be able to reign in. No matter how many of us there were working on it.”
I look over at Mousy. From the way she looks back at me I realize we both know who they’re referring to. But it’s all just speculation, and in a way too suspicious to be true. You give a free building so someone can run a free school, and it sets off a chain of events. Now you and the person you’ve helped are intertwined, are connected, are part of the same story and that story can grow, be embellished, in the minds of everyone who knows even the basic facts. And maybe now I do want to consider the possibility that the professor might still be alive. But consider it only for myself, not try to convince anyone else.
They announce the next presentation will begin in ten minutes and we all file back into the main room. Once again there’s an introduction and once again they introduce the professor. I watch as he slowly makes his way onto the stage. For the first time since we arrived it occurs to me that perhaps I do have a concussion. That wouldn’t really explain anything, but it’s nonetheless a theory I shouldn’t so easily dismiss. Once again he starts right in, without preamble: “There is no reason economics has to be a field that serves the interests of capitalism. Nonetheless, businesspeople want economics to be a field that serves their interests and are willing to work overtime to make it so. How hard are we willing to work to ensure they don’t get their way? The university is an institution that can be much-too-easily bought, we all know this, though we would prefer not to. But can the university become an institution that resists being bought. Because economics departments do, undeniably, affect public policy, affect how governments are run, affect how businesses are run. You are the next generation and you can’t let anyone, not my generation and not anyone else, tell you that it’s not possible. No one is going to give you power, you have to take it.”
As I listen, I think about how just moments ago we were speculating about who might have murdered him and now we were, once again, listening to him hold forth. When we went on break I assumed the next presentation would be by someone else, but it now seems like every presentation is going to be by him. I don’t know quite how to put it, but I find it extremely difficult to imagine the people in this room taking power of any kind. However, I just met them, maybe they have some secret reserve of tenacity that’s not apparent at first glance. And another thought follows this first wave of reservations, that if some of them were to fully follow their professor’s noble example maybe they would be killed as well. Though rarely does a corpse give a presentation as energetic at the one we are all listening to now.
“A university has a responsibility to the truth. A businessman does not. If money is being made, the “truth” can be made to conform to the requirements of that money. But this is not a way of life that can sustain itself, eventually it’s going to crash. Or, to put it another way, this is a system that has crashed over and over again, and each time managed to rebound, often through the efforts of those who wanted something different but failed at creating something completely different and therefore only managed to achieve temporary reforms. But you can’t crash over and over again and survive. Sooner or later you have suffered one crash too many. You don’t come back. To some what seems most likely is a return to feudalism. And that might be where we are headed if we don’t find a way to activate something else, some otherwise, a new kind of economics that believes the future doesn’t just repeat the past.”
As I listened, I started to think again about our collective dream journal. What was happening now could have easily been one of those dreams. This professor could have easily been one of our shared characters. Yet I knew I wasn’t dreaming. And then there is the other meaning of the word “dream,” that this professor is espousing a dream for the future he wants us to believe is achievable. He is saying this is not a dream but a plan. Could we really sit down and map out how to take over the economics departments of the universities one by one? How to go about it in concrete and effective detail? What strategies and tactics would most likely lead to success? That would be a kind of planning I’ve never really seen at the kinds of conferences and meetings I’ve previously attended and that this particular gathering echoes in some ways but not others.
“Now is the time for us to invest in our own tenacity and conviction to an unprecedented degree. The scale of the problems and obstacles we face may seem insurmountable, but they are problems that also have clear and often quite simple solutions. What we require is the accumulated power to implement those solutions. Money is power, but the field of economics has the possibility to undermine some of that power, to expose some of the ways money isn’t real and close some of the loopholes that allow pyramid schemes and the corruption of pure gambling to masquerade as business as usual. Use your doubt to fuel your conviction.”
I look over at Mousy and realize she is almost in tears. She turns, pushes through the crowd and out the back door as I do my best to follow. I find her in the backyard crying as hard as I’ve ever seen anyone cry. I sit down quietly beside her, waiting for things to calm down, trying to exude peaceful calm in the hope it might be contagious. Slowly her crying begins to settle.
I say: “Are you sad because your professor is dead?”
Mousy says: “He’s not dead. We were just watching him speak.”
This confuses me further but I decide to stay on topic.
I say: “Then why are you upset?”
Mousy says: “I heard the line ‘use your doubt to fuel your conviction’ and it hit me in such a specific way. Everything took on a greater clarity. Since we arrived here I’ve been thinking so much about my time running the school. I’ve been thinking back so much, too much. I’ve been thinking about Driver, about how our time together was the only time in my life I was completely in love. And we’re still in love, somehow I now realize that almost nothing has changed. And I can’t believe we let that bastard separate us. I can’t believe we agreed that she would move away for something as stupid as a paycheck. About a month ago she sent me a text to ask if I was planning to come to this gathering and I wrote back that I wasn’t. Then, as you know, I changed my mind at the last minute, which is why we’re here, but I didn’t write to tell her, which is probably why she isn’t. But I now realize that I was hoping to see her here, that I was almost expecting it. And I also realize what I need to do. I need to use my doubt to fuel my conviction. I need to go find her. We need to be together. I realize now that’s the only important thing. Everything else I’m doing is so much less important. I’m going to get my things and leave right away.”
I say: “You’re going to leave right now?”
Mousy says: “Yes.”
I watch her head upstairs to get her bag. I stand limply by the front door waiting, trying to think what is the best way for us to say goodbye. It crosses my mind I might never see her again. She comes back down and we hug for a long time. Then she says goodbye, walks out the door. I hear her get into her car, hear the car start up and drive away. A few weeks ago I barely knew Mousy at all and now our story already has a beginning, middle and end. I stand by the front door wondering what I should do. In a way this is mainly a gathering for Mousy’s professor, so now there’s no longer much reason for me to be here. For a long moment I consider going back in to hear the rest of the presentations but realize I don’t much feel like it. I instead decide to go for a walk to clear my head. So many things have happened in a relatively short period of time.
*
In my current in-progress trilogy (which I also seem to be calling my final trilogy): Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim (2024), Desire Without Expectation (2027) and Faithful Unbeliever (2030), all three books are based loosely around questions concerning the desire for utopia.
If I ever finish this final trilogy, Failure Finds its Happy End might be the plus one.
And if you're feeling extra-generous and want to help me continue writing books, you can find my Patreon here.
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August 11, 2026
August 9, 2026
Confessions of the extremely online.
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As of today I have posted exactly 2000 times on Instagram. (Confessions of the extremely online.)
You can of course find it here.
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As of today I have posted exactly 2000 times on Instagram. (Confessions of the extremely online.)
You can of course find it here.
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August 4, 2026
“...emotions, yearnings, reactions and ambitions which as a result of society’s shortcomings we all share.”
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“The illusion has been shattered that a work of art has a fixed value: its value is dependent on the creative ability of the onlooker, which in turn is stimulated by the suggestion the work of art arouses. Only living art can activate the creative spirit, and only living art is of general significance. For only living art gives expression to the emotions, yearnings, reactions and ambitions which as a result of society’s shortcomings we all share.”
― Constant, Manifesto (1948)
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“The illusion has been shattered that a work of art has a fixed value: its value is dependent on the creative ability of the onlooker, which in turn is stimulated by the suggestion the work of art arouses. Only living art can activate the creative spirit, and only living art is of general significance. For only living art gives expression to the emotions, yearnings, reactions and ambitions which as a result of society’s shortcomings we all share.”
― Constant, Manifesto (1948)
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July 31, 2026
Serializing Failure (Instalment #2)
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I'm currently serializing my novel-in-progress Failure Finds its Happy End on my Patreon. It is a novel about a person who decides to start an art movement. For the indefinite future all posts will be free content, so there's no reason not to follow (and get a new instalment every month in your inbox.) You can find the second instalment here.
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I'm currently serializing my novel-in-progress Failure Finds its Happy End on my Patreon. It is a novel about a person who decides to start an art movement. For the indefinite future all posts will be free content, so there's no reason not to follow (and get a new instalment every month in your inbox.) You can find the second instalment here.
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July 30, 2026
Michael Eddy on Authenticity is a Feeling
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"Authenticity is a Feeling: My Life in PME-ART, by Jacob Wren
Wren's book is a sort of biography of his performance art group PME-ART. His account of their work, whose aim is stripping away theatricality and “being yourself in a performance situation,” is therefore an exercise in nonfiction. But putting something in a performative frame or committing it to the printed word involve a sophisticated understanding of authenticity where irony, fluidity and hallucination are part of the deal (I tend to project confidence into the awkwardness of PME-ART performers, which can make them alienating as opposed to vulnerable). I think Wren agrees with me: “I am rewriting history from the perspective of now, because nonfiction is always also a kind of fiction.”"
- Michael Eddy, Committed to Irony
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"Authenticity is a Feeling: My Life in PME-ART, by Jacob Wren
Wren's book is a sort of biography of his performance art group PME-ART. His account of their work, whose aim is stripping away theatricality and “being yourself in a performance situation,” is therefore an exercise in nonfiction. But putting something in a performative frame or committing it to the printed word involve a sophisticated understanding of authenticity where irony, fluidity and hallucination are part of the deal (I tend to project confidence into the awkwardness of PME-ART performers, which can make them alienating as opposed to vulnerable). I think Wren agrees with me: “I am rewriting history from the perspective of now, because nonfiction is always also a kind of fiction.”"
- Michael Eddy, Committed to Irony
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July 27, 2026
My Terrains Vacants Brief Summary
[I was recently invited by Écotone - Espace d'expérimentation to be part of their Terrains Vacants residency. I was also asked to write a brief summary of my experience, as follows.]
The first thing I noticed was how quiet it was (during the first moments of my first week: March 23-29, 2026.) I always listen to music when I work – and when I’m not working as well – but I didn’t bring any music. I decided to leave my computer at home in order to spend time away from the internet. (As everyone knows, I am much too addicted to the internet.) So… I would spend some time in silence. That seemed like a good enough idea.
In my application I’d proposed I would spend the time trying to come up with an idea for a solo performance. Almost all of my performance work has been made in collaboration with other artists. My motivations to make a solo performance were multiple and questionable. I’ve always found working with other people difficult and might like a break from such difficulties. Funding is increasingly challenging to come by, and less people on stage also means less funds required. But perhaps my main motivation is to make work in which I have the agency and freedom to completely change things in the moment, with no one else relying on me, no one who might be thrown off by any sudden, spontaneous changes.
Sitting there in that empty, very quiet room at the La Cité-des-Hospitalières, I quickly came up with a preliminary idea. I thought of calling it A Personal History of Everything and Everyone. I conceived of it as a kind of “composition in real time.” One version of the idea was built around a table full of objects. Each object would connect to a theme. The performance would consist of me picking up objects at random and speaking about the related theme for each one. I also had a desire to speak about current events, so I wanted there to be enough objects that there would always be one I could connect to any current event on my mind. I had way more ideas for themes than I did for objects. Some of the themes I was interested in speaking about included: Oil, Music, Prize Culture, Failure, Books, Chronic Pain, A World Without Money, Solidarity, Depression, Travel, Friendship, Cooking, Regret, Nature, Animism, Honesty, Repair and Liveness. People familiar with my work might notice that many of these themes are the ones I find myself returning to over and over again.
When I came back for my second week (June 15-21, 2026), I began, conventionally enough, by looking over my notes from the first week, and was fascinated by how I now had almost no interest in any of my ideas from the previous round. Upon further reflection, this seemed to me indicative of a larger pattern within my artistic practice. I have a great deal of difficulty staying interested in any idea for very long. In my normal artistic work-life, some outside factor forces me to commit to one idea over another: there are collaborators on the project who I feel a responsibility to, or we get a grant, or I tell people about the idea and they encourage me to pursue it, or we are invited to perform somewhere. Each of things (and others) forces me to commit to an idea rather than abandoning it. Since I basically believe that any idea can result in good work, in the end I’m not so certain it matters which idea I choose. If I had the idea in the first place it probably means I have at least some interest in doing it. Any idea can result in good work, it just depends what you do with it.
I then switched tactics, focusing on the more fundamental question of whether I genuinely wanted to make a solo performance and, if so, why. My basic feeling was that I did and here are the reasons I came up with:
- Freedom to change things on the fly.
- Freedom to speak about current events.
- Honesty about who I am and what I’m able to do.
- A preference for doing something that’s less good, yet more true to me, versus doing something that’s better but further away from my true abilities.
- Making performances cheaply and quickly.
- I want to be alone.
I still don’t yet have an idea for a specific solo performance I want to do, but if I ever come up with such an idea I will likely do it. I have a feeling it might have something to do with being old, and for that to work I still might have to get a bit older. I consider the idea that when the rest of my beard turns white, I will begin the process.
In my day-to-day life, I already spend a great deal of time alone, consumed by introspective thoughts. In a way, this residency formalized this process. There was definitely something existential about it. I don’t really make art for myself, I make art because I have a desire to convey something to an audience. Paradoxically, I find I am most able to convey something to an audience if I follow, as closely as possible, my own personal artistic desires. I now realize that a large part of the Terrains Vacants residency was about being in a space, over time, without any specific goals. I’ve always been fond of the John Cage quote: “The goal is not to have a goal.” I’ve always felt lost, and this residency allowed me to reconnect with my ongoing feeling of existential lostness. And so it continues.
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The first thing I noticed was how quiet it was (during the first moments of my first week: March 23-29, 2026.) I always listen to music when I work – and when I’m not working as well – but I didn’t bring any music. I decided to leave my computer at home in order to spend time away from the internet. (As everyone knows, I am much too addicted to the internet.) So… I would spend some time in silence. That seemed like a good enough idea.
In my application I’d proposed I would spend the time trying to come up with an idea for a solo performance. Almost all of my performance work has been made in collaboration with other artists. My motivations to make a solo performance were multiple and questionable. I’ve always found working with other people difficult and might like a break from such difficulties. Funding is increasingly challenging to come by, and less people on stage also means less funds required. But perhaps my main motivation is to make work in which I have the agency and freedom to completely change things in the moment, with no one else relying on me, no one who might be thrown off by any sudden, spontaneous changes.
Sitting there in that empty, very quiet room at the La Cité-des-Hospitalières, I quickly came up with a preliminary idea. I thought of calling it A Personal History of Everything and Everyone. I conceived of it as a kind of “composition in real time.” One version of the idea was built around a table full of objects. Each object would connect to a theme. The performance would consist of me picking up objects at random and speaking about the related theme for each one. I also had a desire to speak about current events, so I wanted there to be enough objects that there would always be one I could connect to any current event on my mind. I had way more ideas for themes than I did for objects. Some of the themes I was interested in speaking about included: Oil, Music, Prize Culture, Failure, Books, Chronic Pain, A World Without Money, Solidarity, Depression, Travel, Friendship, Cooking, Regret, Nature, Animism, Honesty, Repair and Liveness. People familiar with my work might notice that many of these themes are the ones I find myself returning to over and over again.
When I came back for my second week (June 15-21, 2026), I began, conventionally enough, by looking over my notes from the first week, and was fascinated by how I now had almost no interest in any of my ideas from the previous round. Upon further reflection, this seemed to me indicative of a larger pattern within my artistic practice. I have a great deal of difficulty staying interested in any idea for very long. In my normal artistic work-life, some outside factor forces me to commit to one idea over another: there are collaborators on the project who I feel a responsibility to, or we get a grant, or I tell people about the idea and they encourage me to pursue it, or we are invited to perform somewhere. Each of things (and others) forces me to commit to an idea rather than abandoning it. Since I basically believe that any idea can result in good work, in the end I’m not so certain it matters which idea I choose. If I had the idea in the first place it probably means I have at least some interest in doing it. Any idea can result in good work, it just depends what you do with it.
I then switched tactics, focusing on the more fundamental question of whether I genuinely wanted to make a solo performance and, if so, why. My basic feeling was that I did and here are the reasons I came up with:
- Freedom to change things on the fly.
- Freedom to speak about current events.
- Honesty about who I am and what I’m able to do.
- A preference for doing something that’s less good, yet more true to me, versus doing something that’s better but further away from my true abilities.
- Making performances cheaply and quickly.
- I want to be alone.
I still don’t yet have an idea for a specific solo performance I want to do, but if I ever come up with such an idea I will likely do it. I have a feeling it might have something to do with being old, and for that to work I still might have to get a bit older. I consider the idea that when the rest of my beard turns white, I will begin the process.
In my day-to-day life, I already spend a great deal of time alone, consumed by introspective thoughts. In a way, this residency formalized this process. There was definitely something existential about it. I don’t really make art for myself, I make art because I have a desire to convey something to an audience. Paradoxically, I find I am most able to convey something to an audience if I follow, as closely as possible, my own personal artistic desires. I now realize that a large part of the Terrains Vacants residency was about being in a space, over time, without any specific goals. I’ve always been fond of the John Cage quote: “The goal is not to have a goal.” I’ve always felt lost, and this residency allowed me to reconnect with my ongoing feeling of existential lostness. And so it continues.
.
July 25, 2026
Does aging make you impatient?
.
I don't remember being this impatient when I was younger. Does aging make you impatient? Two things on their way to being finished, and yet I still have to wait.
The first record by The Air Contains Honey comes out this November. It's called The Air Contains Honey Sings Quotes. You're going to like it, but you'll have to (impatiently) wait until November (on the other hand, first single out in September.)
And then my next novel Desire Without Expectation comes out in May 2027. Here are a few lines:
"We were there to set fire to the oil wells. So, as you can imagine, we had many enemies. Setting fire to oil wells almost sounds to me now like the genre of idea an agent provocateur would actively encourage. My thinking on the topic of what’s to be done has changed a great deal since that time. I now believe we have to build something, and we’re not going to get far tearing anything down before we’ve built something up to replace it. As I said, those were different times. I look back down at the cover of the book. I don’t want to be thinking about the past. I’d prefer to be thinking about the future."
.
I don't remember being this impatient when I was younger. Does aging make you impatient? Two things on their way to being finished, and yet I still have to wait.
The first record by The Air Contains Honey comes out this November. It's called The Air Contains Honey Sings Quotes. You're going to like it, but you'll have to (impatiently) wait until November (on the other hand, first single out in September.)
And then my next novel Desire Without Expectation comes out in May 2027. Here are a few lines:
"We were there to set fire to the oil wells. So, as you can imagine, we had many enemies. Setting fire to oil wells almost sounds to me now like the genre of idea an agent provocateur would actively encourage. My thinking on the topic of what’s to be done has changed a great deal since that time. I now believe we have to build something, and we’re not going to get far tearing anything down before we’ve built something up to replace it. As I said, those were different times. I look back down at the cover of the book. I don’t want to be thinking about the past. I’d prefer to be thinking about the future."
.
July 16, 2026
WIELS calls for applications from Canadian artists
.
WIELS calls for applications from Canadian artists (Canadian nationals, or those living and working in Canada) for a 6-month residency in Brussels. More info here.
.
WIELS calls for applications from Canadian artists (Canadian nationals, or those living and working in Canada) for a 6-month residency in Brussels. More info here.
.
July 12, 2026
Three lines from Failure Finds its Happy End
.
“We were trying to make a very public society, but no one paid attention, so it ended up being a secret society.”
“In the end we thought maybe our manifesto could be a manifesto of questions.”
“There are so many injustices in the world, you could speak out against them twenty-four hours a day for the rest of your life and still not have nearly enough time.”
*
All three lines are from my novel-in-progress Failure Finds its Happy End, which I am currently serializing on my Patreon here.
If I ever finish what I seem to be calling my final trilogy, Failure Finds its Happy End might be the plus one.
.
“We were trying to make a very public society, but no one paid attention, so it ended up being a secret society.”
“In the end we thought maybe our manifesto could be a manifesto of questions.”
“There are so many injustices in the world, you could speak out against them twenty-four hours a day for the rest of your life and still not have nearly enough time.”
*
All three lines are from my novel-in-progress Failure Finds its Happy End, which I am currently serializing on my Patreon here.
If I ever finish what I seem to be calling my final trilogy, Failure Finds its Happy End might be the plus one.
.
July 11, 2026
Olivia Laing Quote
.
“The plants themselves encoded something utopian for me, a vision of how the world ought to be. At the same time I had a disinclination to act so powerful it felt ordained. It wasn’t just laziness; it was a sense of the pointlessness of human effort, that almost every action had some damaging consequence, and that it was better to simply let things be. […] Staying power had come later, in my thirties; the helpful revelation that there is no mystery to any creative endeavour save for turning up each day and knuckling down to it, hour after tedious or – but this was far rarer – joyful hour. That was when I started making gardens and writing books, the unhappy years of failed dreaming an increasingly unvisited memory.”
— Olivia Laing, The Garden Against Time: In Search of a Common Paradise
.
“The plants themselves encoded something utopian for me, a vision of how the world ought to be. At the same time I had a disinclination to act so powerful it felt ordained. It wasn’t just laziness; it was a sense of the pointlessness of human effort, that almost every action had some damaging consequence, and that it was better to simply let things be. […] Staying power had come later, in my thirties; the helpful revelation that there is no mystery to any creative endeavour save for turning up each day and knuckling down to it, hour after tedious or – but this was far rarer – joyful hour. That was when I started making gardens and writing books, the unhappy years of failed dreaming an increasingly unvisited memory.”
— Olivia Laing, The Garden Against Time: In Search of a Common Paradise
.
July 9, 2026
"...even more immediacy, connection, and public life in art and in performance."
.
"And I’ve always had such a difficult, conflicted relationship with performing. All of the things you say are true: I do like the immediacy, connection, and the idea of a public life that are embodied in the act of performance. And, at the same time, I’m disappointed that I haven’t been able to find or create even more immediacy, connection, and public life in art and in performance. There is a sense of ongoing failure that makes the real moments of immediacy and connection in performance all that much more precious. I feel that I’ve wasted my life and I also feel that I haven’t. In a way, for me the act of performance is embodied in this sentiment."
- Jacob Wren, from Hospitality Matters: Un entretien avec PME-ART with Sylvie Lachance and Geneviève Robichaud
.
"And I’ve always had such a difficult, conflicted relationship with performing. All of the things you say are true: I do like the immediacy, connection, and the idea of a public life that are embodied in the act of performance. And, at the same time, I’m disappointed that I haven’t been able to find or create even more immediacy, connection, and public life in art and in performance. There is a sense of ongoing failure that makes the real moments of immediacy and connection in performance all that much more precious. I feel that I’ve wasted my life and I also feel that I haven’t. In a way, for me the act of performance is embodied in this sentiment."
- Jacob Wren, from Hospitality Matters: Un entretien avec PME-ART with Sylvie Lachance and Geneviève Robichaud
.
June 28, 2026
one big project per year
.
Somehow my life has organized itself into one big project per year:
2026: The very first record by The Air Contains Honey
2027: My next novel Desire Without Expectation
2028: The new PME-ART show How Does Change Happen?
(All of these projects somehow make me very nervous for very different reasons.)
.
Somehow my life has organized itself into one big project per year:
2026: The very first record by The Air Contains Honey
2027: My next novel Desire Without Expectation
2028: The new PME-ART show How Does Change Happen?
(All of these projects somehow make me very nervous for very different reasons.)
.
June 27, 2026
Keep doing the same thing versus Try doing something new.
.
Keep doing the same thing versus Try doing something new.
I wrote this down after seeing The Ex play a few nights ago. I had this feeling that they just keep doing the same thing and it just keeps on being good. That for them "doing the same thing" might be the right choice. But I'm not sure. I don't know enough about The Ex enough to know that they keep doing the same thing. And definitely, over the years, they also tried many new things. But I'm always wondering how much my work should change and how. And I'm never sure quite what the best way to think about it is.
.
Keep doing the same thing versus Try doing something new.
I wrote this down after seeing The Ex play a few nights ago. I had this feeling that they just keep doing the same thing and it just keeps on being good. That for them "doing the same thing" might be the right choice. But I'm not sure. I don't know enough about The Ex enough to know that they keep doing the same thing. And definitely, over the years, they also tried many new things. But I'm always wondering how much my work should change and how. And I'm never sure quite what the best way to think about it is.
.
June 24, 2026
Kawai Shen Quote
.
“Despite the suspension of norms in the mosh pit and the lifting of prohibitions on exercising aggression and violence, moshing was never a free-for-all. Like any social endeavour, there were unwritten rules of conduct. Entering a new millennium ushered in by forest fires, warmongering, and a global pandemic, I repeat to myself the lessons I’ve learned. Grasp the hands of the fallen so they are not trampled. Do not tolerate those monopolizing space for themselves. There is something honest and necessary in the proximity that pain causes, in the urgency to stay connected to each other. There can be unity in disorder. Seek it out, make it grow.”
― Kawai Shen, Wavering Futures
.
“Despite the suspension of norms in the mosh pit and the lifting of prohibitions on exercising aggression and violence, moshing was never a free-for-all. Like any social endeavour, there were unwritten rules of conduct. Entering a new millennium ushered in by forest fires, warmongering, and a global pandemic, I repeat to myself the lessons I’ve learned. Grasp the hands of the fallen so they are not trampled. Do not tolerate those monopolizing space for themselves. There is something honest and necessary in the proximity that pain causes, in the urgency to stay connected to each other. There can be unity in disorder. Seek it out, make it grow.”
― Kawai Shen, Wavering Futures
.
June 23, 2026
Things haven't gone quite how I planned...
.
An update on my attempt to start a Patreon (and the book I'm writing to procrastinate working on the other book that I'm supposed to be finishing.)
.
An update on my attempt to start a Patreon (and the book I'm writing to procrastinate working on the other book that I'm supposed to be finishing.)
.
June 17, 2026
Some favourite records of 2026 (so far)
.
[I do a list at the end of every year. And sometimes I also do a shorter list in the middle. Not all of these records were released this year, but this was the year I heard and enjoyed them.]
Dijon – Baby
Titanic – HAGEN
Setting – Setting
keiyaA – hooke’s law
Nadah El Shazly – Laini Tani
Maurice Louca – Barĩy (Fera) برٌِي
Chyna Baejing and Boneweso – BAEJING BALLAD
mary sue, bloomcycle – Self Expressions From Selling Reflections On The Internet
.
[I do a list at the end of every year. And sometimes I also do a shorter list in the middle. Not all of these records were released this year, but this was the year I heard and enjoyed them.]
Dijon – Baby
Titanic – HAGEN
Setting – Setting
keiyaA – hooke’s law
Nadah El Shazly – Laini Tani
Maurice Louca – Barĩy (Fera) برٌِي
Chyna Baejing and Boneweso – BAEJING BALLAD
mary sue, bloomcycle – Self Expressions From Selling Reflections On The Internet
.
June 14, 2026
Some favourite books of 2026 (so far)
.
[I do a list at the end of every year. And sometimes I also do a shorter list in the middle. Not all of these books were published this year, but this was the year I read and enjoyed them.]
Sofia Mostaghimi – Desperada
Michael Eddy – Koh-i-Noor
Kawai Shen – Wavering Futures
Patrick Cottrell – Afternoon Hours of a Hermit
Makenna Goodman – Helen of Nowhere
Mohamed Mbougar Sarr – The Most Secret Memory of Men (Translated by Lara Vergnaud)
Mohamed Kheir – Slipping (Translated by Robin Moger)
Giada Scodellaro – Ruins, Child
,
[I do a list at the end of every year. And sometimes I also do a shorter list in the middle. Not all of these books were published this year, but this was the year I read and enjoyed them.]
Sofia Mostaghimi – Desperada
Michael Eddy – Koh-i-Noor
Kawai Shen – Wavering Futures
Patrick Cottrell – Afternoon Hours of a Hermit
Makenna Goodman – Helen of Nowhere
Mohamed Mbougar Sarr – The Most Secret Memory of Men (Translated by Lara Vergnaud)
Mohamed Kheir – Slipping (Translated by Robin Moger)
Giada Scodellaro – Ruins, Child
,
May 28, 2026
Ten years of Rich and Poor
.
Thinking about how my novel Rich and Poor came out in 2016, which is now ten years ago. (And, thanks to Luigi Mangione, it has even started selling again.)
*
“I will kill him. It will solve nothing and help no one, but for me at least, it will bring something to an end. The poor must kill the rich, one at a time, at every opportunity. One man kills another and the message is clear, your wealth is cruel and unnatural. You can put fences, guards and dogs around your home, so you are like a prisoner in your own life, but if you are rich you will live in fear. You will fear your servants. You will look out the window of your limousine and, at every traffic light, wonder if each and every passerby has a gun and bullet with your name on it. It is only that the killing must be completely random. The victims having nothing in common other than their wealth, the killers nothing in common other than their poverty. The message should be clear: if you are rich you can be killed at any time. The police would arrest millions but there would always be another poor man that could suddenly snap. We would only have to kill ten to start, to strike fear in the hearts of every billionaire in the world. And he will be the first. I will see to it.
On a social level, people have to look after each other, but on an ethical level, each of us has to look after ourselves. If you are a billionaire it is because you have done evil in the world. You have exploited and caused untold misery. You have bent laws and governments to your will. I don’t want to shoot him. I want to strangle him with piano wire. I don’t want to escape. I want to be caught and explain my idea to the world. I want to be executed. I now have nothing to lose. We will all be forgotten. But if ten of us manage to kill billionaires those ten will be remembered forever. Our poverty will become history. Wealth is impersonal but we will make it personal again.”
– Jacob Wren, Rich and Poor
.
Thinking about how my novel Rich and Poor came out in 2016, which is now ten years ago. (And, thanks to Luigi Mangione, it has even started selling again.)
*
“I will kill him. It will solve nothing and help no one, but for me at least, it will bring something to an end. The poor must kill the rich, one at a time, at every opportunity. One man kills another and the message is clear, your wealth is cruel and unnatural. You can put fences, guards and dogs around your home, so you are like a prisoner in your own life, but if you are rich you will live in fear. You will fear your servants. You will look out the window of your limousine and, at every traffic light, wonder if each and every passerby has a gun and bullet with your name on it. It is only that the killing must be completely random. The victims having nothing in common other than their wealth, the killers nothing in common other than their poverty. The message should be clear: if you are rich you can be killed at any time. The police would arrest millions but there would always be another poor man that could suddenly snap. We would only have to kill ten to start, to strike fear in the hearts of every billionaire in the world. And he will be the first. I will see to it.
On a social level, people have to look after each other, but on an ethical level, each of us has to look after ourselves. If you are a billionaire it is because you have done evil in the world. You have exploited and caused untold misery. You have bent laws and governments to your will. I don’t want to shoot him. I want to strangle him with piano wire. I don’t want to escape. I want to be caught and explain my idea to the world. I want to be executed. I now have nothing to lose. We will all be forgotten. But if ten of us manage to kill billionaires those ten will be remembered forever. Our poverty will become history. Wealth is impersonal but we will make it personal again.”
– Jacob Wren, Rich and Poor
.
May 24, 2026
Oliver Fugler Quote
.
“Many of our biggest blunders have occurred when trying to keep pace with the industry, when applying pressure that one or many of us can’t bear. Commonly, publishers are portrayed as deadline fiends, hounding willy-nilly artists for their work, and with any extra pressure on any one of the parties, the cycle stutters and heaves.
A disability justice lens, and its rhetorical influence on and co-creation with BIPOC and queer and trans communities, would have us all understand that that kind of pressure serves none of us, in the end. We are here, rather, to care about and for each other, and if it takes time and resources and adjustments, that’s not a barrier but rather the conditions that we must lovingly meet in order to live.”
― Oliver Fugler, from the Intro to Sharp Pink Claws: New Writing by Metonymy Press Authors, Vol. 2
[Check out all the amazing books at Metonymy Press.]
.
“Many of our biggest blunders have occurred when trying to keep pace with the industry, when applying pressure that one or many of us can’t bear. Commonly, publishers are portrayed as deadline fiends, hounding willy-nilly artists for their work, and with any extra pressure on any one of the parties, the cycle stutters and heaves.
A disability justice lens, and its rhetorical influence on and co-creation with BIPOC and queer and trans communities, would have us all understand that that kind of pressure serves none of us, in the end. We are here, rather, to care about and for each other, and if it takes time and resources and adjustments, that’s not a barrier but rather the conditions that we must lovingly meet in order to live.”
― Oliver Fugler, from the Intro to Sharp Pink Claws: New Writing by Metonymy Press Authors, Vol. 2
[Check out all the amazing books at Metonymy Press.]
.
May 16, 2026
Some passages from Afternoon Hours of a Hermit by Patrick Cottrell
Some passages from Afternoon Hours of a Hermit by Patrick Cottrell:
*
“Friendship has been a form of poison to me, I thought as I tried to picture my friends, especially my writer friends. I kept trying to picture them, my writer friends from the contemporary literature and adjunct scene in Brooklyn. No, the writer friends I pictured only reminded me of the palpable anxiety and awkwardness I felt whenever I interacted with them.”
*
“Perhaps part of the problem was I had surrounded myself with the fiction writers instead of the poets. I had chosen the wrong world to immerse myself in; the poets were nightclub docents of mourning and melancholia and the fiction writers were real estate agents.”
*
“I was ecstatic with joy whenever I had the opportunity to overhear what people said about me as if I weren’t there. Whenever I ran out of things to talk about during my creative writing workshop with the troubled youth, I would, without warning, get up from the conference table and wander out into the hallway, where, if I wasn’t careful, I could spend the rest of the class eavesdropping on my troubled youth, although they hardly ever said my name. I was nothing to them; they preferred to talk about debt, activism, gender, trauma, etc. I was disappointed when I didn’t hear my name come up.”
*
“A few years and nothing to show for all my troubles but the beginning of my psychological thriller, perhaps ten or twelve pages at most, the first ten or twelve pages are the easiest to write, I once said to Thomas Bernhard during office hours, the first ten or twelve pages are effortless, seamless, boundless, effortlessness; it’s the rest of it that’s completely insufferable. It never opens up the way I want it to, I explained to my mother and Aunt Sue. I only wanted to conjure a latticework of light and tranquility, but because of my limitations, I always end up suffocated in a broom closet of despair.”
*
“And some people might find it hard to believe I managed to write a book, a published one, knowing what they know about me, but during my time in graduate school, I learned it’s the most demented and mentally unwell writers who have the easiest time getting their books published, even the most awful, unhinged, stupid, and neurotic person can write and publish a book, then step into a roomful of strangers and talk about it and persuade them to buy it. Almost all my writer friends are suicidal in some way, I reflected, mostly in a soft, ambient way, their suicidal thoughts humming in the background like a refrigerator or a noise-machine, while others are openly suicidal, more suicidal forward.”
*
*
“Friendship has been a form of poison to me, I thought as I tried to picture my friends, especially my writer friends. I kept trying to picture them, my writer friends from the contemporary literature and adjunct scene in Brooklyn. No, the writer friends I pictured only reminded me of the palpable anxiety and awkwardness I felt whenever I interacted with them.”
*
“Perhaps part of the problem was I had surrounded myself with the fiction writers instead of the poets. I had chosen the wrong world to immerse myself in; the poets were nightclub docents of mourning and melancholia and the fiction writers were real estate agents.”
*
“I was ecstatic with joy whenever I had the opportunity to overhear what people said about me as if I weren’t there. Whenever I ran out of things to talk about during my creative writing workshop with the troubled youth, I would, without warning, get up from the conference table and wander out into the hallway, where, if I wasn’t careful, I could spend the rest of the class eavesdropping on my troubled youth, although they hardly ever said my name. I was nothing to them; they preferred to talk about debt, activism, gender, trauma, etc. I was disappointed when I didn’t hear my name come up.”
*
“A few years and nothing to show for all my troubles but the beginning of my psychological thriller, perhaps ten or twelve pages at most, the first ten or twelve pages are the easiest to write, I once said to Thomas Bernhard during office hours, the first ten or twelve pages are effortless, seamless, boundless, effortlessness; it’s the rest of it that’s completely insufferable. It never opens up the way I want it to, I explained to my mother and Aunt Sue. I only wanted to conjure a latticework of light and tranquility, but because of my limitations, I always end up suffocated in a broom closet of despair.”
*
“And some people might find it hard to believe I managed to write a book, a published one, knowing what they know about me, but during my time in graduate school, I learned it’s the most demented and mentally unwell writers who have the easiest time getting their books published, even the most awful, unhinged, stupid, and neurotic person can write and publish a book, then step into a roomful of strangers and talk about it and persuade them to buy it. Almost all my writer friends are suicidal in some way, I reflected, mostly in a soft, ambient way, their suicidal thoughts humming in the background like a refrigerator or a noise-machine, while others are openly suicidal, more suicidal forward.”
*
May 6, 2026
Excerpt from the novel-in-progress Failure Finds its Happy End
.
I spent a great deal of time trying to figure out how I might start an art movement. In general, people seemed to feel starting a new art movement was not possible, if they thought about it at all. It was something that occurred in the past, during the twentieth century and before, and was now no longer viable. When I can’t figure out how to do something in real life, the next best thing is to write a novel about it. But I don’t just want it to be a novel, I also want it to be a fable.
Many art movements I’ve read about over the years followed a fairly specific pattern that greatly interests me. There is an extended period in which a group of artists – friends living or hanging out in the same neighborhood with cheap rent – work in relative obscurity, often spending a great deal of time together drinking to excess. During this time they debate artistic questions, share influences and resources, while each individually continuing to make work and develop their practice. Through such debate certain commonalities emerge, alongside many differences. Often, somewhere in the mix, there is a manifesto or a few. At some point there is a breakthrough moment when one or two of the artists achieves sudden success, the unexpected yet hoped for fruits of this longer period of hidden, communal development. During this breakthrough the movement is given a name, often by a critic or hanger on, and the name sticks, a name most of the artists involved don’t particularly like. Many of the artists quickly go from struggling and having little money to being known and having more money than they know what to do with. The drinking becomes more extreme. A few of the artists are singled out as being the most important avatars of the movement and many of the others are relegated to the status of minor players. Imitators and posers quickly flood the scene. There is instant nostalgia for the tight knit sense of community they had not so long ago experienced. Often at least one of the artists dies, unable to handle the sudden rush of celebrity or through drinking. In general, all this takes place over the course of about five years. Much later, after everyone is dead or old, the movement becomes even more glamourous in retrospect and a great deal of fluff is written about it. I would like the art movement I help found to echo some aspects of this trajectory while jettisoning others.
So first I had to find the people, then we had to bond over the course of a substantial interval of relative obscurity. I was hoping for less alcohol than previous art movements, but we’d have to see which stimulants were the drugs of choice. I imagined it a little bit like putting together a boy band, though definitely not all boys, those days were long gone, no more boys’ clubs and no more centring whiteness. And it had to be about something substantial, something political, something worth doing.
Meanwhile, there was much going on in the world. There was war, there was genocide, there was fascism, there was an enormous amount of protest against war, genocide and fascism. I would join a protest practically every week. It seemed likely to me that the other artists I was looking for were also part of these protests. And therefore, as we marched, I should talk to as many strangers as possible Often this did not go as well as planned.
Did art movements of the past emerge organically or did the artists involved actively work to make them happen? Some mix of both? Always an aspect of zeitgeist involved, some generational shift. (Art movements often started by the very young, which I am not.) There’s of course a shift occurring now, with U.S. hegemony in the process of coming apart as the seams. Is this the kind of shift you can build an art movement on? Usually, art movements are built from shifts that are more forward looking, optimistic: this is the new thing that will forever improve art as society improves alongside it, these possibilities based squarely within the idea of progress, and since progress is a lie, we’ll need to find another basis. Things don’t progress, they go in circles like the seasons.
This book will be my contribution to an art movement that doesn’t yet exist, a kind of history in advance.
*
I'm still working on what I'm calling my final trilogy — Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim (2024), Desire Without Expectation (2027) and Faithful Unbeliever (2030) — but, if I ever finish this trilogy, Failure Finds its Happy End might be the plus one.
As well, my current plan is to serialize Failure Finds its Happy End on my Patreon here.
.
I spent a great deal of time trying to figure out how I might start an art movement. In general, people seemed to feel starting a new art movement was not possible, if they thought about it at all. It was something that occurred in the past, during the twentieth century and before, and was now no longer viable. When I can’t figure out how to do something in real life, the next best thing is to write a novel about it. But I don’t just want it to be a novel, I also want it to be a fable.
Many art movements I’ve read about over the years followed a fairly specific pattern that greatly interests me. There is an extended period in which a group of artists – friends living or hanging out in the same neighborhood with cheap rent – work in relative obscurity, often spending a great deal of time together drinking to excess. During this time they debate artistic questions, share influences and resources, while each individually continuing to make work and develop their practice. Through such debate certain commonalities emerge, alongside many differences. Often, somewhere in the mix, there is a manifesto or a few. At some point there is a breakthrough moment when one or two of the artists achieves sudden success, the unexpected yet hoped for fruits of this longer period of hidden, communal development. During this breakthrough the movement is given a name, often by a critic or hanger on, and the name sticks, a name most of the artists involved don’t particularly like. Many of the artists quickly go from struggling and having little money to being known and having more money than they know what to do with. The drinking becomes more extreme. A few of the artists are singled out as being the most important avatars of the movement and many of the others are relegated to the status of minor players. Imitators and posers quickly flood the scene. There is instant nostalgia for the tight knit sense of community they had not so long ago experienced. Often at least one of the artists dies, unable to handle the sudden rush of celebrity or through drinking. In general, all this takes place over the course of about five years. Much later, after everyone is dead or old, the movement becomes even more glamourous in retrospect and a great deal of fluff is written about it. I would like the art movement I help found to echo some aspects of this trajectory while jettisoning others.
So first I had to find the people, then we had to bond over the course of a substantial interval of relative obscurity. I was hoping for less alcohol than previous art movements, but we’d have to see which stimulants were the drugs of choice. I imagined it a little bit like putting together a boy band, though definitely not all boys, those days were long gone, no more boys’ clubs and no more centring whiteness. And it had to be about something substantial, something political, something worth doing.
Meanwhile, there was much going on in the world. There was war, there was genocide, there was fascism, there was an enormous amount of protest against war, genocide and fascism. I would join a protest practically every week. It seemed likely to me that the other artists I was looking for were also part of these protests. And therefore, as we marched, I should talk to as many strangers as possible Often this did not go as well as planned.
Did art movements of the past emerge organically or did the artists involved actively work to make them happen? Some mix of both? Always an aspect of zeitgeist involved, some generational shift. (Art movements often started by the very young, which I am not.) There’s of course a shift occurring now, with U.S. hegemony in the process of coming apart as the seams. Is this the kind of shift you can build an art movement on? Usually, art movements are built from shifts that are more forward looking, optimistic: this is the new thing that will forever improve art as society improves alongside it, these possibilities based squarely within the idea of progress, and since progress is a lie, we’ll need to find another basis. Things don’t progress, they go in circles like the seasons.
This book will be my contribution to an art movement that doesn’t yet exist, a kind of history in advance.
*
I'm still working on what I'm calling my final trilogy — Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim (2024), Desire Without Expectation (2027) and Faithful Unbeliever (2030) — but, if I ever finish this trilogy, Failure Finds its Happy End might be the plus one.
As well, my current plan is to serialize Failure Finds its Happy End on my Patreon here.
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April 28, 2026
Elle Barbara's ‘One Man Show’ / May 22, 2026
The legendary underground musician Elle Barbara presents ‘One Man Show’ on May 22, 2026 at Montreal’s iconic Theatre Outremont. More than a concert, ‘One Man Show’ is an on-stage exploration of Elle Barbara’s Black Space’s 2025 album ‘Word on the Street,’ in a spectacle created in collaboration with noted choreographer Raja Feather Kelly. Sure to be one of the events of the summer.
Purchase tickets: https://theatreoutremont.tuxedobillet.com/web/elle-barbara
Listen and purchase: Elle Barbara’s Black Space’s 2025 album ‘Word on the Street’
Purchase tickets: https://theatreoutremont.tuxedobillet.com/web/elle-barbara
Listen and purchase: Elle Barbara’s Black Space’s 2025 album ‘Word on the Street’
April 24, 2026
May 2027
I've never had one of these before. My new novel Desire Without Expectation - the middle book of what I'm calling my final trilogy - is coming to a bookstore near you in May 2027.
April 14, 2026
set the stage
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Occupy set the sage for Bernie and Luigi. Bernie set the stage for Mamdani, who set the stage for waves of DSA candidates hopefully sweeping future politics. Luigi set the stage for warehouse fires plus the Molotov aimed at Altman’s house. Actions lead to further actions down the line. (I’m thinking about to what degree it’s possible to push simultaneously from within and from outside the system.)
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Occupy set the sage for Bernie and Luigi. Bernie set the stage for Mamdani, who set the stage for waves of DSA candidates hopefully sweeping future politics. Luigi set the stage for warehouse fires plus the Molotov aimed at Altman’s house. Actions lead to further actions down the line. (I’m thinking about to what degree it’s possible to push simultaneously from within and from outside the system.)
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March 13, 2026
PME-ART's How Does Change Happen? Call for Participants
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Montreal-based interdisciplinary group PME-ART is looking for 4 participants to co-create and perform our next show How Does Change Happen? You can find all the information about the workshop-audition and how to apply both in English et en français.
Montreal-based interdisciplinary group PME-ART is looking for 4 participants to co-create and perform our next show How Does Change Happen? You can find all the information about the workshop-audition and how to apply both in English et en français.
the internet has rotted my brain
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For the past five or six months I haven’t especially liked any of the books I’ve read and, perhaps subconsciously, this has led to a current situation in which I’ve basically stopped reading books. (I'm sure I'll start again soon, but then again not so sure.) Instead I read slop on the internet. What it feels like is the internet has rotted my brain to the degree that I no longer feel like reading books. Yet it also feels like the internet has rotted the brains of all the author’s I’m reading (since I mostly read contemporary writers) to the degree that they’re no longer able to write books I find worth reading. A classic chicken vs egg type problem.
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For the past five or six months I haven’t especially liked any of the books I’ve read and, perhaps subconsciously, this has led to a current situation in which I’ve basically stopped reading books. (I'm sure I'll start again soon, but then again not so sure.) Instead I read slop on the internet. What it feels like is the internet has rotted my brain to the degree that I no longer feel like reading books. Yet it also feels like the internet has rotted the brains of all the author’s I’m reading (since I mostly read contemporary writers) to the degree that they’re no longer able to write books I find worth reading. A classic chicken vs egg type problem.
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March 10, 2026
the hubris that glows
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A house of cards. A paper tiger. A palace built on sand. A machine for telling lies that will someday be brought to light. A race to the bottom. A world historical moment. A situation that is entirely volatile. The end of an era. An opening or possibility. A time to be afraid. A time to make the rich afraid. A time when everything starts crashing down. The wisdom that no empire lasts forever. A Goliath absolutely certain David doesn’t stand a chance. The knowledge that hubris leads to a fatal misstep. The hubris that glows with stupidity. The stupidity that is simply another name for malice. A shift in the global balance of power. A wishful thinking that might also become possible. And death after death after death, a new way (and the old way) of seeing the horrors of forever.
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A house of cards. A paper tiger. A palace built on sand. A machine for telling lies that will someday be brought to light. A race to the bottom. A world historical moment. A situation that is entirely volatile. The end of an era. An opening or possibility. A time to be afraid. A time to make the rich afraid. A time when everything starts crashing down. The wisdom that no empire lasts forever. A Goliath absolutely certain David doesn’t stand a chance. The knowledge that hubris leads to a fatal misstep. The hubris that glows with stupidity. The stupidity that is simply another name for malice. A shift in the global balance of power. A wishful thinking that might also become possible. And death after death after death, a new way (and the old way) of seeing the horrors of forever.
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February 27, 2026
Xu Shaoyang is coming to Montreal on March 6th!
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Xu Shaoyang is coming to Montreal on March 6th! Don't miss it.
xushaoyang.co.uk / Facebook event
Xu Shaoyang has mastered a beguiling sophisticated-naive style overflowing with humanity and beauty and that's what makes this Chinese musician so special.
He is a collaborator of the rather splendid cult errant pop group Maher Shalal Hash Baz, and like the Japanese collective his songs pick apart conventional ideas of musicality by embracing fragments, happy accidents and the spirit of amateurism.
Over the years he has performed with musicians such as Lee Ranaldo, Ana Da Silva, Tenniscoats, Eric Chenaux, Jens Lekman, Oneida, Tomoko Sauvage.
After years in Canada, Japan, and Scandinavia, Xu currently resides in London, England.
Xu Shaoyang is coming to Montreal on March 6th! Don't miss it.
xushaoyang.co.uk / Facebook event
Xu Shaoyang has mastered a beguiling sophisticated-naive style overflowing with humanity and beauty and that's what makes this Chinese musician so special.
He is a collaborator of the rather splendid cult errant pop group Maher Shalal Hash Baz, and like the Japanese collective his songs pick apart conventional ideas of musicality by embracing fragments, happy accidents and the spirit of amateurism.
Over the years he has performed with musicians such as Lee Ranaldo, Ana Da Silva, Tenniscoats, Eric Chenaux, Jens Lekman, Oneida, Tomoko Sauvage.
After years in Canada, Japan, and Scandinavia, Xu currently resides in London, England.
February 22, 2026
"the problems of the world will not melt away"
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“As we walked in silence, I realized I couldn’t help myself. I was talking to the Popsicle because I literally had no one else to talk to. At home, I might not have had friends, but there was always someone to talk to. What a sick world this is where you talk to the enemy because there’s literally no one else, feeling so depressed by this idea that, to cheer myself up, I start imagining him as an actual popsicle. A big purple dripping popsicle walking alongside me, two wooden popsicle sticks for legs, angling his frame from side to side with every awkward step. A big purple popsicle with a beautiful popsicle wife and two beautiful popsicle children. Then I imagine him melting, that eventually he will melt away to nothing, leaving a long purple sticky trail behind him, like a purple popsicle snail. And it occurs to me this might be what I most want, for the problems of the world to simply melt away. But the problems of the world will not melt away, we must find tools and strategies to push against them, and I wonder, even here, in this hopeless predicament, what such tools and strategies might be, as the imaginary purple popsicle continues to melt into nothingness beside me.”
- Jacob Wren, Dry Your Eyes to Perfect Your Aim
.
“As we walked in silence, I realized I couldn’t help myself. I was talking to the Popsicle because I literally had no one else to talk to. At home, I might not have had friends, but there was always someone to talk to. What a sick world this is where you talk to the enemy because there’s literally no one else, feeling so depressed by this idea that, to cheer myself up, I start imagining him as an actual popsicle. A big purple dripping popsicle walking alongside me, two wooden popsicle sticks for legs, angling his frame from side to side with every awkward step. A big purple popsicle with a beautiful popsicle wife and two beautiful popsicle children. Then I imagine him melting, that eventually he will melt away to nothing, leaving a long purple sticky trail behind him, like a purple popsicle snail. And it occurs to me this might be what I most want, for the problems of the world to simply melt away. But the problems of the world will not melt away, we must find tools and strategies to push against them, and I wonder, even here, in this hopeless predicament, what such tools and strategies might be, as the imaginary purple popsicle continues to melt into nothingness beside me.”
- Jacob Wren, Dry Your Eyes to Perfect Your Aim
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February 16, 2026
Scotiabank fully divests from Elbit Systems
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Scotiabank fully divests from Elbit Systems.
This divestment does not exonerate Scotiabank, which maintains investments in arms and extractive capital.
Nonetheless, we must celebrate small wins.
You can read more about it here.
.
Scotiabank fully divests from Elbit Systems.
This divestment does not exonerate Scotiabank, which maintains investments in arms and extractive capital.
Nonetheless, we must celebrate small wins.
You can read more about it here.
.
February 4, 2026
Adventures can be found anywhere, même dans un cauchemar at Mois Multi in Quebec City.
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PME-ART are excited to be collaborating with Bureau de l’APA on a new version of our Adventures can be found anywhere, même dans... Concept Touring Kit entitled: Adventures can be found anywhere, même dans un cauchemar, taking place February 10-14, 2026 at Mois Multi in Quebec City.
I am realizing I haven't yet had a chance to write about our Concept Touring Kit, so I'll give it a try now:
Concept Touring (also referred to as “showing without going”) is a way of disseminating work in which the idea, process and project travels but the artists do not. Instead of the artists travelling, local artists recreate the project for their own local context. Concept Touring is a growing international trend that responds to the current ecological crisis, allowing artists to disseminate their work without taking airplanes. It is an environmental initiative to help us lower our carbon footprint and also, in this case, a remarkable opportunity for local artists to experience the magic that is PME-ART.
Very briefly, Adventures can be found anywhere… is a project in which a group of artists sit around a table and rewrite a book of their own choosing, page by page, changing it in significant ways that are chosen beforehand, and then immediately read each page aloud. It is a mischievous hybrid of literature and live performance that goes to places both unexpected and moving. You might have already seen the videos of the two original (non-concept touring) versions:
Adventures can be found anywhere, même dans la répétition (2022)
Adventures can be found anywhere, même dans la mélancolie (2014)
What makes Adventures can be found anywhere… such a perfect project for Concept Touring is the process of the local artists choosing their own book to rewrite and having the opportunity to rewrite it in their own language.
The Concept Touring Kit version of Adventures can be found anywhere… premiered at the 2024 edition of the Homo Novus festival in Riga, Latvia. The project was recreated by ten local Latvian artists selected through an open call. They chose a new title that was a mix of Latvian and French: Piedzīvojumus var atrast it visā, même dans le courage. These ten local artists together decided to rewrite Milda Palēviča’s diaries (which were originally written in French and then translated into Latvian), the very first Latvian female philosopher who had mostly been forgotten during the Soviet era.
The upcoming version in Quebec City at Le Lieu (where Bureau de l’APA rewrite Kafka's The Trial) will be the second time our Concept Touring Kit is performed. It is our hope that our Concept Touring Kit will continue to travel (without us.) If you are interested in creating your own version of Adventures can be found anywhere… please get in touch.
Facebook event.
Relay-Interview with Jacob Wren at Mois Multi / February 14, 10am-12pm
The original versions of Adventures can be found anywhere… and the Concept Touring Kit itself were created by: Burcu Emeç + Claudia Fancello + Marie Claire Forté + Nadège Grebmeier Forget + Adam Kinner + Catherine Lalonde + Ashlea Watkin + Jacob Wren. Thanks to Michèle Thériault and the Leonard & Bina Ellen Gallery for commissioning the work.
PME-ART are excited to be collaborating with Bureau de l’APA on a new version of our Adventures can be found anywhere, même dans... Concept Touring Kit entitled: Adventures can be found anywhere, même dans un cauchemar, taking place February 10-14, 2026 at Mois Multi in Quebec City.
I am realizing I haven't yet had a chance to write about our Concept Touring Kit, so I'll give it a try now:
Concept Touring (also referred to as “showing without going”) is a way of disseminating work in which the idea, process and project travels but the artists do not. Instead of the artists travelling, local artists recreate the project for their own local context. Concept Touring is a growing international trend that responds to the current ecological crisis, allowing artists to disseminate their work without taking airplanes. It is an environmental initiative to help us lower our carbon footprint and also, in this case, a remarkable opportunity for local artists to experience the magic that is PME-ART.
Very briefly, Adventures can be found anywhere… is a project in which a group of artists sit around a table and rewrite a book of their own choosing, page by page, changing it in significant ways that are chosen beforehand, and then immediately read each page aloud. It is a mischievous hybrid of literature and live performance that goes to places both unexpected and moving. You might have already seen the videos of the two original (non-concept touring) versions:
Adventures can be found anywhere, même dans la répétition (2022)
Adventures can be found anywhere, même dans la mélancolie (2014)
What makes Adventures can be found anywhere… such a perfect project for Concept Touring is the process of the local artists choosing their own book to rewrite and having the opportunity to rewrite it in their own language.
The Concept Touring Kit version of Adventures can be found anywhere… premiered at the 2024 edition of the Homo Novus festival in Riga, Latvia. The project was recreated by ten local Latvian artists selected through an open call. They chose a new title that was a mix of Latvian and French: Piedzīvojumus var atrast it visā, même dans le courage. These ten local artists together decided to rewrite Milda Palēviča’s diaries (which were originally written in French and then translated into Latvian), the very first Latvian female philosopher who had mostly been forgotten during the Soviet era.
The upcoming version in Quebec City at Le Lieu (where Bureau de l’APA rewrite Kafka's The Trial) will be the second time our Concept Touring Kit is performed. It is our hope that our Concept Touring Kit will continue to travel (without us.) If you are interested in creating your own version of Adventures can be found anywhere… please get in touch.
Facebook event.
Relay-Interview with Jacob Wren at Mois Multi / February 14, 10am-12pm
The original versions of Adventures can be found anywhere… and the Concept Touring Kit itself were created by: Burcu Emeç + Claudia Fancello + Marie Claire Forté + Nadège Grebmeier Forget + Adam Kinner + Catherine Lalonde + Ashlea Watkin + Jacob Wren. Thanks to Michèle Thériault and the Leonard & Bina Ellen Gallery for commissioning the work.
January 28, 2026
the most compelling first page
High praise for my book Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim: "This has to be the most compelling first page of a book I've ever read."
Thanks so much for reading.
January 24, 2026
Amy Fusselman Quote
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"The parental gaze returned me to a quote I had read a few years earlier, by British child psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott, in his 1971 book Playing and Reality, in a chapter on adolescent development. Although my kids weren’t yet adolescents when I first read it—two of the three of them are now—it has remained one of the most significant things I have read in my parenting life:
“If you do all you can to promote personal growth in your offspring, you will need to be able to deal with startling results. If your children find themselves at all they will not be contented to find anything but the whole of themselves, and that will include the aggression and destructive elements in themselves as well as the elements that can be labelled loving. There will be this long tussle which you will need to survive.”
In all my parental discussions up to that moment—with teachers, principals, pediatricians, and other significant figures in my parenting work—I had never before heard a peep about the desirability of dealing with “startling results” such as these. The parenting canon as I had seen it seemed rife with experts whose sole aim—I am thinking now of the brightly-titled mega-bestseller 1-2-3 Magic—was to keep the parent secure in his/her domain of wizard-y control. That as brilliant a psychoanalyst as Winnicott should have stated that a death-defying “tussle” is an essential aspect of parenting whole children—and serves as a sign that one has parented well rather than poorly—is a concept I have held onto tightly in part because I have heard it expressed so seldom."
- Amy Fusselman, On the Parental Gaze
.
"The parental gaze returned me to a quote I had read a few years earlier, by British child psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott, in his 1971 book Playing and Reality, in a chapter on adolescent development. Although my kids weren’t yet adolescents when I first read it—two of the three of them are now—it has remained one of the most significant things I have read in my parenting life:
“If you do all you can to promote personal growth in your offspring, you will need to be able to deal with startling results. If your children find themselves at all they will not be contented to find anything but the whole of themselves, and that will include the aggression and destructive elements in themselves as well as the elements that can be labelled loving. There will be this long tussle which you will need to survive.”
In all my parental discussions up to that moment—with teachers, principals, pediatricians, and other significant figures in my parenting work—I had never before heard a peep about the desirability of dealing with “startling results” such as these. The parenting canon as I had seen it seemed rife with experts whose sole aim—I am thinking now of the brightly-titled mega-bestseller 1-2-3 Magic—was to keep the parent secure in his/her domain of wizard-y control. That as brilliant a psychoanalyst as Winnicott should have stated that a death-defying “tussle” is an essential aspect of parenting whole children—and serves as a sign that one has parented well rather than poorly—is a concept I have held onto tightly in part because I have heard it expressed so seldom."
- Amy Fusselman, On the Parental Gaze
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January 10, 2026
The DJ Who Gave Too Much Information at Rosendal Teater (Trondheim, Norway)
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PME-ART are soon on our way to Norway to perform The DJ Who Gave Too Much Information at the Rosendal Teater on January 21, 2026. We have now been performing this work for fifteen years and it is always a pleasure to bring it to a new city.
A turntable and a pile of records. For each record we have at least one story at the ready. These stories have come from hearsay, internet research, books, magazines, friends and our personal lives. One after another, we put on the records and tell our stories about them, each story growing out of the last and into the next. The audience can casually have a drink, stay for a while, come and go, exploring the way music – and the stories that surround it – infiltrate our personal and social lives, affecting our ongoing understanding of love, work and how we think society should operate.
Every time we do The DJ Who Gave Too Much Information we tell stories we’ve told before but in very new ways, plus a few stories we’ve never told before to keep us on our toes. Like John Peel famously once said about The Fall: “Always the same, always different.”
The following day (January 22) we invite the public to bring a song of their choice and tell a story about it during the Bring your own Record/Listening Party.
*
Bonus:
Watch at short video of The DJ Who Gave Too Much Information being performed at the Musée d’art contemporain – La Triennale québécoise, 12 octobre 2011.
You can also read A letter about The DJ Who Gave Too Much Information from 2011.
Plus an excerpt from my book Authenticity is a Feeling about The DJ Who Gave Too Much Information featuring anecdotes regarding The Fall, Pavement and Parenthetical Girls.
.
PME-ART are soon on our way to Norway to perform The DJ Who Gave Too Much Information at the Rosendal Teater on January 21, 2026. We have now been performing this work for fifteen years and it is always a pleasure to bring it to a new city.
A turntable and a pile of records. For each record we have at least one story at the ready. These stories have come from hearsay, internet research, books, magazines, friends and our personal lives. One after another, we put on the records and tell our stories about them, each story growing out of the last and into the next. The audience can casually have a drink, stay for a while, come and go, exploring the way music – and the stories that surround it – infiltrate our personal and social lives, affecting our ongoing understanding of love, work and how we think society should operate.
Every time we do The DJ Who Gave Too Much Information we tell stories we’ve told before but in very new ways, plus a few stories we’ve never told before to keep us on our toes. Like John Peel famously once said about The Fall: “Always the same, always different.”
The following day (January 22) we invite the public to bring a song of their choice and tell a story about it during the Bring your own Record/Listening Party.
*
Bonus:
Watch at short video of The DJ Who Gave Too Much Information being performed at the Musée d’art contemporain – La Triennale québécoise, 12 octobre 2011.
You can also read A letter about The DJ Who Gave Too Much Information from 2011.
Plus an excerpt from my book Authenticity is a Feeling about The DJ Who Gave Too Much Information featuring anecdotes regarding The Fall, Pavement and Parenthetical Girls.
.
January 4, 2026
Favourite Political Novels
Someone on social media asked for people's favourite political novels (their recommendation was Comrade Papa by GauZ, which I now need to read.) It got me thinking, and I came up with this list (since, as everyone knows, I really do love lists):
Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052-2072 – Eman Abdelhadi and M. E. O'Brien
Diego Garcia – Natasha Soobramanien & Luke Williams
American Abductions – Mauro Javier Cárdenas
ELADATL: A History of the East Los Angeles Dirigible Air Transport Lines – Sesshu Foster & Arturo Ernesto Romo
I Hotel – Karen Tei Yamashita
M Archive – Alexis Pauline Gumbs
Clandestine Occupations: An Imaginary History – Diana Block
The Unseen – Nanni Balestrini (translated by Liz Heron)
The Vanquished – César Andreu Iglesias (translated by Sidney W. Mintz)
Paradise in the Sea of Sorrow – Michiko Ishimure (translated by Livia Monnet)
American War – Omar El Akkad
.
Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052-2072 – Eman Abdelhadi and M. E. O'Brien
Diego Garcia – Natasha Soobramanien & Luke Williams
American Abductions – Mauro Javier Cárdenas
ELADATL: A History of the East Los Angeles Dirigible Air Transport Lines – Sesshu Foster & Arturo Ernesto Romo
I Hotel – Karen Tei Yamashita
M Archive – Alexis Pauline Gumbs
Clandestine Occupations: An Imaginary History – Diana Block
The Unseen – Nanni Balestrini (translated by Liz Heron)
The Vanquished – César Andreu Iglesias (translated by Sidney W. Mintz)
Paradise in the Sea of Sorrow – Michiko Ishimure (translated by Livia Monnet)
American War – Omar El Akkad
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