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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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Showing posts with label A poem by Jacob Wren. Show all posts
Showing posts with label A poem by Jacob Wren. Show all posts
March 13, 2026
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
.
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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August 17, 2025
the reason I find easiest to understand
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This is a chapbook written by me and published by above/ground press:
https://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com/2024/03/new-from-aboveground-press-press-from.html
It came out last year. This is how it starts:
“Writing comes easily to me, while I find most other things in life exceedingly difficult. This is often a problem with writers. The truth of what they write is deeply shaded by a writerly distance from life which is also often connected to various forms of loneliness. Writers are often not the best people when it comes to understanding either community or solidarity. Maybe I should only speak for myself. Certain kinds of religious conversions bring one directly into community with others who are similarly converted. As you might have already guessed, I lean rather heavily into not wanting to be part of any club that might have me as a member. Religion has always been one of the places people look to for community. As has often been noted, in our current world, community can be rather hard to come by and even harder to maintain. One of the many reasons religion hasn’t disappeared, as was not so long ago predicted, is it allows its adherents to mainline a sense of community. This is the reason I find easiest to understand.
It is difficult to imagine how anything secular could generate the same intensities of community that religion does. Such intensities are also forms of power which are easily abused. Yet when certain kinds of atheists fail to understand how powerful a genuine sense of [spiritual] community can be, it is as if they are willing themselves to understand nothing. Nonetheless, I somehow know that religion will never be a solution for me. How exactly do I know this? I don’t think I’m writing a book about religion, but if I am it is about the furthest thing I can imagine from anything I previously thought I might someday do. And yet in various moments in my life I have felt that in order for the left to win it needs to find ways to connect to something one might call spirituality. A sense of the sacred. As an unbeliever I am not really the person best able to figure out how we might do this. Yet maybe it is the person who truly doesn’t know who is able to ask the most genuine and genuinely difficult questions. I am writing this book because I truly don’t know. (Here again we come back to the question of doubt.)”
This is a chapbook written by me and published by above/ground press:
https://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com/2024/03/new-from-aboveground-press-press-from.html
It came out last year. This is how it starts:
“Writing comes easily to me, while I find most other things in life exceedingly difficult. This is often a problem with writers. The truth of what they write is deeply shaded by a writerly distance from life which is also often connected to various forms of loneliness. Writers are often not the best people when it comes to understanding either community or solidarity. Maybe I should only speak for myself. Certain kinds of religious conversions bring one directly into community with others who are similarly converted. As you might have already guessed, I lean rather heavily into not wanting to be part of any club that might have me as a member. Religion has always been one of the places people look to for community. As has often been noted, in our current world, community can be rather hard to come by and even harder to maintain. One of the many reasons religion hasn’t disappeared, as was not so long ago predicted, is it allows its adherents to mainline a sense of community. This is the reason I find easiest to understand.
It is difficult to imagine how anything secular could generate the same intensities of community that religion does. Such intensities are also forms of power which are easily abused. Yet when certain kinds of atheists fail to understand how powerful a genuine sense of [spiritual] community can be, it is as if they are willing themselves to understand nothing. Nonetheless, I somehow know that religion will never be a solution for me. How exactly do I know this? I don’t think I’m writing a book about religion, but if I am it is about the furthest thing I can imagine from anything I previously thought I might someday do. And yet in various moments in my life I have felt that in order for the left to win it needs to find ways to connect to something one might call spirituality. A sense of the sacred. As an unbeliever I am not really the person best able to figure out how we might do this. Yet maybe it is the person who truly doesn’t know who is able to ask the most genuine and genuinely difficult questions. I am writing this book because I truly don’t know. (Here again we come back to the question of doubt.)”
August 10, 2025
perhaps a relief
.
For the past few years I've been trying to figure out if there are ways for me to increase the readership of my books and I think I've finally come to the conclusion that, at least for the time being, there aren't any. This perhaps comes as a relief.
,
For the past few years I've been trying to figure out if there are ways for me to increase the readership of my books and I think I've finally come to the conclusion that, at least for the time being, there aren't any. This perhaps comes as a relief.
,
July 4, 2025
fourteen years ago
.
I've been thinking a lot about this bad poem I wrote fourteen years ago: Obsessing over the ramifications of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012. (A moment in history.) The first line was: “In the bright light of day, the United States becomes a lawful fascist state.” You can find it here.
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I've been thinking a lot about this bad poem I wrote fourteen years ago: Obsessing over the ramifications of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012. (A moment in history.) The first line was: “In the bright light of day, the United States becomes a lawful fascist state.” You can find it here.
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June 26, 2025
With an archive in the attic in dHOUSE Magazine
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I have a text in dHOUSE Magazine called With an archive in the attic. The table of contents moves around but, if you search, you can find it here.
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I have a text in dHOUSE Magazine called With an archive in the attic. The table of contents moves around but, if you search, you can find it here.
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June 2, 2025
I Make and Watch Performances
[This text was written for the Montreal edition of Oral Method in response to the prompt EXCUSEZ-MOI.]
1.
I make performances. Therefore I feel an obligation to watch performances. Lately this has been creating difficulties. I feel an obligation to watch performances made by other people, perhaps only so that they might in turn feel obligated to watch performances made by me. This is not a good reason. The difficulties are not recent but have recently intensified. The performances I watch mostly do not feature or mention current events. Many of these performances were created long before current events occurred. But current events are weighing heavily upon my interior life. I think I go see art because it is a place we can speak about the world. I think speaking about the world means speaking out against injustice. I think live performance means speaking and acting in the here and now. By this point you might have already intuited what my difficulties are.
2.
I have a fantasy. It is a fantasy I often have while I am watching a performance. The people on stage are doing whatever they are doing. I am in the audience. In the middle of the audience I stand up and begin to speak loudly. I accuse those on stage of failing to mention current injustices in the world. I do so in a charming and entertaining manner so as to win over the rest of the audience. I make my case: that by failing to mention any injustices they are like ostriches with their heads in the sand. (Ostriches don’t actually stick their heads in the sand. This is a myth.) That every moment art fails to mention painful realities is a moment when art is not doing its job, when injustices continue to proceed unchallenged. When injustices continue to devour every living moment of the world. I know I have to make my case quickly. That soon some usher, or audience member wanting to make themselves useful, will forcibly remove me. I don’t mind being removed. I just want to make my case in a manner that will not easily be forgotten.
3.
I do not necessarily require performances to speak out directly against current events. I just want to see some indication that they know these events are happening. That we are all living in the same indefensible world. I want them to know what I know and somehow let me know that they know it. I find it painful, sometimes almost unbearably so, that we are not acknowledging things that are happening every day and all around us. I also find my position unfair. Unfair to the artists on stage who are hopefully embodying and expressing something that is meaningful to them. Unfair to art, which has ways of speaking about the world that can bypass the didactic and reach toward other truths. Unfair to myself, since I am forfeiting my chance to momentarily stop thinking about the injustices of the world and enjoy watching a performance. But I do not enjoy watching these performances, and for that I probably should, but will not, apologize.
4.
Then there are performances that do directly denounce specific injustices and I don’t much care for those ones either. You can’t win with me. Because it is not enough to denounce injustice. It is not enough to say those people over there are bad and over here we’re good and that’s all you need to know about the world. The performance must also implicate the audience and do so in ways that lead to action rather than guilt. We must begin to see what is to be done and with what small steps we can begin to do it. I have not yet seen any performances that meet this perhaps unrealistic criteria. Did I mention that many of the performances I see take the form of contemporary dance. I am not sure there is any way, using the forms of contemporary dance, that one can implicate the audience in the injustices of the world and do so in ways that lead to action rather than guilt. But dance is not the problem. Rather it is more like I am going to the hardware store and trying to buy bread. They do not sell bread at the hardware store. Instead of going to watch performances, there might be other kinds of events I could attend. But I want something specific from art, and no matter how many times it disappoints me, I will never stop wanting it.
5.
I make performances. And the performances I make also do not sufficiently fulfil the criteria I have outlined above. Each time I strive toward it, and each time I fail. Since audiences do not have the same strict desires as I have, they do not seem to notice these particular failures. They notice other failures, such as the failure to entertain, or the failure to present aesthetic splendor. But mostly they are not thinking so much about failure. They are people who know how to enjoy watching a performance which is the reason they attend. I could learn from them but I will not. I will wait for one of them to stand up in the middle of the audience and quickly and loudly denounce me. I will continue to wait.
.
1.
I make performances. Therefore I feel an obligation to watch performances. Lately this has been creating difficulties. I feel an obligation to watch performances made by other people, perhaps only so that they might in turn feel obligated to watch performances made by me. This is not a good reason. The difficulties are not recent but have recently intensified. The performances I watch mostly do not feature or mention current events. Many of these performances were created long before current events occurred. But current events are weighing heavily upon my interior life. I think I go see art because it is a place we can speak about the world. I think speaking about the world means speaking out against injustice. I think live performance means speaking and acting in the here and now. By this point you might have already intuited what my difficulties are.
2.
I have a fantasy. It is a fantasy I often have while I am watching a performance. The people on stage are doing whatever they are doing. I am in the audience. In the middle of the audience I stand up and begin to speak loudly. I accuse those on stage of failing to mention current injustices in the world. I do so in a charming and entertaining manner so as to win over the rest of the audience. I make my case: that by failing to mention any injustices they are like ostriches with their heads in the sand. (Ostriches don’t actually stick their heads in the sand. This is a myth.) That every moment art fails to mention painful realities is a moment when art is not doing its job, when injustices continue to proceed unchallenged. When injustices continue to devour every living moment of the world. I know I have to make my case quickly. That soon some usher, or audience member wanting to make themselves useful, will forcibly remove me. I don’t mind being removed. I just want to make my case in a manner that will not easily be forgotten.
3.
I do not necessarily require performances to speak out directly against current events. I just want to see some indication that they know these events are happening. That we are all living in the same indefensible world. I want them to know what I know and somehow let me know that they know it. I find it painful, sometimes almost unbearably so, that we are not acknowledging things that are happening every day and all around us. I also find my position unfair. Unfair to the artists on stage who are hopefully embodying and expressing something that is meaningful to them. Unfair to art, which has ways of speaking about the world that can bypass the didactic and reach toward other truths. Unfair to myself, since I am forfeiting my chance to momentarily stop thinking about the injustices of the world and enjoy watching a performance. But I do not enjoy watching these performances, and for that I probably should, but will not, apologize.
4.
Then there are performances that do directly denounce specific injustices and I don’t much care for those ones either. You can’t win with me. Because it is not enough to denounce injustice. It is not enough to say those people over there are bad and over here we’re good and that’s all you need to know about the world. The performance must also implicate the audience and do so in ways that lead to action rather than guilt. We must begin to see what is to be done and with what small steps we can begin to do it. I have not yet seen any performances that meet this perhaps unrealistic criteria. Did I mention that many of the performances I see take the form of contemporary dance. I am not sure there is any way, using the forms of contemporary dance, that one can implicate the audience in the injustices of the world and do so in ways that lead to action rather than guilt. But dance is not the problem. Rather it is more like I am going to the hardware store and trying to buy bread. They do not sell bread at the hardware store. Instead of going to watch performances, there might be other kinds of events I could attend. But I want something specific from art, and no matter how many times it disappoints me, I will never stop wanting it.
5.
I make performances. And the performances I make also do not sufficiently fulfil the criteria I have outlined above. Each time I strive toward it, and each time I fail. Since audiences do not have the same strict desires as I have, they do not seem to notice these particular failures. They notice other failures, such as the failure to entertain, or the failure to present aesthetic splendor. But mostly they are not thinking so much about failure. They are people who know how to enjoy watching a performance which is the reason they attend. I could learn from them but I will not. I will wait for one of them to stand up in the middle of the audience and quickly and loudly denounce me. I will continue to wait.
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April 21, 2025
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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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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April 19, 2025
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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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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March 26, 2025
Voting
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Now we have fascism. But there were tyrants long before the invention of fascism. One of the things that makes fascism different is this situation in which large numbers of people vote the tyrants into power. It is difficult to know to what extent these voters get what they want, since it all takes place awash in endless propaganda. Nonetheless, the dispiriting feeling that not only are so many evil things being done, but that so many people voted for them, is perhaps at the heart of why it is so difficult to know, with any certainty, what are the best strategies and tactics to bring about positive change. How to harness mass desires in ways that bring about greater fairness, kindness and care?
.
Now we have fascism. But there were tyrants long before the invention of fascism. One of the things that makes fascism different is this situation in which large numbers of people vote the tyrants into power. It is difficult to know to what extent these voters get what they want, since it all takes place awash in endless propaganda. Nonetheless, the dispiriting feeling that not only are so many evil things being done, but that so many people voted for them, is perhaps at the heart of why it is so difficult to know, with any certainty, what are the best strategies and tactics to bring about positive change. How to harness mass desires in ways that bring about greater fairness, kindness and care?
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September 21, 2023
I try to imagine what my life might have been like if I had never become an artist...
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I try to imagine what my life might have been like if I had never become an artist. To imagine my life being opposite. And the first thing that comes to mind is myself as an eccentric. That without the release valve of making art, my artistic impulses instead become behaviors. That I would have become a somewhat stranger person than I currently am.
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I try to imagine what my life might have been like if I had never become an artist. To imagine my life being opposite. And the first thing that comes to mind is myself as an eccentric. That without the release valve of making art, my artistic impulses instead become behaviors. That I would have become a somewhat stranger person than I currently am.
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April 17, 2023
Six sentences concerning art and jealousy
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Jealousy of other artists is perhaps the most natural part of being an artist.
Artists should have honest discussions about ambition (and about money.)
Being an artist is often about the feeling that other artists are getting something that you’re not.
The difference between how I feel jealous of an artist whose work is better than mine and how I feel jealous of an artist whose work is more successful than mine.
The purpose of an artistic star system is to undermine solidarity.
There are no individual solutions to collective problems.
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Jealousy of other artists is perhaps the most natural part of being an artist.
Artists should have honest discussions about ambition (and about money.)
Being an artist is often about the feeling that other artists are getting something that you’re not.
The difference between how I feel jealous of an artist whose work is better than mine and how I feel jealous of an artist whose work is more successful than mine.
The purpose of an artistic star system is to undermine solidarity.
There are no individual solutions to collective problems.
.
March 17, 2023
How many times have I gone online and posted a paragraph entitled “possible opening for a new novel?”
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How many times have I gone online and posted a paragraph entitled “possible opening for a new novel?” That feeling of starting something new, starting over. The feeling or idea that it’s possible to start from scratch, a feeling most easily obtained in the land of fiction. The fiction that it’s possible to start again. Everything comes from somewhere, nothing is pure invention. The beginning of a new work is the beginning of a new day. And yesterday was also once a new day. Wondering if I should leave but no idea where to go.
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How many times have I gone online and posted a paragraph entitled “possible opening for a new novel?” That feeling of starting something new, starting over. The feeling or idea that it’s possible to start from scratch, a feeling most easily obtained in the land of fiction. The fiction that it’s possible to start again. Everything comes from somewhere, nothing is pure invention. The beginning of a new work is the beginning of a new day. And yesterday was also once a new day. Wondering if I should leave but no idea where to go.
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March 15, 2023
Can an art of collective struggle really be made by an individual artist?
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Can an art of collective struggle really be made by an individual artist? My secret, if I have one, is that I honestly hate being alive. What is your secret? What is the secret of some larger collectivity? A secret shared by everyone, a secret that everyone can work toward together? But of course not exactly everyone, just those within a certain specific circle of solidarity. What secret might be large enough to hold this solidarity together? My secret, if I have one, is that I can endlessly write about how miserable I am, but most often choose not to. Some other people are as miserable but, for the most part, most other people don’t seem to be. Illusions.
.
Can an art of collective struggle really be made by an individual artist? My secret, if I have one, is that I honestly hate being alive. What is your secret? What is the secret of some larger collectivity? A secret shared by everyone, a secret that everyone can work toward together? But of course not exactly everyone, just those within a certain specific circle of solidarity. What secret might be large enough to hold this solidarity together? My secret, if I have one, is that I can endlessly write about how miserable I am, but most often choose not to. Some other people are as miserable but, for the most part, most other people don’t seem to be. Illusions.
.
February 20, 2023
There is a genre of scene I believe I had read several times in a certain kind of nonfiction book...
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There is a genre of scene I believe I have read several times in a certain kind of nonfiction book. In this type of scene, the author of the book shows an earlier draft of said book – the very book you are holding in your hands – to a character in the book, or more precisely to a person in the author’s life upon whom one of the characters is based. And this person reacts extremely badly to the manner in which they’ve been portrayed. Which creates a sort of ethical dilemma on the part of the author. Do they remove this character from their book? Or rewrite the character in order to make it more to the liking of the person on whom it is based? Or fictionalize the character even further so as to make it unrecognizable? I have seen different author’s deal with this dilemma in different ways, and it always strikes me as somehow getting to the very heart of the ethical problem of the relationship between fiction and reality.
.
There is a genre of scene I believe I have read several times in a certain kind of nonfiction book. In this type of scene, the author of the book shows an earlier draft of said book – the very book you are holding in your hands – to a character in the book, or more precisely to a person in the author’s life upon whom one of the characters is based. And this person reacts extremely badly to the manner in which they’ve been portrayed. Which creates a sort of ethical dilemma on the part of the author. Do they remove this character from their book? Or rewrite the character in order to make it more to the liking of the person on whom it is based? Or fictionalize the character even further so as to make it unrecognizable? I have seen different author’s deal with this dilemma in different ways, and it always strikes me as somehow getting to the very heart of the ethical problem of the relationship between fiction and reality.
.
February 17, 2023
And things started to happen, but none of them were the things we said were going to happen...
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And things started to happen, but none of them were the things we said were going to happen, and none of them were the things anyone else expected either. But at least something had begun. Or so we thought. Were we willing to classify whatever it was that seemed to be happening as “something”? We had no choice: we couldn’t go back and the only way forward was to go with what was happening. What was starting. What we thought. It had something to do with the way one thing followed the next. If we didn’t intervene. All we had done is open the door. It was exhausting.
.
And things started to happen, but none of them were the things we said were going to happen, and none of them were the things anyone else expected either. But at least something had begun. Or so we thought. Were we willing to classify whatever it was that seemed to be happening as “something”? We had no choice: we couldn’t go back and the only way forward was to go with what was happening. What was starting. What we thought. It had something to do with the way one thing followed the next. If we didn’t intervene. All we had done is open the door. It was exhausting.
.
February 10, 2023
My life is entangled in theatre but I now know almost no one else who works in theatre...
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My life is entangled in theatre but I now know almost no one else who works in theatre. It is like a place I have almost completely left as that place continues to almost completely rule my inner life. Be careful what you decide to be against. I find myself feeling like I’m stuck in a tunnel of things I don’t want to do. But what exactly is the tunnel? An inability to usefully think what other sorts of things I could be doing. Doing things in reaction to what I’ve previously done, rather than thinking toward what might interest me in the future. This has something to do with the idea of a diary.
.
My life is entangled in theatre but I now know almost no one else who works in theatre. It is like a place I have almost completely left as that place continues to almost completely rule my inner life. Be careful what you decide to be against. I find myself feeling like I’m stuck in a tunnel of things I don’t want to do. But what exactly is the tunnel? An inability to usefully think what other sorts of things I could be doing. Doing things in reaction to what I’ve previously done, rather than thinking toward what might interest me in the future. This has something to do with the idea of a diary.
.
February 8, 2023
They warned me the soup was extremely hot and I might burn myself...
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They warned me the soup was extremely hot and I might burn myself. I didn’t heed the warning and did indeed burn myself. I couldn’t say that I hadn’t been warned. I retaliated by writing the experience down, an account you are currently reading. A rather boring and predictable account. It has happened before and will happen again.
.
They warned me the soup was extremely hot and I might burn myself. I didn’t heed the warning and did indeed burn myself. I couldn’t say that I hadn’t been warned. I retaliated by writing the experience down, an account you are currently reading. A rather boring and predictable account. It has happened before and will happen again.
.
January 31, 2023
To not start from a theme but from an activity...
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To not start from a theme but from an activity. A theme can lead anywhere. An activity can also lead anywhere but not quite in the same way. How open is a theme? How open an activity? Can it all be thought of as some kind of music? The question of how to start and the question of where you’re going seem to be the same question. Where to start? Where are we going? Most people aren’t dancing but there is one person in the audience who is absolutely dancing their face off. Is that person a stand in for the thing we’re searching for? Never a good idea to use anyone as a stand in for something else. The very best thing about that dancing person is they are not doing it for anyone but themselves. To start not from a theme but an activity. I know what I’m addicted to but what is it exactly I’m addicted to? What is the exact thing, the exact moment.
.
To not start from a theme but from an activity. A theme can lead anywhere. An activity can also lead anywhere but not quite in the same way. How open is a theme? How open an activity? Can it all be thought of as some kind of music? The question of how to start and the question of where you’re going seem to be the same question. Where to start? Where are we going? Most people aren’t dancing but there is one person in the audience who is absolutely dancing their face off. Is that person a stand in for the thing we’re searching for? Never a good idea to use anyone as a stand in for something else. The very best thing about that dancing person is they are not doing it for anyone but themselves. To start not from a theme but an activity. I know what I’m addicted to but what is it exactly I’m addicted to? What is the exact thing, the exact moment.
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