.
"About five minutes away I come across a choir singing for charity. I watch them for a long moment, listening intently. I know this melody but can’t quite place it. Is it a song from my childhood or from the current moment? And then I realize something that, in retrospect, seems rather unbelievable. I realize I wrote this melody. But not recently, rather in a previous lifetime, and because the event took place in a previous lifetime I of course can’t be entirely sure. I recognize the melody but don’t recognize the words. It’s often this way with traditional music. The same melodies are used again and again, generation after generation, each new generation using it once again to say what is currently most needed."
I’m currently serializing my novel-in-progress Faithful Unbeliever. The above lines are from the seventh instalment.
Faithful Unbeliever is the final book of an in-progress trilogy in which all three books are loosely based around questions concerning the desire for utopia.
All posts are free so there's no reason not to follow (and receive a new installment in your inbox every two weeks.) You can do so here.
.
January 30, 2026
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 25, 2026
the only reasonable position was treason
.
"I no longer remember exactly what the footnote said. Only that it referenced something the author believed they had seen but could not confirm. A mention of a film or performance or artwork in which treason was held up to be the highest value. That the world we lived in was irredeemably corrupt and toward it the only reasonable position was treason. What struck me most was the troubling vagueness of the footnote. How could there be a citation that didn’t recall exactly what it was referencing?"
I’m currently serializing my novel-in-progress Faithful Unbeliever. The above lines are from the sixth instalment.
Faithful Unbeliever is the final book of an in-progress trilogy in which all three books are loosely based around questions concerning the desire for utopia.
All posts are free so there's no reason not to follow (and receive a new installment in your inbox every two weeks.) You can do so here.
.
"I no longer remember exactly what the footnote said. Only that it referenced something the author believed they had seen but could not confirm. A mention of a film or performance or artwork in which treason was held up to be the highest value. That the world we lived in was irredeemably corrupt and toward it the only reasonable position was treason. What struck me most was the troubling vagueness of the footnote. How could there be a citation that didn’t recall exactly what it was referencing?"
I’m currently serializing my novel-in-progress Faithful Unbeliever. The above lines are from the sixth instalment.
Faithful Unbeliever is the final book of an in-progress trilogy in which all three books are loosely based around questions concerning the desire for utopia.
All posts are free so there's no reason not to follow (and receive a new installment in your inbox every two weeks.) You can do so here.
.
January 24, 2026
Amy Fusselman Quote
.
"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)
.
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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January 2, 2026
Whistle Blower
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"There is a Whistle Blower that wanders with us, sleeps alongside us in the great outdoors. Perhaps we are here to protect them but, either way, I often fear for their life. The corporation they exposed to criticism would certainly like to see them dead. We, on the other hand, want them to continue living."
I’m currently serializing my novel-in-progress Faithful Unbeliever. The above lines are from the fifth instalment.
Faithful Unbeliever is the final book of an in-progress trilogy in which all three books are loosely based around questions concerning the desire for utopia.
All posts are free so there's no reason not to follow (and receive a new installment in your inbox every two weeks.) You can do so here.
.
"There is a Whistle Blower that wanders with us, sleeps alongside us in the great outdoors. Perhaps we are here to protect them but, either way, I often fear for their life. The corporation they exposed to criticism would certainly like to see them dead. We, on the other hand, want them to continue living."
I’m currently serializing my novel-in-progress Faithful Unbeliever. The above lines are from the fifth instalment.
Faithful Unbeliever is the final book of an in-progress trilogy in which all three books are loosely based around questions concerning the desire for utopia.
All posts are free so there's no reason not to follow (and receive a new installment in your inbox every two weeks.) You can do so here.
.
December 31, 2025
Belatedly...
.
I have a book title I’ve been thinking about for many years for a book I will probably never write (an in joke for people who knew about me in the eighties or nineties): Belatedly Announcing that Death Waits has Changed his Name to Jacob Wren
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I have a book title I’ve been thinking about for many years for a book I will probably never write (an in joke for people who knew about me in the eighties or nineties): Belatedly Announcing that Death Waits has Changed his Name to Jacob Wren
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December 29, 2025
Excerpt from Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim (to end the year)
This is a passage from my book Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim that a few different people have posted online over the past year. From this I gather it might be something of a reader favourite. So, to end the year, I thought I’d post it as well. (Also, if you don't already know, this book got some really nice reviews.)
*
I remember how at this moment we both stopped. We had come to a plateau and the view was particularly stunning. From here you could look over the entire forest. Within the forest there had been a great deal of fighting. And you could even spot a few craters where stray bombs had felled the trees. But the forest was still thick, those trees would grow back, and listening to the silence on the tape crackle with background wildlife I remembered us standing side by side, taking in the landscape as fully as possible. It would be nice to be back there now.
—What do you think about on your walks?
—I try not to think too much. Mostly just take in my surroundings. To see every tree and pebble and insect. To feel how it all interrelates. How all these things need each other and none of them actually need us. How all of it would thrive so much more fully if we were gone.
—That sounds almost fatalist. Or nihilist.
—I don’t think so. There is a kind of humility I find so important. Knowing human beings aren’t actually the centre of anything. We’ve done considerable damage thinking we’re the centre of the world.
—Why is that damaging?
—Because when you’re the centre of the world, you can do whatever you want. The world revolves around you. And we’re not the centre of anything. We’re just full of ourselves.
As we stood there quietly inhaling the view, I tried to have some thoughts about the landscape that spread out in front of us. There was a forest and a river. At least, when you looked in this direction there was a forest and a river. I knew if we snaked our way around to the other side of the mountain the view would be rocks and hills and ridges. Dirt and sand. I didn’t know enough about geology to hazard a guess as to why one side was so lush and green and the other was not. I was about to ask a question along these lines when my thoughts were interrupted.
—I don’t know if I want this on the record. But since you’re recording me anyway, I guess I won’t object.
—If you like I can stop recording.
—No, it’s all right. Maybe it’s good that you have a record of what I’m about to say.
There is a long pause. So long that I wonder if the tape recorder had stopped working, but the background sounds of the mountain assure me the tape is still rolling.
—What is it you want to say?
—What I want to say is that I simply don’t like the fact that you’re here. It doesn’t sit well with me.
—I’m sorry to hear that.
I remember the tension in my body as I braced myself for whatever she was about to say. Whatever it was, I was sure there would be a great deal of truth to it, that I would largely agree with her arguments. I was there to learn, and unfortunately that also included learning more of the reasons why I should have never ended up there in the first place.
—You’re going to write about us, but you’re never going to get it right. I can feel that just from the way you are in the world. But that’s not it, that’s not quite what I mean. Whatever you write might not do us much good, but from what I can tell, you’re sincere enough, so it probably also won’t do much harm. It’s really something else, I’m not even sure I can fully articulate it.
—I’m listening. Don’t worry, I can take it.
—I’m definitely not worried about hurting your feelings.
—Why not?
—Any of us here, all of us, we might be killed any day now, any minute. Our lives are what matters. In this context your feelings definitely don’t matter.
—The criticism I’ve already received is that I’m only a tourist here, I have no real commitment to this place. I’m not invested enough.
—That’s certainly true.
—But that’s not what you’re trying to tell me. You want to say something else.
—You want to learn from us but you can’t because it’s always going to be about you. I don’t know why exactly. And I don’t even want to know why. But that’s the way that I see it. That’s what I see.
—You’re probably right. So what I should do is leave?
—Yes, you should leave.
But of course I didn’t leave right away. I think that mountainside conversation was maybe five or six weeks before I went out on my first patrol, which as we now know resulted in my capture and interrogation. And I remember how I spent those five or six weeks thinking she was right, that I should leave now. That now was really the time to go—what was I waiting for? I often say that when I don’t know what to do I become paralyzed, but here was a situation where even when I did know what to do I found myself paralyzed. I knew I couldn’t stay but neither could I get myself to start leaving. It went on like that for week after week after week. The tape continued.
—I understand what you’re saying.
—That’s the thing. You understand. You can leave. But do you also understand that I can’t?
—You can’t leave because this is your home. This is your home and you have to stay here and fight for it?
—You really have a romantic idea of us, don’t you?
—I’m sorry. Tell me. Why can’t you leave?
—I can’t leave because I have no money. No passport. No way to get anywhere. No other country that would take me in.
—But do you want to leave?
—I want the freedom you take for granted. All the freedoms. The freedom to walk up this mountain and know it’s my home, to know it will survive, and also the freedom to tomorrow be on a tropical beach and forget this war for as long as I choose, until I recover, until I’m ready to come back to it. It’s not that I would actually get on a plane and go anywhere. Perhaps quietly walking up this mountain once a week is enough for me. But why can’t I have that freedom? Just to know it’s possible, just to know that I can. And then it sounds like this is about me, or about you, but it has nothing to do with me or you. Some people can go wherever they want, and others can’t, and it’s the worst bullshit I’ve ever heard. Maybe that’s really what I’m getting at. Some people can go wherever they want, meaning you can also pick up and come here, no one will stop you, we even welcome you with open arms. Because we’re not stupid. We also know you have access that we don’t so easily have. More of a voice on the world stage. But what we have to say, what we’re actually living, is so clearly more important than anything you will ever write. And it fucking sucks that you have more of a voice than us. It’s bullshit and it fucking sucks, but that’s the way the world is, for now at least, and therefore the only thing me telling you all this actually does is give me a chance to vent and complain.
I remember the feeling of standing there on the mountainside, looking over the endless expanse of forest, her voice as she told me: “You’re going to write about us but you’re never going to get it right.” And once again it makes me realize how never in my life as a writer have I genuinely tried to get anything “right,” if getting it right means an accurate portrayal of reality, or even if it means providing access to something we might call truth or wisdom. In fact, it now seems to me, I have attempted to do almost the opposite, a search for how to “get it wrong” as evocatively as possible. Or to fully engage in the struggle between getting it right and getting it wrong. Of course, I’m always considering ethics, so I would never want to be ethically wrong, or to harm anyone with my words, but nonetheless there is the desire to be artistically off-kilter in ways that create the possibility of seeing things anew. To fully admit that I don’t know. But now I’m not so sure. Rethinking all such assumptions might be one of the many ways I find myself trying to change.
.
*
I remember how at this moment we both stopped. We had come to a plateau and the view was particularly stunning. From here you could look over the entire forest. Within the forest there had been a great deal of fighting. And you could even spot a few craters where stray bombs had felled the trees. But the forest was still thick, those trees would grow back, and listening to the silence on the tape crackle with background wildlife I remembered us standing side by side, taking in the landscape as fully as possible. It would be nice to be back there now.
—What do you think about on your walks?
—I try not to think too much. Mostly just take in my surroundings. To see every tree and pebble and insect. To feel how it all interrelates. How all these things need each other and none of them actually need us. How all of it would thrive so much more fully if we were gone.
—That sounds almost fatalist. Or nihilist.
—I don’t think so. There is a kind of humility I find so important. Knowing human beings aren’t actually the centre of anything. We’ve done considerable damage thinking we’re the centre of the world.
—Why is that damaging?
—Because when you’re the centre of the world, you can do whatever you want. The world revolves around you. And we’re not the centre of anything. We’re just full of ourselves.
As we stood there quietly inhaling the view, I tried to have some thoughts about the landscape that spread out in front of us. There was a forest and a river. At least, when you looked in this direction there was a forest and a river. I knew if we snaked our way around to the other side of the mountain the view would be rocks and hills and ridges. Dirt and sand. I didn’t know enough about geology to hazard a guess as to why one side was so lush and green and the other was not. I was about to ask a question along these lines when my thoughts were interrupted.
—I don’t know if I want this on the record. But since you’re recording me anyway, I guess I won’t object.
—If you like I can stop recording.
—No, it’s all right. Maybe it’s good that you have a record of what I’m about to say.
There is a long pause. So long that I wonder if the tape recorder had stopped working, but the background sounds of the mountain assure me the tape is still rolling.
—What is it you want to say?
—What I want to say is that I simply don’t like the fact that you’re here. It doesn’t sit well with me.
—I’m sorry to hear that.
I remember the tension in my body as I braced myself for whatever she was about to say. Whatever it was, I was sure there would be a great deal of truth to it, that I would largely agree with her arguments. I was there to learn, and unfortunately that also included learning more of the reasons why I should have never ended up there in the first place.
—You’re going to write about us, but you’re never going to get it right. I can feel that just from the way you are in the world. But that’s not it, that’s not quite what I mean. Whatever you write might not do us much good, but from what I can tell, you’re sincere enough, so it probably also won’t do much harm. It’s really something else, I’m not even sure I can fully articulate it.
—I’m listening. Don’t worry, I can take it.
—I’m definitely not worried about hurting your feelings.
—Why not?
—Any of us here, all of us, we might be killed any day now, any minute. Our lives are what matters. In this context your feelings definitely don’t matter.
—The criticism I’ve already received is that I’m only a tourist here, I have no real commitment to this place. I’m not invested enough.
—That’s certainly true.
—But that’s not what you’re trying to tell me. You want to say something else.
—You want to learn from us but you can’t because it’s always going to be about you. I don’t know why exactly. And I don’t even want to know why. But that’s the way that I see it. That’s what I see.
—You’re probably right. So what I should do is leave?
—Yes, you should leave.
But of course I didn’t leave right away. I think that mountainside conversation was maybe five or six weeks before I went out on my first patrol, which as we now know resulted in my capture and interrogation. And I remember how I spent those five or six weeks thinking she was right, that I should leave now. That now was really the time to go—what was I waiting for? I often say that when I don’t know what to do I become paralyzed, but here was a situation where even when I did know what to do I found myself paralyzed. I knew I couldn’t stay but neither could I get myself to start leaving. It went on like that for week after week after week. The tape continued.
—I understand what you’re saying.
—That’s the thing. You understand. You can leave. But do you also understand that I can’t?
—You can’t leave because this is your home. This is your home and you have to stay here and fight for it?
—You really have a romantic idea of us, don’t you?
—I’m sorry. Tell me. Why can’t you leave?
—I can’t leave because I have no money. No passport. No way to get anywhere. No other country that would take me in.
—But do you want to leave?
—I want the freedom you take for granted. All the freedoms. The freedom to walk up this mountain and know it’s my home, to know it will survive, and also the freedom to tomorrow be on a tropical beach and forget this war for as long as I choose, until I recover, until I’m ready to come back to it. It’s not that I would actually get on a plane and go anywhere. Perhaps quietly walking up this mountain once a week is enough for me. But why can’t I have that freedom? Just to know it’s possible, just to know that I can. And then it sounds like this is about me, or about you, but it has nothing to do with me or you. Some people can go wherever they want, and others can’t, and it’s the worst bullshit I’ve ever heard. Maybe that’s really what I’m getting at. Some people can go wherever they want, meaning you can also pick up and come here, no one will stop you, we even welcome you with open arms. Because we’re not stupid. We also know you have access that we don’t so easily have. More of a voice on the world stage. But what we have to say, what we’re actually living, is so clearly more important than anything you will ever write. And it fucking sucks that you have more of a voice than us. It’s bullshit and it fucking sucks, but that’s the way the world is, for now at least, and therefore the only thing me telling you all this actually does is give me a chance to vent and complain.
I remember the feeling of standing there on the mountainside, looking over the endless expanse of forest, her voice as she told me: “You’re going to write about us but you’re never going to get it right.” And once again it makes me realize how never in my life as a writer have I genuinely tried to get anything “right,” if getting it right means an accurate portrayal of reality, or even if it means providing access to something we might call truth or wisdom. In fact, it now seems to me, I have attempted to do almost the opposite, a search for how to “get it wrong” as evocatively as possible. Or to fully engage in the struggle between getting it right and getting it wrong. Of course, I’m always considering ethics, so I would never want to be ethically wrong, or to harm anyone with my words, but nonetheless there is the desire to be artistically off-kilter in ways that create the possibility of seeing things anew. To fully admit that I don’t know. But now I’m not so sure. Rethinking all such assumptions might be one of the many ways I find myself trying to change.
.
December 28, 2025
Meet The Bug
.
I just discovered the music of Meet The Bug and now want everyone else to discover it too: meetthebug.bandcamp.com
.
I just discovered the music of Meet The Bug and now want everyone else to discover it too: meetthebug.bandcamp.com
.
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