Excerpt from my novel-in-progress Desire Without Expectation

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That evening we go around the circle. Everyone has to introduce themselves and explain a bit about why they’re here, why they’ve decided to be part of this:



“My friend brought me. I wasn’t convinced I was up for it, but we took the bus here together. It was only on the bus ride that they fully convinced me. I’m always up for a cause. But… I don’t know… I wonder about my life. If I’ve been too much of a coward. The courage to put my body on the line, to be roughed up by the authorities, or to go to jail for my convictions and see what happens there. These aren’t the kinds of things I’ve done before. So on the bus my friend turns to me and really lays it on the line. If I want to talk the talk I’ve got to walk the walk. And they were right.”



“My first protest was when I was seventeen. I felt then what I still feel now. Everything has gone wrong with the world. Every time I get a chance, I realize I need this. I need to be out on the streets with others who also realize everything’s gone wrong and want to do what we can to oppose it. I’ve been arrested over thirty times. I don’t know. People keep protesting and the world keeps getting worse. But we can’t just watch it all getting worse without stating our opposition, without shouting out what we know and shouting is all together. I’ve been doing this since I was a teenager and plan to keep doing it until I can’t anymore. That’s why I’m here.”



“I wasn’t planning to say this, but I was just listening to you and realize I have to respond somehow. I have to say that I really think protesting is not enough. It needs to be one tactic among many. Of course I’m also here to protest, to take part in this protest, which we’re all hoping will be significant. But maybe it’s worth saying that what I believe in most is what we might call an inside/outside strategy. Some people pushing as hard as they can from the inside, other people pushing as hard as they can from the outside. That’s always what I think most has to happen. And right now, as I think we all know, there aren’t nearly enough people pushing from the inside. But I’m also not on the inside, and don’t believe I have any way of getting in there any time soon, so I have to do my best to push from where I am.”



“Hopefully this won’t take too long, but I just want to tell a little story that is important to me. That gradually became quite important to me over the years. I was taking the train, not a long trip, a few hours between cities. And a crew member came through, taking tickets, making jokes. There was a woman a few rows in front of me, the crew member seemed to have a problem with her, maybe there was a problem with her ticket, but from a few rows back something felt off about the interaction. It looked like he’d decided to be a bit of a bully, make use of the little bit of power he had in the situation. I didn’t think so much of it, the woman was standing up, he was asking her to leave, she was beginning to gather her things. But then a woman across the aisle stood up and spoke directly to the employee, said this woman hasn’t done anything wrong, you can’t just ask her to leave like that, it’s completely unfair. And to everyone’s complete surprise the crew member immediately backed down, apologized to both of the women and let the first woman return to her seat. And I was watching all this, thinking to myself: my plan had been to just sit there and do nothing. Even though my instincts were telling me I was watching someone be bullied. And there was someone else who had the guts to stand up and say something. And I wished that person had been me. Also because it worked. So every time I think of that story, I think I can’t just be a bystander, I better stand up and do something. Which is probably one of the main things that has brought me here tonight.”



“A secret service agency is paying me to infiltrate a variety of radical left-wing organizations and then report back to my superiors to tell them whatever I find out. Honesty is always the best policy.”



It was the wrong thing to do, but we all ignored this outrageous statement, perhaps thinking it was only a joke, and continued going around the circle.



“I haven’t put much thought into it until now. I heard something was happening and thought I’d check it out. Maybe it was something like: something important might happen here and I don’t want to miss out. I know that doesn’t sound like a very good reason. It’s not really noble or anything like that. Sometimes I hear about think that happened before I was born and feel bad that I missed out on them. Tell myself that if something significant happens in my lifetime I want to be there. So here I am. Trying to do my part. Play some sort of minor role as a foot soldier in the making of historical change.”



“This is all so interesting. So many different roles and perspectives. But tomorrow we’re going to go out there all together and we’ve got to have each other’s backs. If there are differences between us, we’ve got to put them aside. Not forever, just for the next few days. Because this is only going to work if we find ways to really work together. I have a tendency to become a bit of a cheerleader in situations like this. To loudly state how important it is we all work as a team. When we’re children in this culture, we’re not given nearly enough tools to work collectively, to work together. But every time we go through something like this, and manage to have each other’s backs, we all learn a little bit more how to do it. We’re learning this all together. I hope someday we’ll actually win. But, if I’m honest with myself, and I think it’s really important to be honest with yourself, I think winning is still a long way off. And there has to be a whole lot of collective learning to get from where we are now to some sort of more general victory. Which is another way of saying that, hopefully, I’m here to learn.”



And then it was Alfreda’s turn. Alfreda was sitting directly next to me, she paused for a long moment, taking in the fully scope of the circle and each of the people who constituted it, before saying: “We were in a house. We only stayed there for a week, a bit less than a week. They had two children’s rooms for rent and we each rented one of them. It was a rather strange situation. There had been some sort of conflict between the parents and the children, a conflict none of them had been able to resolve, which is why the two children were gone, and we were staying in their rooms. But just like the previous children had been expelled by the parents, we were eventually also expelled. The same patterns just continue repeating over and over again. Before we left that town I had one demand. I wanted to go back to the small-town diner were the previous night I had reunited with the one true love of my life. I still haven’t completely managed to process what it was like for me to see her again after all those years. Why we came here has something to do with what it was like for me to be in that very charged space of that small town diner, drinking that very bad diner coffee, the entirety of the space charged with my memories of that recent meeting with the life I could have had but didn’t. The life I would have had if, at the time, I had followed my true desires instead of listening to what I thought the people around me wanted me to do. That space was fully charged for me. And then we looked up and saw a tiny television screen broadcasting the news and telling us to come here. It was as if the desire to be reunited with the love of my life merged with the desire to be part of this protest, to be part of the zeitgeist. I know all of this doesn’t exactly make sense. But somehow it all makes sense for me so much more than so many of the other things in my life. There have been times in my life, too many times, when I didn’t follow my desires, and I now look back at many of those decisions as mistakes. So when I looked up at that small television, and it announced this protest, it was clear to me that this was a moment I should follow my desires. Which is what I did.”



Then it was my turn. I thought to myself that Alfreda was really a hard act to follow. And then I really had to wonder: why did I come here? Was I only following Alfreda and her spontaneous desires? Didn’t I have any desires of my own? And it was my turn to speak, everyone was waiting, I couldn’t just sit in the circle in silence when it was so clearly my turn to speak. As so often happens, I begin to speak before I fully know what I intend to say: “If it’s not already clear, I came here with Alfreda, who just spoke and is sitting directly to my left. We drove here together. I don’t know if that’s the reason I came here, but it’s definitely the method, the means of transportation. It’s a tangent, but being asked to speak like this makes me wonder a bit about my reasons for doing anything. Do I really know why I do anything? And in some sense I already know the answer. The reason behind so many of the things I do is to gather more information about the lost masterpiece. Since all of the information is plausibly unreliable, there can somehow never be enough. I don’t specifically know how this project is going to provide me with further knowledge about the lost masterpiece, but if I mention it here to all of you, that might at least open the question. In my mind, protest and the lost masterpiece feel very connected. But all of that is only a tangent. That’s not really the specific reason I’m here. There probably isn’t a specific reason. But, nonetheless, I feel it was the right decision for me to come.”



We then divide up into smaller breakout groups. Each group is three people and our group consists of myself, Alfreda and the person who announced to everyone he was a paid-by-the-government infiltrator. It was awkward, but somehow we were also very curious to find out more about him. Each breakout group was supposed to decide what we were and weren’t willing to do, how much danger we were willing to engage in and where we wanted to draw the line. We were put into groups based on what we had said during the introductory round, and it made me wonder what was it about what Alfreda and I had said that made the organizers decide to put us in the same group with this self-proclaimed infiltrator. I had the feeling that the three of us were the wild cards, the people who had said things that didn’t fit the acceptable overall narrative. It goes without saying that I didn’t much like being lumped into the same category as the infiltrator, but perhaps he also didn’t much care to be lumped into the same category as the two of us.



I say: “So how should we do this?”

Alfreda says: “Maybe we could list some of the possibilities and then each state whether or not we’re willing.”

Infiltrators says: “How do you mean?”

Alfreda says: “For example: get arrested?”

I say: “Yes.”

Alfreda says: “Yes.”

Infiltrator says: “Yes.”



I say: “Stay in the tear gas?”

Infiltratory says: “Yes.”

Alfreda says: “Yes.”



Infiltrator says: “Throw Molotov cocktails at the police?”

Alfreda says: “Yes.”

I say: “I’m not sure.”



When we’re not in complete agreement we’re supposed to discuss. Alfreda begins the discussion by saying we all know this event is planned as a nonviolent protest. Alfreda begins the discussion by saying we all know this event is planned as a nonviolent protest. Nonetheless, even at a nonviolent event a certain useful movement can be activated by the right act of violence at the right moment. But she didn’t come here to smash stuff. That’s really not the point. She only wants to state that she is open to the possibility. Having said her piece, she looks at me in a manner that suggests it is now my turn to defend my position.

I say: “I know there’s a history of agent provocateurs. They work behind the scenes to discredit peaceful movements by egging them on toward sensationalistic acts of violence. The media then only focuses on the images of violence and the societal evils being protested fade into the background. So when a person who has already admitted to being a covert agent suggests throwing Molotov cocktails, it of course gives me pause. Am I being manipulated and should I really allow it to happen so easily? The target of any activist violence needs to be so well thought out it hurts. Choosing the wrong target can so easily do more harm than good. If we were talking about blowing up an oil pipeline, I could really see the value in that. But I’m not sure who it benefits to throw bombs at the police. I worry it might actually benefit the police, giving them a pretext to request budget increases when I would prefer to see them fully defunded. That is why I said I’m not so sure.”

I look over at Infiltrator, expecting him to be, I’m not quite sure what: offended? rebuffed? put in his place? given pause? Instead he says: “As I mentioned before, I’m here to gather information, and I want to thank you both because you have now given me a good amount. I can clearly see how and why there is both openness and resistance to utilizing violence over the days to come. At previous moments when I was doing this job, I did so in the more conventional manner, doing everything in my power to conceal my true identity. But that almost never worked, people almost always guessed I was a cop, sometimes within seconds of first meeting me. So this time I thought I would try a different approach. Be completely upfront about it and see what happens. And, I have to say, so far I quite like the results.”



After the breakout sessions were over, Infiltrator pulled me aside and said: “Earlier you were asking about the lost enterprise. I have some information that might interest you. One of my very first assignments was in a room full of computers. Every day we all sat at our terminals and spread false information on the internet. And I was assigned to a unit spreading false information about the lost enterprise. Every day I would go there and make up things about it to post on various difficult to find websites. And I was amazed how many people would respond and how quickly. There really is a very large and active community interested in the topic. I suppose you are one of those people.”

I say: “Do you think any of the things you posted are things I’ve since come to believe?”

Infiltrator says: “It’s definitely possible. Many of the things I posted went on to be reposted and shared many thousands of times.”

I say: “So you might be the source of my beliefs.”

Infiltrator says: “I might be.”



Early the next morning we gather, line up in rows facing a wall of already assembled riot cops. There are a lot of helmets, a lot of shields, a lot of tear gas canisters and a lot of guns. That is the direction I’m facing, and it definitely sets the tone. It is more cops than I have ever seen before in my life. A cliché I’ve heard many times before shoots through my mind: if you want to know who wants a riot look at who came dressed for a riot. I am not dressed for a riot; it’s more like I’m dressed for a poetry reading. I didn’t sleep very well last night.



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Some passages from Touching the Art by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore

Some passages from Touching the Art by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore:


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And how this happened for me too – twenty years ago, when my chronic pain first became debilitating and I couldn’t write like I used to, in frantic bursts trying to get everything out. So I decided to write a few sentences a day, with no intention of plot or structure, and after a few years I was shocked to find I had over four hundred pages. And that text became my second novel.


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How music always carries the memory of when you first heard this music. How this can be a burden. How this can be glorious. How this can be suffocating. How this can make you shake. How this can make you sing. How this can make you dance. And this can be true of visual art too.

Sometimes, when the CD skips, I think maybe I should stop listening to CDs. And sometimes, when the CD skips, I think this is what it feels like to really love something.


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Gladys saw herself as a contemporary artist, so she didn’t want to be defined by the past. She wanted her art to be considered on its own. But then Bobby wrote the catalog copy, and she rejected it. So someone else was hired to write it.

Bobby says Gladys was not a risk-taker, she was fiercely competitive with herself and how she saw herself among Baltimore artists, but she turned her back on the professional art establishment, and after that she didn’t pursue a professional career, and you can’t expect the world to come to you. She enjoyed the process of painting, and put that above anything else.

Like many artists of her generation, Bobby says, Gladys made the mistake of thinking that genius will be discovered.


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When someone asks what is your writing process, I think it must be to try and try and then finally, in the gap between the limits of my body and the possibility of pulling something through, somewhere in that gap—


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Maybe a different way to say history repeats itself would be to say history never resolves itself. History is a lesson, this may be true, but, as with any other lesson, the people who need it the most rarely listen.


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truly amazing!

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Really nice to see this very concise Goodreads review for my book Authenticity is a Feeling: My Life in PME-ART.

a demand

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"Without a demand - power concedes nothing."

[This statement was projected behind Gang of Four when I saw them perform the other night. I have since learned that it is a quote from Frederick Douglass.]


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in the gears

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If you are pushing a theory that puts oil in the gears of the status quo, it is different than if you’re pushing a theory that puts sand in the gears. The gears will still turn, but nonetheless it is different.


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trying to convince myself

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I’m not trying to convince you. I’m trying to convince myself. That there is art worth fighting for. And art worth fighting against.


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Nick Romeo on José María Arizmendiarrieta

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In his collected writings, José María Arizmendiarrieta championed a revolutionary pragmatism. To deserve the name, idealists must take their own goals seriously enough to try to realize them. “The ideal thing is to do the good that can be done, not the good that is dreamt of,” he wrote. The value of lofty ideals lies in their capacity to inspire action: “Great ideals do not have to be precisely attainable to be useful to us.” For those who critique current systems but create nothing better to replace them, his words still offer a pointed challenge: build institutions, develop capacities, and change legislation. “No moans but action,” he urged. The noblest ideals risk becoming empty rhetoric if not married to effective and disciplined execution. “Being badly organized should not be confused with having respect for freedom.”

Despite his eloquent insistence on pragmatic action, Arizmendiarrieta also rejected a utilitarianism that values only results. How something is achieved matters. “It is not enough for the managers and bosses to perform good deeds, it is necessary that the workers participate,” he wrote. If an enlightened executive in a traditional company chose to cap their pay at six times the salary of the lowest-paid employee, this would be good. It would also resemble the decree of an enlightened monarch. Within Mondragon, members of the cooperatives have voted democratically on the ratio between the highest and lowest compensation levels. Particular cooperatives are free to have a ratio smaller than 6:1, as many do; member-owners could also vote to expand the ratio in the future. Mondragon’s institutional design depends on democracy. It can flourish only if most individuals continue to value its traditions of equality and solidarity. Rather than assuming that markets alchemize private greed into public good, Arizmendiarrieta built the cooperatives in a way that emphasized both institutional safeguards and individual moral character: “There can never be great works without people giving generously and without them sacrificing their selfish appetites,” he wrote.

Arizmendiarrieta’s defiance of easy categorization makes him a provocative challenge to many contemporary shibboleths. He created effective institutions without ignoring the importance of individual ethics; he recognized the value of capital and profit but saw both as subordinate to broader social aims; he created a business structure that competed effectively in international markets while rejecting basic assumptions of capitalist firms. Perhaps most astonishing of all, his insights were not merely theoretical achievements; they were realized in a dense web of structures that have become the largest worker-owned cooperative in the world.

– Nick Romeo, The Alternative: How to Build a Just Economy



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One Yes & Many Know

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I’m always trying out different titles for books I’m working on. Currently I’m trying out: One Yes & Many Know.


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Two short quotes from Rich and Poor

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“I start to think fear is the most furious part of courage. Knowing how full and real and justified your fears are but still not letting them stop you.”
- Jacob Wren, Rich and Poor (p. 144)


“I must experience everything that is about to happen to me as fully as possible, I must experience it as some kind of joy. I can’t just let it all speed by without living it fully. I can’t let this life or this struggle happen without me.”
- Jacob Wren, Rich and Poor (p. 176)


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[Someone posted these two quotes on Goodreads and, even though I don't remember writing either of them, they struck me as things I was rather happy to have written.]

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Also, I suppose thanks to Luigi Mangione, more people seem to be reading my 2016 novel Rich and Poor. (It’s about a man who washes dishes for a living who decides to kill a billionaire as a political act.)



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Ambition...

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I try to differentiate between artistic ambition and career ambition. And I try to see artistic ambition as the ambition to make something I find meaningful and career ambition as the ambition to make something other people will like. Since I don't really know what other people like I try to lean away from that impulse, and instead tell myself that if I make something I really like, some other people will like it as well.

Somehow related to: Six sentences concerning art and jealousy


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