At a time when progressives are afflicted with incrementalist ideas and a sense of retreat and resignation, I wrote these essays to promote the idea of radical transformation. By grounding this work in the personal, I wanted my own limitations, biases and presuppositions to be as clear as possible. What links these essays is the idea that the normal operations of the self are inadequate to the vivid complexity of experience, and entail suffering for all involved. Engaging with the work of artists, theatre-makers, film directors, writers, musicians and philosophers, I make the case that and that the social world urgently needs to be re-made. In my view, the artists and thinkers I write about — Marcel Duchamp, Samuel Beckett, Steve Earle, Wallace Shawn, Cormac McCarthy, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Paul McCarthy, Rene Girard, the Wooster Group, Sylvan Tomkins, Simone Weil, Roberto Unger and Isabelle Stengers —have all been making valuable contributions to this project, operating in a semi-dark lit up only occasionally by intuitions and fugitive modes of knowing. It is to them that I dedicate this work. — Guy Zimmerman
To have worked with Guy over these last 10 years and to have formed a friendship of incalculable value has been an honor. As a writer, playwright and director of both theater and film, Guy brings together concepts, feeling and insights that cross-pollinate the political, social and personal. It it his integration of ideas from a 20 year daily non-Western meditation practice that gives a unique resonance to his essays. There is also the courage to call out the injustices and entitlements of our accelerating political alt conservative arena, worldwide. All combine to become what I have hoped the Times Quotidian has embodied. — Nancy Cantwell ... [Read More]
Anthology: Ten Years of TQ – Alissa Guzman
Wings of Desire Poster in the writer's studio Like my Southern California childhood, Times Quotidian is best described as alternative. My first piece, published in 2011 two days after my 27th … [Read more]
Anthology: Ten Years of TQ – Sean Hughes
Pink Elephants, Circus Polka, 1942, Fifty Elephants, Balanchine and Stravinsky Team Up A decade ago, my writer friend Mona Houghton suggested I contribute an article to an arts … [Read more]
Anthology: Ten Years of TQ – Naomi Pitcairn
Redhawk, Doumenting Standing Rock Naomi Pitcairn is a graphic-digital-performance-street artist and creative advocate who has no set style or medium. Her short films have screened at the … [Read more]
Anthology: Ten Years of TQ – Books, Jim Houghton & Melanie Wudl
There have been many a writer from TQ who have been involved in the exploration of reading and the testaments thereof, but I wanted to focus on two of the more prolific pen persons, Jim Houghton and … [Read more]
Anthology: Ten Years of TQ – Lorraine Anne Davis
Robert Stivers, Head with Open Mouth, 1995 Lorraine and I met in a small town outside of Florence, Italy while attending a yoga seminar with Dona Holleman. Since, we've hiked the Alps, Spa'd in … [Read more]
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