Sometimes the present feels blurry in shape, its character mysterious, hard to fathom. And sometimes the present feels blade-sharp, distinct and unmistakable. There is a cruel clarity to the long present of the decade 2016-2026: from the stranglehold of austerity to the fear and isolation of pandemic, from the resurgence of fascism and genocide to the increasingly evident and catastrophic impact of humans on the natural environment, this is a decade of power and fear.
What is the impact on minds, on bodies, of living in such a present? What fractures, what fragments, what is lost? Psychotherapist Francis Weller is also clear: this present moment is the wild edge of sorrow, a descent into “the unknown, into grief and losses”. In such a time, how might it be possible “to let the creative impulse arise out of the darkness of the soul”?
Over the same decade, Something Other has sought to be a home for such impulses. Across all of the chapters, writers and artists have been practising and learning how to make, hold and engage experiments in writing, sometimes in writing and performance, with the thickness of the now. What does it mean to be part of a critical culture in the midst of shifting crises? What might we want to reclaim, to unlearn, or to reshape in the hold, force and power of ‘experiment’ in relation to writing, in its ecology-crossing? From poetic experiments to performative interventions, prose, art and performance writing, sonic and video essays, we have been finding ways to hold space for writing in and of the margins. What is the present moment, and how might it also shape futures in these precarious times? What does it mean for writing to shift across contexts, and what does it take to sustain it?
This is a call for rituals of now, for thinking these questions anew, adjacent to what we might discern in the now. In a British context, where spirituality is treated with suspicion, it’s easy to feel wary of ritual. And yet, as sociologist Dimitris Xygalatas argues, rituals “imbue our lives with meaning”; ritual “helps us connect, find meaning and discover who we are”. The grief rituals Weller hosts are invitations to “engage grief and suffering”, to share “cumulative sorrow” in ways that enable “an opening” to occur: that “breaks the heart open to joy and delight”. And across the world there are cultures that understand that through ritual, people co-create society.
And so, for our fourteenth chapter, Something Other invites you to a ritual of grief, suffering, joy, delight: not led by another, not already existent, but new, created by you, for all of us.
What are the components of ritual? What repetitions, movements, sounds, evocations might a ritual inspire or require? How might you invite others into an act of ritual? What inner shift or outer ripple might you hope to support?
The chapter will be preceded by a live gathering in London, a collective event in which each ritual is shared and embraced in ways that might meet, in Xygalatas’s words, the “primordial, deep-seated human needs” for each other, and for hope. Performances will be curated from the submissions by Something Other, in dialogue with the selected artists, and the event will be held at a private studio in Vauxhall, London, on Thursday 19th November.
All submissions for Chapter Fourteen: On Ritual should be submitted via this form
We welcome submissions in a wide range of forms: text, image, video, sound, digital experiments. Please bear in mind our publishing platform is WordPress, and we are working with its general constraints.
Further details can be found in our editorial policy. Please submit by Sunday 6 September 2026.
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