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Tense

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Tense

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Tense is a recurring event in the Collected Agenda archive, appearing 12 times across 12 issues between June 24, 2024 and March 25, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as “taking the subway to Brooklyn for Beckett Rosset’s Tense… one of my favorite events of the year”; “Beckett is hosting another TENSE event at The Locker Room”; “What you should do: Devil’s Workshop, TENSE”. It most often appears alongside KGB, Beckett Rosset, Chloe Pingeon.

Metadata

  • Category: Events
  • Mention count: 12
  • Issue count: 12
  • First seen: June 24, 2024
  • Last seen: March 25, 2025

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

COLLECTED AGENDA #4
June 24, 2024 · Original source
What I Did - Beckett’s Tense, Learning Not To Linger, What Are Children For Book Launch, Etc
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
Friday, July 19 - Beckett is hosting another TENSE event at The Locker Room. Details forthcoming.
Inline links: TENSE, The Locker Room
COLLECTED AGENDA #5
July 08, 2024 · Original source
What I did: Dienst & Dotter, SARA’S at Dunkensthalle, Knickerbocker Bar & Grill What you should do: Devil’s Workshop, TENSE, Blade Study, Jack Skelley Myth Lab
Tonight: Monday, July 8 at 7pm - Ev Christensen celebrates the launch of her debut single “spectacularity” at 442 Broadway. Additional performers include Lea Jaffe, Kembra Pfahler, and Megsuperstarprincess.
Inline links: Ev Christensen, 442 Broadway, Lea Jaffe, Kembra Pfahler, Megsuperstarprincess
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.
Inline links: Beckett Rosset, TENSE, The Locker Room, Sultry Summer Soirée, August Lamm, Peter Vack, Cassidy Grady, Johnny St. Grace, Jonah Howell, Mia Vallet, Noelle Franco
COLLECTED AGENDA #8
August 23, 2024 · Original source
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
What Are You Doing In The Fall?
September 03, 2024 · Original source
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
Statues Of Critics.
September 10, 2024 · Original source
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
Ways to be sincere.
October 02, 2024 · Original source
I’m ill on Friday, almost too ill to attend Beckett’s TENSE but I’m expected at The Locker Room bearing little tins of nicotine mints and a box of art and so I’m going back to Brooklyn again. It’s a smaller crowd than usual at first, people get there late, people on the street outside are talking about how there are no cool countries left: only Mexico, Ireland, maybe El Salvador. They are murmuring to each other in fervent agreement and I wish it wouldn’t be weird to ask them their criteria for evaluation.
Inline links: TENSE
Inside, I can stomach club soda but no vodka. I'm helping make a pyramid of the nicotine mints, people start to show up. It ends up being a really nice night of readings, an excellent performance. Beckett is exceptionally good at curating personalities (which is probably why he invented readings in the first place!), and there remains a cohesion and charisma to his events that is often lacking elsewhere. Everyone is so cynical about readings these days, which is probably because readings can often create a bit of a void, a performance of creative merit that spins its wheels and never yields any cultural output (novels?), a way to stack a party flier, etc. duh. During intermission, Beckett tells the audience that he always intended for Beckett’s (the original Beckett’s) to be a place where young writers could go and get their start, an open door space for beginnings, somewhere for writers and artists to read and drink and grow and meet and fuck. He’s excited, now, that many of the writers he championed in his space in the West Village are reading here, at TENSE, from new novels, forthcoming stories, debut collections, many having reached significant success in the past few years. There is a sincerity in his desire to put on readings which can yield something more for their participants, and a rigor and community required, therefore, that most other events simply lack. It’s a credit to Beckett that writers who began at Beckett’s have reached success, and continue to return to read at TENSE.
Playing With Glass
November 05, 2024 · Original source
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
Counterculture in America
November 12, 2024 · Original source
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
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.
Inline links: TENSE, Is That All There Is, Beckett Rosset, Adeline Swartzendruber, Chris Bray
Autumn passes and one remembers one's reverence
November 19, 2024 · Original source
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
Dream Logic
February 03, 2025 · Original source
Thursday, January 30 And then it's ok. Well, it's not, but it can be. You’ve been taking for granted that it will be ok, if it has to be ok. That if you care about something so, so, so deeply then it cannot possibly be destroyed, but it could, you are capable of this. It feels foreign sometimes, this force, this capacity for destruction, like it can’t belong to you, but it does, it’s no one else’s. It becomes simple, then. You can’t just say I crossed my fingers, you can’t just say I take it back. And so, no more. I'm working the door at Tense tonight, which is my favorite - both TENSE, and working doors, that is. It’s a beautiful night, and this, after everything, is a relief. Christian Lorentzen reads emails with Gary Indiana. “I now believe you can tell if the writer is part of a writing program, by looking at their teeth,” Gary told Christian. "Why does everybody love Downton Abbey?" Gary asked Christian, in another email. "Well, what's not to love? The series construction is so glibly subscribed that you know what will happen before the writers do." In another, he lamented the logistical problems surrounding his writings on Cuba - the travel ban, his lover there, etc etc etc. It's a good format for a reading - the emails thing. Correspondences brought to life. Not quite a diary, but close, more intimate, often, because one isn't writing into the void of one's own neurosis in a correspondence. Madelyn writes me an email, after. I am working on my own correspondence back, still. Mania delays the process. It's good to have a long form conversation to return to. I hope this email finds you well. This email finds me almost incapacitated, but I won't be, soon. Beckett's reading is full of empathy and wit as always. He's lamenting the narcissism of our times in his introductory speech, and his own gut impulses and the stories that follow give him the proper wherewithal to do so. I see Sean Lynch and others outside. Sean writes something nice on the evening. I see Doomers the next day - the dream logic of my thoughts following this production requiring another letter altogether WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Tuesday, February 4 From 7pm at Heaven Can't Wait — Cynosure presents the first of a two night fundraiser for Los Angeles, featuring Alex Arthur, Precious Human, Truman Flyer, and more.
Inline links: something nice on the evening, Heaven Can't Wait, Cynosure
Here, There, Everywhere
March 17, 2025 · Original source
TENSE is back on March 28. I will be reading, alongside a lineup I am very excited about. Save the date.
Inline links: TENSE
How to Redeem Yourself
March 25, 2025 · Original source
From 8pm at KGB — TENSE returns with More Pricks Than Kicks. I will be reading, along with readings and performances from Kansas Bowling, Zack Graham, Sophie Madeline Dess, Valley Latini, and Cristiano Grim.
Inline links: TENSE, More Pricks Than Kicks

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