Alisa Clements is the author of All at Once, a novel that invites readers to new heights of awareness by leading them nowhere and everywhere at once. The Midwest Review praised Clements' exploration of "the boundaries of the imagination," and indeed, the boundaries between fiction and reality blur when her protagonists attempt to 'logon' to the far-out 'Outernet' for a meeting of the minds. You can read an excerpt of the novel here.Clements decided at age seven that she would be a writer when she grew up, but this vocation was eclipsed in college by the exploration of other media, primarily electronic music. As a student at Harvard University, she became a teaching assistant in the electronic music studio and stayed on after graduation, later taking the role of studio manager.She then entered the Studio for Interrelated Media program at the Massachusetts College of Art to pursue her interests in experimental music, performance, and film. Upon receiving her MFA degree, she became an instructor at the college, teaching classes in electronic sound composition. Her experience in this field―as a performer, composer, and teacher―enters into All at Once in the guise of arcane facts about the effects of audio stimuli on human consciousness.After a journey that has spanned several professions and countries, including thirteen years spent in Bahia, in northeastern Brazil, Alisa now lives in the Sirius intentional community in the woods of Western Massachusetts.
"All at Once is a bit like the syncretic cults that enter its plot.
Past and present, feminine and masculine, mysticism and modernity
intermingle and recompose under a thickening menace. The story is
constructed through the fragmentary perceptions of the characters,
some of which are able to access a reality that subsumes our own.
Sound is always present, infusing the settings.... Alisa Clements
is a specialist in the dissection of vibrations. An enthusiastic
explorer of the psychoacoustic terrain and fan of the music of
ordinary sounds, she has studied, composed, performed and taught
experimental and electronic music, first as teaching assistant and
manager of the Harvard Electronic Music Studio under the direction
of Ivan Tcherepnin, then as instructor at the Massachusetts College
of Art, giving classes in electronic music, installations, and the
polygamous marriage of sound, movement, and image."-Afrikadaa, p.
268 POLITICS OF SOUND"The boundaries of human imagination are
explored in Alisa Clements's intelligent fantasy novel ALL AT ONCE.
Clements presents two romantic triangles, centuries apart, whose
participants all share psychic abilities beyond the norm. Much of
this beautifully written novel centers on the story of Josephine, a
scholar researching native religious practices in a more or less
modern-day Brazil, and her encounters with a group of people,
rebels against the government, who seem to have harnessed their
psychic powers in a manner that promises great things for humanity
but threatens the power structure. How Clements connects the dots
between the two fraught relationships is just one of the rewards of
this clever and entertaining book."-Midwest Book Review"Love
triangles, international adventure, psychic awareness, evil plans
for world domination. All at Once will not let you put it down! A
beautifully rendered novel."-Faulkner Fox, author, Dispatches from
a Not-So-Perfect Life
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