A Radical Cut In The Texture Of Reality

March 14, 2024

New Jacob Wren chapbook: From Desire Without Expectation

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From Desire Without Expectation
Jacob Wren
$5

"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."

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
March 2024
as the twenty-fourth title in above/ground’s prose/naut imprint
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

This is Jacob Wren’s second chapbook with above/ground press, following Tributes To The Subtlety Of Matter (1996).

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; in US, add $2; outside North America, add $5) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

https://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com/2024/03/new-from-aboveground-press-press-from.html




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March 10, 2024

Like Eagles (Mānand-e ‘Oqāb) by Shaista Latif, Osama Shalabi, Isak Goldschneider and the Land of Kush ensemble.

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If you’re in Montreal this Wednesday (March 13, 2024 at 19:30) you should definitely go see Like Eagles at La Chapelle Scènes Contemporaines:

https://levivier.ca/en/concert/2023-24-season/eagles

Facebook event.

A re-creation and multimedia conception of the film Like Eagles (Mānand-e ‘Oqāb).

In this performance, playwright/librettist Shaista Latif, composer Osama Shalabi, arranger Isak Goldschneider and the Land of Kush ensemble imagine a multimedia re-creation and conceptualization of Like Eagles (Mānand-e ‘Oqāb): the first feature film produced in Afghanistan. An exquisitely surreal vision of Kabul in the 1960s, it follows a young girl as she wanders through the city on a journey from her hometown to attend a day of national celebration.

In light of subsequent tragic events in Afghan history, the project confronts Western stereotypes of Afghanistan in a stage work combining music, text and film.

Performers:
Shaista Latif (actor/director/writer)
Osama Shalabi (oud and electric guitar)
Isak Goldschneider (clarinet)
Adrianne Munden-Dixon (violin)
Anna Atkinson & Gen Heistek (violas)
Mark Molnar (cello)

Presented as part of La Semaine du Neuf Festival in collaboration with Groupe Le Vivier.



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March 5, 2024

some kind of mini-utopia

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"I now find myself thinking of such conversion experiences as some kind of mini-utopia. Utopia reflecting a desire for the world to change and these personal experiences being evidence that an individual’s sense of purpose and action can shift – more, and more quickly, than one might at first suspect."


(From my current work-in-progress Desire Without Expectation. More and more it seems to be becoming a novel about political conversion experiences.)



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March 3, 2024

Possible opening (updated)...

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Possible opening for a new book:

“Things are going badly. But not everything can go badly, or at least not all the time. On the other hand, no matter how bad things are, they can always get worse. For my entire life, for as long as I can remember, I have felt the world as a catastrophe. Perhaps all that's changed is that, in our current moment, considerably more people agree. The things that were once (somewhat) hidden, we’re no longer bothering to hide. When I was young, all of official culture seemed to enthusiastically endorse capitalism. Now the enthusiasm behind such endorsements feels weak at best. Increasing numbers of people can feel we’re reaching the end of something and, if anything comes next, it doesn’t look good. Or, at least, that’s how matters currently feel to me. But I’ve been wrong before.”



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February 26, 2024

Final Words

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“My name is Aaron Bushnell, I am an active duty member of the US airforce, and I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I’m about to engage in an extreme act of protest, but compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers it’s not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal. Free Palestine!”



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February 22, 2024

The World Ends in Our Desires

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Possible title for my next book: The World Ends in Our Desires



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February 21, 2024

Sometimes it seems to me that the process of rehearsal is simply a process of emotional armouring...


 


A quote from my book Authenticity is a Feeling: My Life in PME-ART. As posted by Lucy Bellwood on Tumblr:

https://lucybellwood.tumblr.com/post/728466340736827392

“Sometimes it seems to me that the process of rehearsal is simply a process of emotional armouring: we will make everything absolutely perfect so no one will ever see who or what we really are.”



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February 2, 2024

Ten years ago I thought this was never meant to happen....

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I've been thinking a lot about how Polyamorous Love Song came out ten years ago. How it was a moment that, in some ways, really changed my life. The first time it had occurred to me my books could have any sort of readership. I had always assumed I would be a writer without a readership. I had always been told my books were too experimental for very many people to ever read them. And here was one of my most experimental books, being read by far more people than had read anything I'd previously written. I partly assumed the success of Polyamorous Love Song had something to do with the last minute title change, that the title itself drew people to the book. But, much later, a friend said the quality she most liked about it was its “surrealist polyvocality,” and this quality was one of the main reasons for its success. (When I was young I think I wanted to be some sort of “cult writer.” But now that I am in fact some sort of cult writer, I have the strange feeling that people don't even really know what that is anymore.) Ten years is both a long time and not such a long time. Sometimes I have the feeling I will never write anything people like as much again. But, I suppose, every time one puts out a new book there's a chance something unexpected might, once again, occur.

You can read an excerpt here.
You can find out about the original title here.

Plus some reviews of Polyamorous Love Song:
Shannon Tien at Cult Mtl
Liz Worth at Quill and Quire
Jade Colbert at The Globe and Mail
Featured book in Maisonneuve
Lesley Trites for the Montreal Review of Books Blog
Letters we wrote to friends after reading Polyamorous Love Song

February 1, 2024

Percival Everett Quote

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In my writing my instinct was to defy form, but I very much sought in defying it to affirm it, an irony that was difficult enough to articulate, much less defend.” 
– Percival Everett, Erasure



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[Fascinated by the idea that they’ve made an Oscar-nominated film from Percival Everett's Erasure. As is often (but not always) the case, the book is considerably better. But I was intrigued by just how Hollywood they managed to make it while at the same time maintaining something of its original essence. Between American Fiction and Poor Things, I find myself wondering if turning experimental novels into Hollywood films has become something of a momentary trend.]


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