So impossible it seems inevitable

During the drawn-in fuggy Saturnalian-tinged darkness of December – with its holly-spiked promise of renewal just beyond the calendar’s horizon – I like to think about what I want to make in the year to come.

This is a short Substack to float one of my wants out into the aether.

Because there’s one thing I’ve learned from my creative practice – telling people about your ideas is a great and powerful thing. People are brilliant and will always help if they can.

If you read my Substack from last week, you saw in 2025 I am planning a year-long medieval boustrophedonrave land-art project in Devon called Our Longland Is Dreaming. It’s happening in Devon because I mentioned in a *previous* Substack that I needed a field to make something in.

Then, in the comments to that post, I was offered a field in Devon. Well, three actually.

That’s going to be exciting … but here’s another thing I want to make that I hope some of you might fancy being part of …

I want to stage a one-night only, free Happening in New York in autumn.

Right now, as the title of this email suggests, this feels so impossible it seems inevitable. I don’t really know anyone in New York. I don’t really know New York. Hiring a venue and actors and flights and accommodation will cost me a lot of money I definitely don’t have right now.

Stay foolish etc.

I’ll tell you the idea I have in my head.

The Happening will be a live performance of my three-act sex-magick absurdist poem/play Changeling which is about the horror and grace of the abyss. I did some readings from this at the Abyssmass Variety Show on December 6th and it went down well.

Changeling features two magicians, Aleister Crowley and Victor Neuburg, in the Algerian desert in 1909. In the poem/play Neuburg is changed into a camel, a zebra and a donkey.

In New York in autumn 2025, I will stage a performance, on a single night, of the poem/play with five actors portraying the camel, zebra, donkey, abyss and Victor Neuburg. It’ll be in a small-ish gallery and I’m thinking there will be an invited audience of between two and six people at each performance – maybe three performances over the evening.

Then that’s it. I might make a limited edition version of the text for the limited edition audience to own. Everything will be free.

It’ll be a combination of live performance and projected text and image. I have quite a clear idea of how this type and acting combination will work to create an intense hallucinogenic effect.

So … if you know how I might find a good space in New York to hire, please tell me.

If you know of performers who might want to be part of this, please tell me.

If you know of any digital projection designers who might fancy being involved, please tell me.

If you know of anyone who might want to be in the audience, please tell me.

If you know of any artistic benefactor who is itching to support absurdist sex-magick poem/plays with obscene amounts of money, please tell me.

I don’t hold out much hope for the last one.

Here are a few lines from Changeling. The moment when the Abyss asks the Zebra what form the magick took to transform him. Magick can take so many forms.

Ask me anything in the comments.

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