Liminal Journal, Writing Workshop, Substack Notes
Some quick updates
My next Writing Workshop starts tomorrow. We will meet for three hours each week to review people’s work in a variety of genres: Nonfiction, fiction, screenwriting, blog posts. Please join us!
Liminal Journal: Call for Submissions
Do you want to tell the world what you think about the recent breakthroughs in AI technologies or any other aspect of this bizarre, hurtling-toward apocalyptic, transhumanist, Singularity moment we are in?
Why don’t you share your thoughts on Liminal, our journal?
The theme of our next issue is Automaton, which you can interpret as you wish. You are welcome to explore the theme via poetic parable, feisty feuilleton, jaunty jeremiad, or philosophical farrago ―the opportunities are endless, and the time is now.
Submissions open through May 1st: Guidelines here.
Renaissance Issue
If you haven’t yet, please check out our current issue. The theme is Renaissance. This is a project that simply exists because it is good to have more venues for excellent, surprising creative work. I get inspired by many of the pieces. Some of them were initially presented as drafts in the writing course.
Along with the stories and essays, please check out our interviews with consciousness guru Antero Alli and conceptual artist Natalya Nova.
Whose Renaissance?
Juliet Rania
“If there is to be a new renaissance, let it be a step away from the quest for universal truth (Uni means centered around the one) into something more subjective, intimate, structurally complicated and circular. A spiral renaissance, a bloom, an interwoven narrative that contains the past, present and future. Not an end of history, but rather an end of androcentrism.”
A Drive
Jason Stern
“As I drove I remembered standing over the helpless, mewling infant as I changed his diaper. At the same time the presence of his being was palpable. Like a luminous, membraned bubble, his atmosphere encompassed the whole house and beyond. I felt him as an infinite, powerful identity. The juxtaposition of the impotent and vulnerable body demanding care for its every need and the vast, independent presence of his being was almost too much to bear. I felt myself at the fulcrum of those two poles, and groaned with the exquisite poignance of the contradiction.”
Into the Crystal
Seth Lorinczi
“After the image of the chrysanthemum came and went, I went to a place that defies description. All I can summon now is a vision of enveloping blackness, the sense I’d somehow passed through the speaker of my childhood radio. But the place I floated was far more distant and infinitely stranger. A crushing wave of fear pressed in on me—was this dying? Then it passed, and it was just me and the featureless void.”
FACEmask
Paradox Pollack
“When I was 15, after I survived near death in a fire, I had my first LSD trip, where I digested 13 tabs of medium-grade LSD. The LSD was made in a dirty West Philly home laboratory by a sticky-fingered chemist, handed off to a green-haired stripper named Karen who my brother met while they were both canvassing for GreenPeace.”
Substack Notes
I have been experimenting with Substack Notes, their new feature, and invite you to join me over there. You may have heard that Elon Musk is a bit scared of Notes, which has Twitter-like functionality, while allowing for much longer posts. Here is one of my latest offerings:
Notes is a new space on Substack for us to share links, short posts, quotes, photos, and more. You can, of course, share notes of your own.
How to join
Head to substack.com/notes or find the “Notes” tab in the Substack app. As a subscriber to Daniel Pinchbeck’s Newsletter, you’ll automatically see my notes. Feel free to like, reply, or share them around!
I joined the workshop hurray!! I will miss the first 45 minutes today, will this be an issue? Thanks you Daniel!
Loved the Into the Crystal one.