:: Editor’s Note: 

Thank you, Writer. 

Or

“Sorry, you caught me at a time when I couldn’t pick a way to think about the world.” :: 

 

I wrote three ear­li­er ver­sions of this editor’s note: one that start­ed in July and end­ed with Berry­man, anoth­er described my sum­mer as Flocked-Filled  and Slog­gy, and the third was delet­ed before I even got to the Why Lit­er­a­ture part. 

Over some iced Amer­i­canos extract­ed from what claimed to be Eth­i­cal­ly Sourced sin­gle ori­gin beans, I try to explain what a lit­er­a­ture jour­nal is. It’s kin­da like a book. But with work by a lot of peo­ple. And like, Yeah some are print but ours is online, I say, to some­one who I bare­ly know but who shares the inten­tion or at least the hope of spend­ing a life together.

 

*

There are two the­o­ries on writ­ing. One says writ­ing is inher­ent­ly a Self­ish act and says the writer spends their life­time com­ing up with a hun­dred new ways to say Look at me! 

On a press tour for “The End of the Tour” a bio­graph­i­cal film on David Fos­ter Wal­lace, Jason Segel describes writ­ing as “So much time alone, so much time say­ing, No I can’t meet you for din­ner.” 

My day job has me sit­ting at the head of the table. Makes me the guy who has to take off Late points to remind the stu­dents It’s not the writer but The speak­er. And where the great­est work­place haz­ard is always view­ing writ­ing as some­thing to be Fixed. So to remind us what lit­er­a­ture can be:

              when the leaves on the trees begin to bronze, Look it is fall  (Edson).

              And when it’s mid-semes­ter and we need it: This is peace and con­tent­ment (Cope). 

              And when it’s grad­u­a­tion sea­son and the stu­dents are almost ready to toss their caps into the air and enter “the real world”: Your body told me in a dream it’s nev­er been afraid of any­thing  (Siken). 

And then we are grateful 

for all the missed din­ner reservations. 

 

*

 

Not now, but a while ago: Doja Cat plays in the back­ground. I’m toss­ing a rawhide bone to a gold­en­doo­dle while K tries to explain the dif­fer­ence between ETFs and Mutu­al funds. One is Con­tin­u­ous and the oth­er has a Net Asset Val­ue price. 

Which sets me up to ram­ble about how I think it’s super messed up that we have con­struct­ed a soci­ety in which in order to have a chance to die with some dig­ni­ty we have to invest in com­pa­nies that only view me as an End User and wouldn’t mind me dead. 

Which gar­nered a response like Okay, Pro­fes­sor, Dr. Cho A., but this is the real­i­ty of the situation .

Which of course made me think of the one that went  I’ve nev­er felt fur­ther away from anoth­er than stand­ing beside them try­ing to point out a star  (Lynn). 

 

*

And then there’s a third the­o­ry: in “My Shark”,  Ellie Black’s speak­er pro­claims: “The rad­dest thing I can imag­ine is to be left alone.”. 

And in response I offer writ­ing as an arti­fact of insights that can only be found in the soli­tude of spend­ing time with our inter­nal world(s). 

In the era of com­mod­i­fied atten­tion, of the two-screen prob­lem, as I write this, Yoke Lore plays in my left ear, one tab is open to Wirecutter’s S.A.D. lamp page, anoth­er: “best mod­er­ate dif­fi­cul­ty hik­ing trails near me”, and in my pock­et: a spir­it­ed debate on the fair­ness of trad­ing a back­up quar­ter­back for a kick­er in my long-stand­ing fan­ta­sy foot­ball keep­ers league. 

Which is to say there are many ways to give your brain the small bursts of joy it calls for.  The chal­lenge (says the 30-year-old, with not enough sleep, aug­ment­ed with too much caf­feine) of liv­ing is not find­ing a way to be in the world, but rather find­ing the space to think about the expe­ri­ence of being. 

And when we are for­tu­nate enough to cap­ture col­lec­tive expe­ri­ence and insights on the page: writ­ing becomes a gift to share with an audi­ence of read­ers.

All of which is to say thank you, writer, for the silent time alone you spent inside yourself. 

Till Spring, with grat­i­tude

Sean Cho A.*

EIC

(*with a spe­cial Thank you! to K + L for revi­sion sug­ges­tions on this edi­tor’s note).