Beckett Rosset is a recurring person in the Collected Agenda archive, appearing 18 times across 18 issues between May 28, 2024 and May 01, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "amazing readers (including Beckett Rosset himself)"; "Beckett Rosset's Tense... I like Beckett's reading a lot"; "Beckett Rosset and TENSE are back at The Locker Room for a Sultry Summer Soirée". It most often appears alongside New York, Chloe Pingeon, KGB.
- Article page
- Beckett Rosset
- Mention count
- 18
- Issue count
- 18
- First seen
- May 28, 2024
- Last seen
- May 01, 2025
- Instagram handle
- @me_betseybrown
Outbound links
- https://beckett.substack.com/
- https://languagearts.substack.com/p/beckett-rossets-reading-list
- https://whitneyreview.org/
- https://www.imdb.com/title/tt32365707/
- https://www.instagram.com/ill_seen_ill_said/
- https://www.instagram.com/me_betseybrown/?hl=en
- https://www.instagram.com/p/C8-vs5aN9Es/
- https://x.com/beckettrosset?lang=en
Issue trail
- COLLECTED AGENDA #2
- COLLECTED AGENDA #3
- COLLECTED AGENDA #4
- COLLECTED AGENDA #5
- COLLECTED AGENDA #7
- COLLECTED AGENDA #8
- What Are You Doing In The Fall?
- Statues Of Critics.
- I wish I had more to say about fashion week.
- Playing With Glass
- Counterculture in America
- Autumn passes and one remembers one's reverence
- Moral Framework
- End of the Cold Front
- February Dining.
- Meditations
- Live Diary.
- Big long list of activities
Related pages
Source context
To mark your calendars, Friday, June 14 at 8pm, TENSE MAGAZINE will present “Vagrancy and Vice” at The Locker Room. This will be a special evening, with a forthcoming lineup of amazing readers (including Beckett Rosset himself), ballet, music from New Orleans, and a magician. Eventbrite coming soon with ticket links
Friday, June 14 at 8pm, TENSE MAGAZINE will present “Vagrancy and Vice” at The Locker Room. This will be a special evening, with a forthcoming lineup of amazing readers (including Beckett Rosset himself), ballet, music from New Orleans, and a magician. Eventbrite coming soon with ticket links
Later, we’re taking the subway to Brooklyn for Beckett Rosset’s Tense. It’s the best New York City sunset I’ve ever seen over the Brooklyn Bridge, and then it’s even better over the platform when we arrive. Beckett’s Tense is one of my favorite events of the year, which is something I’d like to write more about somewhere else, but which in brevity, feels very sincere and very sharp and very much like a relic of something that doesn’t quite exist anymore.
Inline links: Beckett Rosset’s Tense
What I Did - Beckett’s Tense, Learning Not To Linger, What Are Children For Book Launch, Etc
I like August Lamm’s reading. I like Beckett’s reading a lot. I like the magician who performs a magic show and then reads a story about a run down roadside magic shop in the small town in Florida where he grew up. It’s half a story about the tricks of the trade. It reminds me a little of the Didion/Warhol Interview Mag “Why Can’t Everything Be Magical All The TIme” “What?” quote that everyone’s been posting this week. The quote is obviously most interesting insofar as it represents a fundamental clash of sensibilities, but it also speaks, however vaguely, to a push and pull between the preservation and the unraveling of illusions. I tell this to Beckett as I’m leaving, which I think is a sign I am tipsier than I thought because it’s really not the most astute observation.
Friday, July 19 at 8pm - Beckett Rosset and TENSE are back at The Locker Room for a Sultry Summer Soirée. August Lamm, Nico Walker, Peter Vack, and Beckett himself, will be reading, accompanied by performances from Cassidy Grady and Johnny St. Grace, and a theater presentation directed by Beckett Rosset, Jonah Howell, Mia Vallet, and Noelle Franco.
Friday, August 23 from 8pm – Beckett ends a magical TENSE summer at The Locker Room with THE UNKNOWNS. Readings by Beckett Rosset, Hansen Shi, Annabel Boardman, and John Padula, among others. Music by The Herald Square Tribune (August Lamm and Vern Matz). More performers TBA, tickets here.
Inline links: Beckett, TENSE, THE UNKNOWNS, Hansen Shi, Annabel Boardman, John Padula, August Lamm, Vern Matz
Saturday, August 17 from 7pm - 10pm - Drunken Boat Production presents a truly incredible lineup for The Drunken Boat Film Festival. The evening will include a screening of Nepotism, Baby (starring Betsey Brown), scenes from Brutalist Couture, and more.
From 8pm - TENSE is back with THE UNKNOWNS at The Locker Room. This is The Big One of the evening (imo), not to be missed! From Beckett Rosset — “Hear Hansen Shi read from his debut novel, enjoy the snazzy jazz musings of the John Ling Trio, and witness a breathtaking dance performance by Cristina Wesnofkse. Accompanied by the poetic meditations of Adeline Swartzendruber, tales of wayward girlhood from Kathy Joyce, and much more…” Tickets here.
Inline links: TENSE, THE UNKNOWNS, The Locker Room, Beckett Rosset, Hansen Shi, Cristina Wesnofkse, Adeline Swartzendruber, Kathy Joyce
To mark your calendars: Beckett Rosset will be hosting the biggest TENSE yet on Friday, September 27. More details forthcoming.
Inline links: Beckett Rosset, TENSE
As a newly declared patron of Confessions, I’m particularly excited that the Sunday night reading and parties series will return for the second week in a row — from 7pm at KGB. Readings from Maxine Beiny, Christian Cail, Sammy Friedman, Chris Gabriel, Bijan Stephen, Beckett Rosset, Stephania Vazquez, Madison Brading, Cassidy Grady, and Annabel Boardman. This Confessions takes inspiration from the Citizen App, with stories that take notifications, and imagine what the hell happened.
Inline links: Confessions, KGB, Maxine Beiny, Christian Cail, Sammy Friedman, Chris Gabriel, Bijan Stephen, Beckett Rosset, Stephania Vazquez, Cassidy Grady, Annabel Boardman, Citizen App
To mark your calendars: Beckett Rosset will be hosting the biggest TENSE yet on Saturday, September 27. The Fall will feature readings and performances from Anika Levy, August Lamm, Beckett Rosset, Kitty St Remy, Madeline Cash, Sophie Madeline Doss, Zack Graham, and Natasha Stagg, among others.
Inline links: Beckett Rosset, TENSE, The Fall, Anika Levy, August Lamm, Kitty St Remy, Madeline Cash, Zack Graham, Natasha Stagg
Friday, September 27 — TENSE presents a much anticipated event at The Locker Room. The Fall will feature readings and performances from Anika Levy, August Lamm, Beckett Rosset, Kitty St Remy, Madeline Cash, Sophie Madeline Doss, Zack Graham, and Magdalene Taylor. Nicotine mints so you can actually quit vaping (like me!) provided by Jones.
Inline links: The Fall, Anika Levy, August Lamm, Beckett Rosset, Kitty St Remy, Madeline Cash, Zack Graham, Magdalene Taylor, Jones
I go to Denmark first tonight. It’s the first play I’ve seen at The Brooklyn Center for Theater Research, although I took a writing class with Betsey Brown there this summer that I loved.
To Mark Your Calendar… TENSE is coming to Manhattan on November 15 — For Is That All There Is, I will be reading, along with Lucy Sante, Guy Dess, Beckett Rosset, Adeline Swartzendruber, Mairead Kiernan, and Chris Bray.
Inline links: TENSE, Is That All There Is
Beckett Rosset texts me today - “I really want to try and put together a group of not necessarily like-minded but rather open-minded people whose main agenda is community and offering the opportunity for people to creatively express themselves through their chosen medium."
Inline links: Beckett Rosset
From 8pm - late — TENSE is back (Manhattan edition). I’ll be reading at Is That All There Is, along with Guy Dess, Beckett Rosset, Adeline Swartzendruber, Mairead Kiernan, Chris Bray, and others to be announced.
Beckett is good at that. He knows where to find the heart of things. His salons are not rehearsed, he doesn’t read the works presented prior, but I am always struck by the cohesion of his events. At the risk of immense cliche, he curates almost in the realm of the collective subconscious. I would encourage everyone to attend the next TENSE event on November 15 (and not just because I’m reading).
Inline links: next TENSE event on November 15
To read: Beckett Rosset's Reading List
Inline links: Beckett Rosset's Reading List
Thursday, November 14 I take the Q to the end of the line today. It's something I've always wanted to do - take the train until the cars stop and I'm the last one left on board and a voice comes on and says please exit the train for cleaning, this is the last stop on this train, please exit the train so the train can be cleaned. I'm in Bay Ridge to shoot a music video today. To be an extra in a music video, that is. I'm exceptionally bad at acting. I'm bad enough that I am even bad as an extra. I'm not particularly bad at lying, but I am bad at having an expressive face. The neighborhood at the end of the Q is nice. I've been taken to other places in New York like this before. Places where you feel like you're by the seaside, where you're under the bridge, where the architecture is more brick, more limestone, more instances of art deco. The Hudson widens into the open ocean somewhere not too far from here and so of course the air feels different. It's strange, even if anticipated, to take the subway ninety minutes to a place where the air feels different, to walk down strange streets and into an unfamiliar gothic building, to open the door to a room where I have never been, and to find it filled with people I mostly already know. The past few years have given me many instances like this. This is something I am very grateful for. The music video is for DDM / Uncensored New York. It's a cool concept. It's cool to watch things come to life. The shoot is outside, and I am the coldest I have ever been. I'm still having fun. I'm thinking about things like how monks orient their consciousness and focus towards the cause of their suffering, and then I am trying to think only about the cold. I am not able to transcend myself, but even freezing, I don't wish I was elsewhere. In the afternoon, I sit in a warm car and I thaw my hands. I have miso soup, tea, and cheese sticks. There is still a chill in me even once inside, which is simultaneously unpleasant and cozy. I'd been wanting a day like this very badly. Friday, November 15 Beckett's Tense comes together with serendipity. There was a crisis with the headliners, Lucy Sante was sick. Beckett ran into Penny Arcade outside of Madame Matovu on 10th. Now, Penny is the headliner. The unsalvageable is always salvaged. The bar can serve real liquor tonight. There's a lot of people here and it's a different crowd than usual. Tense is back in Manhattan. Penny says she’s here because she wants to see what the new New York is doing. I give Beckett a hug at Sovereign House. I say hi to Chris and Adeline. Chris and Adeline are drawing big Tense bubble letters on the chalkboard. The seats are already mostly full. I climb to the top of a ladder and I sit up there. From up there, I have the best view in the house. Tense is not just a reading series, Tense is a show, and this distinction is important. There is a program, an order of events, a flow of new and old. The serendipity with Penny’s arrival lies in this - she seems to understand exactly what Beckett is doing, and while she didn’t write her piece specifically for TENSE (she describes it as “cultural criticism you can dance to”), it speaks with exaction to the spirit of things. Here are some things that Penny Arcade says: I’d rather put a stick in my eye than go somewhere where everyone is the same age. When I was young, if I went to a party and everyone was under thirty I thought... I'm at the wrong party.”
Inline links: DDM, Uncensored New York, Beckett's, Tense, Lucy Sante, Penny Arcade, Madame Matovu, Chris, Adeline
“Community is a different word for lineage. the people that are still here tonight... that says a lot about you.” Beckett reads about The Providence Hotel, Chris reads about The Circus, Adeline reads poems. Afterwards, I stick around for a while. Ellie arrives. I try to get late dinner but there’s no one seating diners at this hour. I walk back to Sovereign House. The UFC fight is playing now. On a split screen, Mike Tyson is telling a small child that he doesn’t dream of legacy because when you die, your ego dies with you. When I get home, I have a text from a number I haven’t saved yet. It’s a photo with Ellie and her friend that I don’t remember taking. “The Three Graces,” it says. “Loved meeting you xoxo Penny” WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Tuesday, November 19 In her Substack, Natasha Stagg recommends The White Ribbon screening at Metrograph this afternoon at 3:30pm. I imagine you might find a strange appeal in luxuriating in a weekday afternoon theater experience that will leave you feeling as awful as this film is sure to. Natasha also recommends the new menu in the commissary, but Shannon recently told me it's fallen far from its glory days. I'll have to stop by soon (maybe tomorrow, at 3:30pm) to see for myself.
From 8pm at Sovereign House — It’s a Very Tense Christmas. Come celebrate the most Tense time of the year with spiked eggnog, surprise santa, and a performance of William S. Burroughs “The Junky’s Christmas” by Nico Walker and Beckett Rosset. Readings by Kathy Joyce, Nick Dove, Kitty St. Remy, Sophie Dess, and Caitlyn Brennan,
From 8pm at KGB — TENSE returns with the event of the winter - WINTER DISCO DRAMA. Readings and performances by Christian Lorentzen, Nico Walker, Magdalene Taylor, Beckett Rosset, and more. Disco dance party
Inline links: TENSE, WINTER DISCO DRAMA
From 8pm— TENSE presents Rapture; a Valentine’s Day Soiree at KGB/Private Curtain. The lineup for this is spectacular, with readings and performances by Rachel Rabbit White, Nico Walker, Beckett Rosset, Maya Martinez, Dorothea Laskey, Valley Latini, Kyla Ernst Alper, and more. Come dance, drink, express your love, or fall in love. Tickets: $20
Inline links: TENSE, Rapture; a Valentine’s Day Soiree
Knickerbocker Bar and Grill is my favorite restaurant in New York and I’ve lauded it many times before. Classic, old school, not too many frills but still feels tasteful and nice, great t-bone, liquor on the grand piano, jazz on the weekends, etc etc etc. I like this description best - Beckett Rosset on his father dining here: “My father went here for lunch for god knows how many years. He probably consumed hundreds of gin martinis and rum and cokes there. When he died, after the memorial at Cooper Union, the family and close friends, a good thirty or forty people, went there. The owner comped everything. I thought it would not survive covid but clearly it has. Glad to know a new generation has taken to it.”
Inline links: Knickerbocker Bar and Grill
WHAT I DID Thursday, March 27 Midnight in New York, I'm taking stock of my glass apartment in the sky. I brought back nine dresses from El Salvador - eight old ones, one black tennis dress from El Tunco. All to be washed. Open the window. There is spring breeze now, all of a sudden, really, but I've been growing accustomed to real heat. These things I used to hate - dense hot air, beating sun, a day that stretches on under direct natural light, no end, no plans.... I would suddenly like to return to this, actually, over frigid and clipped stories about foggy northern coastlines and other things in that vein. Over stories about New York, and other things in that vein. David has stayed in San Salvador, and then, Santa Teresa, Costa Rica. It would have been basically free for me to come and yes I have commitments here but not too many if we're being really honest. I would have become kind of a freak after three whole weeks in airbnbs that are calling themselves "hacker houses," though, is the main issue. And, I wanted to do laundry and stretch in the spring breeze, open the window, set an alarm. It would be so easy for me to untether the physical circumstances of my whole life, these days. It would be easy to have distance from New York, as the main thing, but distance from physicality more generally, too. I've done it before. Honestly, I'm not eighteen anymore, I don't think it makes sense for me to do it again. I will probably stop being so strange and vague once I have even one conversation with my friends back in New York. For now, it is very strange to be alone. Very strange to walk around even a small space, that even only temporarily, is belonging just to me. The past few weeks have been about eclipsing interiority with observation. Floating in realms that are foreign. Not El Salvador, even. The hacker house stuff more. The dialogue of it all, more. The other reason I am here, home, abandoned visions of a hologram of Santa Teresa and also I already really miss my boyfriend - well there was responsibility and laundry and the reading and the stories to finish but also, the lunar eclipse played a role for sure. Something about the Earthquakes and Volcanoes. The floods and the fights. Seek less direct attention from that vivid piercing beaming beating sky. Seek solid ground, I saw someone say online. So, I did. I'm back in stupid dumb New York. Window open. You can barely feel all that fresh air. Friday, March 28 I do go for a walk in the morning, and I do still love New York, I decide. I want to have very delicate arms and boundless energy. I want to have tremendous discipline in a way so as to elicit joie de vivre, and also paths of clarity. The brain fog is so bad today. In the middle of the night, the jet lag woke me up, and I hate sleeping alone in this apartment. I'm sorry, I know I’m being a child but I hate it, the emptiness, when I wake up from paralysis, there are often moments of brief delusion. Alone, glass house, I have to talk myself down. I’ve tried to bring myself to life, today - long walk, two protein bars, slice of papaya, sushi roll for dinner, diet coke and cigarette, make a Vlog, make a Call. David had sleep paralysis, too, last night, he tells me on the phone. This is weird, because usually, this is a plight that is just for me. In real life, there was a creepy elderly woman occupying the hacker house in El Salvador, too. “I started a magazine last year,” she told me, when I told her I was a writer. “Oh, cool, about what?,” I asked her. “I don’t remember,” she told me. Blank gaze. Empty eyes. She would sometimes walk through our room while I slept, and one time I woke up to her passing by, vacant glance, I was obviously shocked, she looked obviously pleased. “How are ya, Love?” she said. The word “love” here, carrying a lot of the weight in making the indecent violation of space a lot creepier. “It’s fun, isn’t it?,” she told David’s friend, while he was doing the dishes. “Turning the water on and off is fun, it’s all fun, isn’t it?” She had referred to herself as a refugee, in El Salvador. From where, I had asked her. From Canada, she had said. A real eccentric freak, and in David’s dream, he wakes up to her sneaking up behind him, looming over him, it’s all fun isn’t it. She says sinisterly: “do you know what I think?” Then, in his dream, he felt her weight bend the bed springs and begin to smother him. Lunar eclipse. New moon. I find this dream ominous enough that I begin to become very concerned. You have to get out of there, I tell David. I'm leaving tomorrow anyways, he reminds me. Saturday, March 29 I spent the night last night reading at Tense and it was really lovely. Kansas Bowling reading and Valley Latini doing a hip hop show and Beckett Rosset on the Providence Hotel and me on half formed thoughts on the half complete piece I am writing on Techno Spirituality and El Salvador. I’m back in Real Life, and I don't regret it. I spent the morning by myself working on my edits. David is still traveling, and I am being more normal about it this time. In jet lagged fugue state, I burned the kettle down to a lump of molten plastic, not on purpose, obviously. I called my dad who's moral judgment I trust in full, so this clarifies a lot of things. I forgot how much I like running really really really fast. Whenever I am craving the extremes, I should access them through lots of sprints. The wind is crazy today. The wind has everyone whooping and hollering through the streets. I'm making TikToks again. I don't care. There are worse evils or, rather, you can leverage anything for evil if you really want and honestly, I am just trying to have lots of fun. Some of you are awfully pretentious for being addicted to things like Ketamine and Feeld. Not me. I don’t like drugs, and I have a soulmate. It is just as bad if not worse to be addicted to your phone as it is to anything else, but I’m regulating my time, and I’m microdosing my slop - or so I tell myself. Sunday, March 30 I order uber eats groceries at midnight, and then it's like celsius and chicken just washes up at my door. I don't like this. Chemicals, aspartame, the dissolution of the social fabric, really. How these things just materialize when you want to actualize some gross borderline animalistic whim. Craving. Diet Blackberry Pepsi. I would not like to live anywhere but New York City, or really anytime but now when I think it through on a very personal and very literal level. But there is something here that I increasingly am wary of as mere hallucination. There is much to consider. I am trying to be very energetic which, really, is the feeling that I increasingly cast as synonymous with Health. We went to Bacaro for dinner last night, then to Clockwork, later. “Do you know about how to get dinner for free,” some girl sitting next to my friend and me said. Then, she explained the concept of Club Promoters. Yeah I know, I said. I didn’t say it in a rude way. I just told her that I already knew, which I already did. My energy feels back in a way that feels very True today. Before I left for El Salvador, I was getting in the habit of killing time. Looking at an hour and wishing it over. I don’t want to quantify anything. What would happen if I never rushed a second again? This is what I’m trying to figure out. What would happen if I never rushed a second again? This is what I’m trying to figure out. Monday, April 1 My mind was reeling so fast in my Irish Literature class this evening. I started flicking through Internet Web Applications at warpspeed. I made some calls. I didn’t go crazy. “Saying no is a far more reliable path to avoiding sin than saying yes”, I heard someone say, through my fog, through the haze - that snapped me out of it quite quickly. “What if you literalize that, and just say no to everything?” a quiet girl across from me asked. I wrote this part down - “JUST SAY NO TO EVERYTHING!!!!” It was humid, heavy, soon-to-be-hot spring, today, in New York. I lost my head. Truly. I became very braindead very quickly, today. I recovered as best I could. It’s the way these things always go. Unmoored from the interactions you’ve been taking for granted, you’ve been alone with your thoughts and suddenly, you’ve found yourself thinking Nothing At All, and Saying A Lot Out Loud And Saying A Lot Online. You realize, suddenly, how wrong this all is, and then you become briefly concerned that maybe, suddenly, it is already too late for you. Or maybe it isn’t too late after all.. Water on the windowsill. I remember spring two years ago, a taxi cab from Chelsea down to where the East River runs near the Lower East Side. I wore a yellow dress and I ran like the wind from the river to the hotel bar. The fires. The maggots. It was that day in New York when it felt like cosmically, biblically, something bad was probably about to happen. The Seven Plagues. The air was thicker and hotter, then. I am thinking about that day because I was braindead on the Internet then, too. Celsius, protein bar, things had begun all thick and ugly and then I’d been whisked away into a big black car, shuttled to the bar at Nine Orchard, my friends convincing me to stick around and then I did, I stuck around for a while, I never really left after that, come to think of it. “It’s Deep Tech Week in New York,” Shannon tells me, today - whatever that means. She sends me an event as such, and I investigate the schedule for the rest of this week from there. Deep Tech Week is a week of events about Tech, and they added the word Deep in front of it to make it seem more cool, I realize quickly. “Turning Science Fiction into Reality,” the text on the website says, and I don’t really like the sound of that. I find that premise, as strictly a premise, material reality aside, even, to be nearly cartoonishly evil. But, I suppose I’ll try to be less pedantic. I eat a sugar cookie (gluten free). Two protein bars from that new brand DAVID. A brand activation crispy sandwich from Joe And The Juice. The packaging is orange instead of that usual nice pastel pink. KEVIN DURANT, the packing says. It is nine pm, and I am suddenly ravenous. Good. Looks like I got my corporeality back. I really was planning to go to the Deep Tech Party tonight, but the rain started in an instant, in the exact instant I was set to leave, really. Like it’s trying to communicate some form of serendipity, reason, warning, whatever. Monday is the day where I let myself get every last thing done on my phone. My eyes burn. It rots the soul. My week continues and I become much more particular with myself. Tuesday, April 2 It’s not that I mind being kind of exhibitionist, even, but I can’t control the feedback loop and I start to drive myself mad. Taking stock of the state of the union like THINGS THAT ARE "IN": Swimming
Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!d8Mb!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7e326f20-1685-4e59-8b0e-e29ce386a22e_950x406.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Yntp!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F160f61ba-48c8-4c23-92f8-600a970e8eb0_708x484.png
From 8pm at KGB — TENSE presents May Day, May Day, May Day. Readings by Dorothea Lasky, Guy Dess, Max Tulio, Nico Walker, Megan Davis, Beckett Rosset, Kitty St. Remy, Kyla Ernst-Alper, and Hannah Wik. “Truth suffers from too much analysis.” | Tickets $20. This one is not to be missed.
Inline links: May Day, May Day, May Day