Three lines from Failure Finds its Happy End

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“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.



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Olivia Laing Quote

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“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



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"...even more immediacy, connection, and public life in art and in performance."

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"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


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one big project per year

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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.)


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Keep doing the same thing versus Try doing something new.

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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.


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Kawai Shen Quote

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“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


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Things haven't gone quite how I planned...

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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.)


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Some favourite records of 2026 (so far)

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[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



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Some favourite books of 2026 (so far)

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[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



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Ten years of Rich and Poor

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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.)

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“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



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