Intimate Reading Performance and Social Dreaming Experiment beginning June 19th

The story, set in the 2050s, focuses on an underground community of poets, artists, scientists, and theater geeks (Bard-lovers) who share the weird experience of receiving cryptic messages in dreams from a figure they know as Ariadne. This more-than-human intelligence seems to be transmitting to them from the planet Jupiter—or so the dream goes. In the 2050s, water is a scarce commodity, while a techno-optimized corporatocracy rules over the carcass of humanity in the throes of Earth’s 6th great mass extinction. This group of misfits keeps a humanistic flame and emancipatory hope alive amid a bleak landscape.

Trapped inside a highly secure medical complex is a genetically and spiritually unique child who may hold the key to the survival of humanity—except she is also dying of a novel virulent disease, or so the authorities say. Dream bleeds into reality when Ariadne’s dream-transmissions suggests an action which the group must undertake to free the girl. They will challenge official version of events, face death, and reclaim the mystery of water. Lovers are torn apart and the community is stressed to the breaking point—is this band of wise rebels merely caught in a web of illusion?

The Invitation

We are proposing a group reading experience that goes beyond merely discussing the text. As you’ll discover if you decide to participate, Maia’s language throughout the novel is poetic, playful, and provocative—and would be a joy to read aloud. Moreover, as we’ve discovered through our previous performances of Milton, Aurobindo, Whitman, Blake, and others—all it takes is a little practice in a safe-to-fail setting to create the context for ontological immersion and aesthetic magic.

For the purposes of this group, literature and life—just as waking and dreaming—will not be treated as totally separate states of being, but brought together in playful resonance. These conversations may also sometimes be quite serious—if we recognize how thin the border between fiction and reality may sometimes be. We might see ourselves reflected in the characters and their circumstances, and vice versa. We can share our own dreams. And we’ll read the text aloud to each other, as around a campfire, taking turns playing different parts, potentially even producing the raw material for a community theater style audiobook version of the text, if we are able to sustain our attention and gather the resources for such a project.

When you sign up, you receive a PDF version and you can also request a print copy directly from the author. If you require financial assistance, we will send you a free copy and invite those who can to chip in toward the costs.

The Action

As you’ll read, one of the main characters in the book is visually blind. Yet that doesn’t mean he cannot see. One of the ways we will attune to the fictional world that Maia has dreamed awake is to conduct our meetings by audio only. We will use Zoom’s audio only feature for these meetings. There will be time for meditation, listening, speaking, song, silence, attuning… we will allow each other to deepen into a shared liminal zone of lucid presence. It will be weird, maybe awkward at times… different than anything we’ve yet attempted here, but hopefully a rewarding experience for all involved.

During our first meeting, we intend to focus on the theme of Water. What does water mean to you? Bring a water story to share. As well, bring a musical instrument! Guitar, cymbal, triangle, bells, mouth harp… any music-making implement you can share over the phone will do.

Subsequent meeting times and the exact plan of action all remain to be determined by the literary psychonauts who show up and the guidance we receive. Each of us can help shape a collective meta-dream—there will be plays within plays and dreams with dreams! And then how shall we bring our dreaming into dialogue with the world? The great MLK said, “I have a dream.” Could we say, “We have a dream?” See you there!