Literary & Oratory Club

First, there is text.

Language

  • Write and read in any language you like.
  • Discussion happens in English only.

Writing

  • Typed or handwritten — handwritten is preferred. Thought in analog form, by hand, is what this club is built on.
  • The 9-out-of-10 rule: AI may write 1 out of every 10 pieces you bring — the other 9 must be your own. What we actually care about is what and how you can write and read. If 9 of your 10 hold up, you've earned the right to let AI write — and even read — the 10th, fully, if you want to.
  • BCI and AI-assisted writing are allowed on the same terms: 9 out of 10 must still be analog, made by your own hand.
  • Accommodation: if you have no hands and can't hold a pen, the writing ratio doesn't apply — bring all 10 by whatever means you have. For reading aloud, 1 of your 10 can be read by you personally; the other 9 can be read by someone else. Others are free to pick up what you've sent in and perform it on your behalf.

Reading & Sessions

  • Reading is an act — so, like writing, any language works.
  • Regular sessions run on prepared material — come with what you've written.
  • Live sessions — where we write and read together, on the spot — are a separate thing, announced on their own.
  • That said, nothing stops you from writing or reading something on the spot during a regular session too. We don't do prechecks or censorship.
  • Auto-reading (text-to-speech) is allowed if that's what you want — but the voice needs to actually be good.

Genres & Themes

Any direction, any genre: philosophy, prose, cringe, anything genuinely new that hasn't been done before — or anything old, exactly as it always was. You choose.

Length

Mostly this means miniatures, or excerpts from something longer. A larger work can also be read as a series, across sessions.

Format — a Happening, Not a Format

  • Right now, the goal is happenings: free forms, nothing fixed.
  • What comes after is genuinely open. This could turn into something like a tradition and gain some order over time. Or it could disappear completely. Or it could simply stay free-form.
  • With no fixed format, there's nothing to hold it to, and nothing to accuse it of failing to be.
  • These things don't die and don't disappear for good — they turn up somewhere else, and they always have. Even inside the Matrix, a person with their reflections, or an NPC, still does this.
  • There's no format here, so there's hardly a real word anyone could say against any of it. A word against this is a word against people, plainly. Want to fight freedom of speech? Go ahead — file your complaints, take your best shot, do whatever you feel you have to.
  • The club's future is undecided. It might take on a format — and then there'd be something to defend and something to push against. Or it stays free: happening here in one form, somewhere else in another, or not at all for a while. It could run alongside other things at once, the way a club has a room with music and a room with dancing — here, the room is literary and oratory. It could even just be theater.

Content & Responsibility

  • Swearing is allowed, everywhere — in the texts, the readings, the action, any streams or archives online. Cringe, profanity, no content restrictions.
  • No censorship beyond the law of the state you're in. You are responsible for yourself; we are not responsible for you.
  • If you seriously cross that line, we won't publish the recording. But your text, your reading, your action itself — we don't touch that, ever. Write what you want, read what you want, do what you want. That's the point of the happening.
  • We won't report you. But there may be people in the room who care enough to act on it — that's yours to weigh.
  • Devil-worship, satanism, porn, and the rest of it — try it if you want. But don't be surprised if it's over after that, and you're not welcome back.
  • Then again, maybe the room can take it. You come back, and again. It depends how it goes — but think it through first.
  • Still, all of this has to move freely, somehow. There will be real people in the room.
  • At A. Jodorowsky's Panic happenings, a man killed a chicken (not Jodorowsky himself). That's a fair reference point for how much cringe and freak-out a reading can carry.
  • But this isn't theater, and it isn't just happenings. This is about literature — first and foremost, about the text, and about writing it.

Age & Venue

  • 18+ for now. This may open up more later.
  • Breaking the law of the country you're in can mean facing judgment from the room itself, on the spot. Someone might also call the police.
  • We're not responsible for what happens, and we won't stop the happening to intervene. But if the police do show up, that's yours to answer for.

Organization

  • The rules here are minimal. The organizers aren't organizers — this runs on its own.
  • At different times, different free people post where the next one is happening. Archives live on Git, and so on.
  • Don't go looking for a hand behind the curtain to arrest.
  • At the same time, the law can be broken here too, and everyone's been warned about what that means. If there's evidence someone did, and they're still around, nobody's going to get in the way of the police handling it.
  • Beyond that: a free-format literary club, with elements of theater and happening.

Vision

This is meant to be a place where new styles get born — where what hasn't existed yet can exist, and where the classics stay alive rather than living only in theory. Style comes from a school: a school of style and a school of thought, free from academic bureaucracy and paperwork, and free from the censorship of other art venues. It draws loosely on old traditions of gathering around word and thought, without belonging to any one of them.

What holds all of it together is the word. Everything here is built on texts, on the act of writing, and on the fact that the text comes first.

Discussion

  • Every author has the right to a discussion after reading — but it's not required.
  • Listeners have the right to ask questions. If something's in a language they don't understand, they can ask for a translation or explanation — but authors aren't obligated to answer.
  • An author can always open the discussion themselves. The audience is just as free to stay silent.
  • Still, the club's goal is to keep discussion alive — there should always be room for it, whenever listeners or authors want it.
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