A Message from our Head Editor
Magic,
Only single words are capable of demonstrating truth because once you start mixing words together they spin out of control, tampering and tempering each other. Fire is boundless, an element to be harnessed and formed into many shapes, but as a single word, it contains the whole of its expression and goes beyond itself to mean everything. A sword of fire has been trapped with questions. Is there a metal blade inside those flames? Will it hurt? When the night comes, will I be strong enough to wield it? This restriction by complexity binds words that mean everything with the ideas we own. When I say “magic”, I mean “magic”, nothing more or less and you are free to consider magic’s meaning on your own terms.
But humans are social creatures. We are not made to be shut in darkness, alone with our thoughts like angels and monsters. Neither are our words (See Virginia Woolf).
Singular words leave you to your truth and me to mine; rightness may sleep here without us stumbling around or shaking it awake, but words were not made for good. That’s not the perfection they seek. Words were made for communication, creation, and, yes, Magic.
Magic originates in language as the form given to something that didn’t exist. Before there were no such means of sharing complex thoughts between one person and another and there was no tool for building beyond your past self. Language is something which manifested where before there was nothing.
In another sense, Language allows for creativity that is clearly seen in mythology and cave paintings, art leading to the present. It is the beginning of the ability to tell stories and see beyond what is right before your eyes and this too is magic.
Magic is anything that you know isn’t real, but exists to you anyway. It leaves glass shards in your lungs and willow fronds growing from your eyes. It’s the words you would put here to describe feelings strong enough to overwhelm the senses.
I think, really, that I am selfish of the dragon egg incubating in my chest. I don’t want anyone to lay their hands on it. I don’t want to watch it hatch, coughing smoke and know someone else corrupted it while I wasn’t looking. I want me to be me and all to be themselves, but I can also see a world where I look at a box of eggshell white walls, no doors, and live there forever. I hold a limp fetal wyrmling in my hands and wait as the fire dies, content that truth was unpervaded.
I want to resist siren song because I’m afraid I’m not any kind of person, that I can so easily be twisted like the words we use, that if I keep putting my feet forward, I won’t know where I’m going, but holding back has done little for love and wonder. Keeping our stars and silver bells to our own ears never made anyone wiser, kinder, or more understanding. It never brought us closer to ringing at the same frequency or seeing the same smiling faces through thin leafed canopies.
Last year we wanted the stories that kept you moving forward, that kept wheels turning and the forge stoked when the hamster blacksmith inside your head wanted to run away to bed. In art, there will always be a portion of how we journey on, but this year we want more than that. Still, we want your itch and echo, but your magic and your life too. The passion and the heat. We want your singular words laced and woven together to create meaning even more than one word can mean. Most importantly, we want the things that you know aren’t real and to believe in them too.
–Joseph
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20160324-the-only-surviving-recording-of-virginia-woolf
