collected below are behind the scenes texts, pictures, and sounds that offer insight into things i am thinking about and my process. there are also references to past projects that are not currently in public view. for occasional long-form project updates, sign up for my newsletter here.
may 23, 2026
while swimming in writing and reporting deadlines, i had a euphoric mail day earlier this month. thanks to
bookshop and occasional workshop/exhibition space temporary unit, i was able to track down a copy of the book the clearing by artist jjjjjerome ellis. a two year search has come to a joyful end.
apr 23, 2026
last week i had another terrific mail day. aidan sank from space to stutter in vancouver kindly sent me a copy of dysfluent magazine (issue 2) by conor foran. i’ve just finished reading it. let’s talk about talking
apr 13, 2026
today i am sitting with the histories of phonocentrism and saussurean linguistics. in that vein, we knock at the table: 17 years of spill propagation is opening at artexte on april 23, 2026.
“spill propagation’s goal was to bring deaf and hearing arts together by deconstructing phonocentrism, where deaf and hearing artists are encouraged to work together without the use of interpretation, and to find new and creative ways to break the language barriers, understand each other, and create together.”
apr 2, 2026
are you a disfluent speaker or looking to understand how to listen better? listen to and/or contribute to luke wyland’s library of dysfluent voices.
mar 31, 2026
best mail day with a poster by eilish briscoe. photographs of sculptures to come. expression is a luxury!
mar 30, 2026
the bureau for listening invites us to listen. today i am sitting with questions for listening from their 2024 listening hotline project.
mar 28, 2026
a poem called aphasia by chris abani:
my language is dying the same way
my father did:
alone. night. and there are no storms. only
moonlight straining through holes in a tin roof
and the slight exhalation, lips
pursed as though to say: uwa'm.
mar 27, 2026
a list of prose that make my brain explode from
impossible word: toward a poetics of aphasia
by
heidi andrea restrepo rhodes:
a fugitive sound
but how we make castles of airless vaults, locking our queerest longings away in towers, or surrounding ourselves with moats of pretense, is its own painful diminution of spirit, however complex a survival strategy it may be at times.
lacunae
sometimes i stand at my apartment door, questioning if i do actually live there, the “4b” appearing unfamiliar, unsolid, leaving me afraid i may be intruding upon some unsuspecting neighbor, and relieved when i realize it is indeed home—that the intrusion was merely the absence projected upon my clarity.
often, the first letter of an otherwise absenting word will present itself, b-b-b, buh-buh-buh.
but it is not intelligence that is impacted: it is language processing and communication. the mind still knows the beauty of its languages. it simply cannot always, or sometimes evermore, reach them.
perhaps most famously among poets, charles baudelaire contended with aphasia after a stroke in 1866 that left him with a singular utterance available to him through most of the final year of his life: crénom!
what doctors explained to his mother as a loss of “the memory of sound.”
a-nomic, “without-name”
(hello, my name is baudelaire.) crénom! (i want an apple.) crénom! (i cut myself.) crénom! (do you want to go for a walk?) crénom! (leave me alone.) crénom! (kiss me.) crénom! (every poem left that yearns for the page.)
simile, smile; aphasia, face—mullen plays with the inventive meaning-making, the poetics, of aphasia’s possibilities in seemingly random word replacement induced by the brain gone a bit haywire.
when i call the closet a castle, all meaning is not lost. a new meaning, a poetics born of aphasia, opens onto infinite possibilities as the brain finds anything but the proper name for the thing.
in other words, the heterogeneous landscape of meaning posed by the aphasic mind offers up what hypatia vourloumis, citing paolo virno, calls a “grammar of the multitude.”
“in order to understand how language works we must look at situations where speech collapses,” vourloumis writes, “suggesting that perhaps the secrets of articulation reveal themselves in those who cannot speak. that to know language is to know it in its absence or its disruption.”
at the end of the second act of schoenberg’s 1932 opera moses und aron, moses proclaims, “o word, thou word, that i lack!” (o wort, du wort, das mir fehlt!)
the what-would-have-been-said is defamiliarized by what is never said or what is said instead, by circumlocution or metonymy, as speech forms a self in the world other than what was expected or desired.
the word that i lack forces me to become a kind of music.
an aphasic poetics, as a joyful pursuit of poetry without law, unfolds into the exhilarating and terrifying open sea of possibility, a shimmer spread across the water’s horizon
when hervey says, “war sad, but heart tie,” and “head but trapped,” the aphasic disruption of grammar defamiliarizes syntax in a syncopoetics that renders language toward the surprise and unexpected that is at the center of our cravings for poetic innovation.
the poetics of ill-formed language, as in, language formed by illness, violates the institution of the healthy, secure, linguistic formation and the grammatical imperialism holding it to its properties.
the patient, who was clearly attempting to express her gratitude, produced an irregular syntax that, for me, mirrors the syntactical violations of writers pursuing radical experimentation that has challenged the status quo...
the division of poetic versus aphasic (read: not-poetic) speech is layered with the racism, heteropatriarchy, and ableism of a colonial order that also continues to delegitimate other syntactical and linguistic deviations found in linguistic practices. for example, linguistic formations such as spanglish, black vernacular english, and creole english are measured against a standardized english. experimentations with the latter are often considered literary deviations of artful subjects only when pursued by white, bourgeois, (often male,) “healthy” writers.
as salisbury ends her essay, “repeating its traumas and losses alongside the possibilities of the new shapes of experience it traces out, the aphasic symptom in beckett’s work...insists that the contours of a newly complicated subjectivity reveal themselves most clearly not in health, but in the embodied, perhaps as yet untranslatable, articulations of injury and disease.”
henri bergson wrote in matter and memory (1896) that aphasia is not a loss of memory but a loss of the corporeal mechanism needed to express memory.
reflection on the mutilation and death of black bodies is occluded from the public sphere as bearing witness while black is forced into an aphasic mode that contains its speech to facts, statistics, and description considered palatable enough for white audiences.
the ill-formed language of aphasia as poetic intention is necessarily one which reflects the order of valued and valuing bodies and languages in modernity, and turns it back on itself in contravention.
to my delight, ‘jigsaw puzzle’, in spanish, is called a ‘rompecabeza’—literally that which breaks the head.
aphasia is, rather than pathology denying us a world, a political and poetic achievement which art and philosophy are meant to serve, in refusal of common sense and capitalist forms of communication.
...as for fred moten, “every disappearance is a recording.”
to be, and let language be, the ghost one must give up. to build castles where they don’t belong.
mar 20, 2026
happy vernal equinox to all who celebrate! big thanks to oral method’s experimental reading series on all things vernal tonight. an energizing start to the season
mar 17, 2026
tiocfaidh ár lá!
mar 14, 2026
this weekend i visited a lineage of transgression at gallery tpw. curated by liz ikiriko, this group exhibition explores “language as a mechanism to challenge systemic definitions of blackness.”
my favourite work was the text-based soundscape listen to black women by jamilah malika abu-bakare on the headphones. according to abu-bakare's bio, “her works contemplate refusal, repetition, dedication, and intimacy through sound art, video essay, text off-page and installation. by considering sound over sight, the artist moves both her subject and the audience towards freedom.” the soundscape’s collages and repetitions of “just as i am” and “addressed and recognized” overlapping with “as a black woman...’” as well as the hop scotching of simultaneous breath and beginning of speech are gorgeous.
also, abu-bakare’s use of ‘text off-page’ is expansive and new to me.
mar 11, 2026
tonight i saw the channel created by alyssa martin and spencer hack at the vault creation lab. the vault creation lab, in association with coal mine theatre, tests out new theatre ideas and writing through feedback and audience exchange.
i loved watching spencer seamlessly combine his background in classical ballet with alyssa’s absurd, hilarious, and heart exploding choreography style. it’s hard to choose, but crashing out to born slippy, deep eye contact, and giving flowers were my favourite parts.
shout out to the dolphin callback and the older person in the crowd head banging to born slippy.
something about all of this going on when i could see the street bustling through the window felt like we were all working on making something together. i hope i always remember alyssa’s collaboration notes on blueprints and architecture.
mar 7, 2026
warm breeze on my face.
mar 6, 2026
philip von zweck, honk if you love silence, 2000. courtesy of the artist. photo: lars söderkvist.
how i wish christof migone’s book,
sonic somatic: performances of the unsound body was still in print. luckily, it is generously available online! today i am sitting with:
“one more thing,” humkoke said, “what’s this crap you got here?”
murke colored. “it’s …” he stammered, “i collect a certain kind of leftovers.”
“what kind of leftovers?” asked humkoke.
“silences,” said murke. “i collect silences.”
(from heinrich böll, “murke’s collected silences” in the stories of heinrich böll, trans. leila vennewitz,
new york: mcgraw-hill, 1987, 495 – 514)
feb 25, 2026
it’s been a fun morning for finding interesting sound and dance things online.
first up, errant bodies press. what a gorgeous name for a publishing house. they have been publishing projects since 1995 “supporting critical thinking and work in sound and spatial practices, community and commoning initiatives, poetic and experimental writing, political thought and current issues.” Their catalogue excites me.
second up, jana from a dance mag, has been distributing a weekly newsletter recently. in a sea of personal writing deadlines, i find these readings delightful. this week, jana introduces us to lilia di bella and their work with the body as a living archive, as well as choreopoethics.
third: another highlight from jana’s newsletter is the palestinian sound archive by the majazz project. the archive celebrates music, spoken word, and album artwork and will exhibit at southbank centre, london, uk from july 27 to november 1, 2026.
feb 21, 2026
photo by katie merchant
this week’s thank you, ok | katie merchant newsletter talked about kids books. she shared illustrations from a 1948 children’s book called bears by ruth krauss, with illustrations by phyllis rowand.
most interesting to me was her reflection on reading that
you should stare into the eyes of your child as much as possible in order to sharebrainwaves.
feb 20, 2026
more pre-production for HOW DO WE (SPEAK) LIKE A PALACE in february, a portrait.
feb 18, 2026
growing pains.
feb 10, 2026
what are found sounds? let’s find out at this workshop co-hosted by
rosina kazi and nicholas murray
from lal and the music gallery.
feb 8, 2026
despite hilarious sentiments from robby hoffman, we persist with a winter blues begone community potluck.
feb 1, 2026
pre-production for HOW DO WE (SPEAK) LIKE A PALACE in february, a portrait.
jan 31, 2026
i just got back from seeing ramla and the desert by nehal el-hadi at the greenhouse festival at tarragon theatre. ramla and the desert is “a haunting and fantastical” shadow puppetry and live animation story about desert disappearances.
i will never forget the gorgeous articulation of ramla running from the side angle alternating with the close up of her face. it was hard not to be drawn into the process of the puppeteers stage right. wow.
jan 20, 2026
the blackwood gallery is hosting a symposium on “neurodivergent ways of living in the world” between february 5 and 7, 2026 called oughtism. i am looking forward to m. remi yergeau’s talk on perseveration as well as chris martin’s workshop on autistic languaging.
dec 5, 2025
jeff wall at the moca today.
nov 22, 2025
oct 27, 2025
artist
oluseye
ogunlesi, “
traces blackness through its multifaceted migrations and manifestations...using diasporic debris.” they recently announced that they are entering their eighth year of their eminado project, a project consisting of 400 amulets, that “began as a way of navigating a nasty brain injury, now a life-long project that shapes oluseye’s understanding and engagement with objects.”
oct 21, 2025
artist seo hye lee explores the subtle nuances between language and sound through her project [sound of subtitles].
oct 19, 2025
stuttering commons, an international educational collective
creates new understandings of stuttering - and similar communication disfluencies - through accessible resources.
“...authored by stutterers and written for everyone, especially those who speak with an abundance of repetitions, blurts, pauses, hesitations, and effort,” stuttering commons
published a handbook about key themes in language disfluency in july 2025.
oct 12, 2025
indian handsign, 1997
©
kimowan metchewais
in
kimowan metchewais: a kind of prayer,
art historian and writer, christopher green writes that after complications from brain surgery in 2007, artist kimowan metchewais became paralyzed on the left side of his body and mostly photographed imagery of his right hand for his indian handsign polaroids series.
green goes on to explain that “the signs do not appear to be based on american sign language but rather obliquely reference plains sign talk, a historical sign language used by indigenous peoples across central north america in trade and oratory” and that “eraser smudges on the polaroids suggest that metchewais wrote and rewrote the labels, drafting his own language for this series of universal gestures, countering appropriations with a new baseline of bodily signs... forming a kind of visual dictionary or record.”
i was delighted to learn about this series by metchewais in aperture’s newsletter this week.
sep 26, 2025
disfluent joy
sep 24, 2025
sep 22, 2025
sep 6, 2025
m. marsel mesulam:
aphasia consists of a breakdown in the two-way translation process that establishes a correspondence between thoughts and language… aphasia is not a disorder of perception.
sep 4, 2025
curator hannah traore, with the support of gallery manager morgan mitchell, presented who? me? at hannah traore gallery between may and july this year. first struck by self-portrait work by carravaggio and renee cox during her undergrad, traore says that “a self-portrait can be anything, capturing an artist’s essence rather than just their likeness... it doesn’t need to be didactic or figurative, it can be abstract.”
hannah traore gallery celebrates artists who have been historically excluded from the mainstream narrative.
this exhibition, as well as traore’s long-time interest in the self-portrait, has me wondering about intersections of disabled artists who have been excluded from mainstream narratives, and what their audible portraits might sound like.
aug 20, 2025
yesterday, momus: the podcast released a summer episode that includes a live recording of their spring issue: post/doc, co-published by momus and the vera list center for art and politics. in it, jjjjjerome ellis and diana seohyung “reflect on the theme of intervals—on languaging, language breaks, aphasia, riffing, and repeating.” you can listen to it here.
aug 17, 2025
i wrapped up summerworks 2025 by witnessing still life by marie lambin-gagnon. a stunning and serious gesture of endurance by megumi kokuba and jessica germano.
aug 8, 2025
the festival of dysfluent representation runs from nov 6–8, 2025 across montréal. how exciting! it asks: how do we talk about stuttering, aphasia, autism, dyslexia, or deafhood in our media, arts, and speech therapy?
aug 7, 2025
graeme and i are in the polishing stages of the HOW DO WE SPEAK LIKE A PALACE soundscape. i can’t wait to share this work with you.
jul 30, 2025
let gaza live! free palestine! nicholas kennedy from trip print press generously made and distributed these in february 2024. the horrors persist :(
jul 15, 2025
eilish briscoe: maybe (copyright © eilish briscoe, 2024)
yesterday i happily stumbled across this beautiful work by eilish briscoe. after experiencing a stroke at the age of 25, briscoe created a typeface to document the process of learning to write again. her exhibition, i don’t have the words is opening on aug 7, 2025 at art practice in london, uk.
jul 09, 2025
my brother’s book, all the quiet hours, arrived in the mail today. there is so much to say about it. regarding the title, danny says:
“...it captures the feeling of not being able to capture a feeling... it has something to do with what robert musil called “the hovering life,” sensations, associations, and half-remembered memories that cannot be explicitly conveyed.
the quiet hours might be when television networks used to sign off for the night. or maybe they’re the little in-between moments in friendship, almost imperceptible accumulated nothings that paradoxically add up to something.”
jul 04, 2025
my new website is live!
jun 30, 2025
shout out to the the blackwood gallery broadsheets. pronouncing. wow.
jun 29, 2025
jun 23, 2025
testing, testing, 1-2-3 testing. how has it been a year since the tech rehearsal for 26 OR LESS?
photo by prashant gopal.
jun 3, 2025
archive images from A TICKET ON THE 4. big thanks to lily mills for finding this gem.
may 28, 2025
highlights from my meeting with graeme about the HOW DO WE SPEAK LIKE A PALACE soundscape include learning about dynamic stochastic synthesis and discussing sonic warfare on bodies of water caused by distant highways.
may 23, 2025
i still have a handful of 26 OR LESS t-shirts left in various sizes. contact me if you would like one free of charge.
photo by xuan nguyen-marshall.
apr 17, 2025
book club reading coming soon.
apr 16, 2025
a strange but timely religious gift in my mailbox? strange because it arrived the morning my brain exploded from jjjjjerome ellis’ live performances at the music gallery this week.
apr 15, 2025
the clearing
jjjjjerome ellis: the contradiction of stuttering is that i am both speaking and not speaking. mid-sentence i block on a word. sound stops coming from my mouth but i haven't reached the end of my thought. the current of my speech has just gone underground.
oof. this performance at the music gallery changed me.
apr 13, 2025
thinking about unsounding and all types of quiet with work by christine
sun kim.
mar 8, 2025
last day of DRAWING A BLANK. a visit from nav and rochelle writing in the background.
mar 5, 2025
a kind and thoughtful review of DRAWING A BLANK by yehyun lee from ARTORONTO.
jan 30, 2025
my friend kate miller released an audiovisual poem about being a hard of hearing parent today. in their work, there are a lot of ways someone can take your child, they tell the story of their child taking a hearing test because they were at risk for congenital hearing loss. their child passed the test, and kate felt both relief and defeat. relief because they want their child to be healthy and defeat because they feel, or felt, their hearing differences would make them feel far away from eachother.
kate’s articulation of distance is profound to me.
sep 19, 2024
photo by sarah bodri
sep 19, 2024
photo by sarah bodri
aug 8, 2024
if you know you know. the heat is terrific.
aug 7, 2024
a tender portrait by tara neray of her child visiting 26 OR LESS.
may 16, 2024
photo by sarah bodri
mar 23, 2023
Untitled, 2016
© rachel levit ruiz
aug 31, 2022
aug 29, 2022
a quiet moment in galway.
dec 3, 2015
photo by mk
oct 28, 2015
jul 24, 2014
jul 19, 2014
today i visited toronto general hospital where they confirmed i experienced a traumatic brain injury.
jul 17, 2014
a ticket on the 4
hank: it’s a matter of style in the face of no chance at all.
jul 13, 2014
a stage prop fell on top of my head today.
nov 26, 2011
behind the scenes of MILK BATH.
jun 03, 2010
jun 07, 2009
slim in COWBOY MOUTH.
jun 06, 2009
cavale from COWBOY MOUTH: he's no crow, i was jes' fooling. we're the crows, me and you, raymond.
jun 06, 2009
nov 10, 2003