Letter from the Editor

Hello Earthlings,

Since our last issue things have only degraded further in the world. And yet for some of us, privileged enough to keep waking up, it all just keeps going–though that movement forward is often a sensation like a ball rolling faster and faster down a hill. It is hard to imagine doing anything, much less finding time to make something new or beautiful. Adding any plates to the ones we already have spinning (if we have any that are still precariously balanced) seems impossible. Talking with friends, I find that we are all losing the ability to focus or get by, much less find delight or joy. So then I ask, where are the spaces that allow us either to escape a little or to work through? Many of the coping mechanisms I and those around me have curated in our lives end up co-opted by productivity or tossed into a dusty corner to be forgotten altogether. Most of us have lost the ability to do a thing without worrying about it being perfect, productive, worthwhile, meaningful.

The Kismet team had the chance to attend ICFA (the International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts) this year and at this lovely and historic conference we had the pleasure of widening our community a little more. We met the folks from Studies in the Fantastic, we met new readers of the magazine, new potential contributors, and above all just a bunch of new friends. At the conference I got to hear Sam J. Miller read a piece he wrote for the conference (spoiler: he very kindly let us publish the piece here in this issue). Sam talked about how he had been having trouble writing in a way that wasn’t bleak so he had started challenging himself to write these lovely pieces of micro-fiction that exuded hope. To just put pen to paper each day and put some joy back in the art. More recently, this year R.F. Kuang did an event here in Indiana with Wild Geese Bookshop in Franklin that I was able to attend. She talked to the audience about her visual art. Yes, R.F. Kuang does all her great writing, but on the side she draws chunky little birds and other things, just for herself to do art for art’s sake. She said that this was in an effort to try and use her outlet of art in a way that wasn’t production based.

One of the few things we can claim as a good thing here in Indiana is Kurt Vonnegut. During his career, he had many a thing to say about art, creativity, and community. I think, though, my favorite moment and quote of his go hand-in-hand from when an elementary school class wrote a letter to him and he very kindly wrote back. In his reply, he wrote

Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.

The first time I heard this quote, I was struck by the simplicity in its truth and I have worked to share it as broadly as I can since. The part of Vonnegut’s letter that I think about a lot these days is a little homework assignment he gave to the class. He told them to write a poem, a short little poem, and then rather than turn it into the teacher he told the kids to

… tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces, and discard them into widely separated trash receptacles. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow.

We have forgotten in some ways that there is a vital importance in making art, even if you just do it for yourself and then tear it all up.

Often these days, the spaces, the people, the objects, the books, the art that we enjoy gets co-opted by the machine. It grinds it all to a pulp and leaves us with nothing to help make life worth living still. The Kismet team has had the immense privilege of getting to collaborate with folks in our community to make something together. Quite often the friends we have wrangled into doing this project with us haven’t written for fun or done art for pleasure in a long while. It has been very rewarding to hear from these friends that they enjoyed having an outlet for a bit while writing a review or thinking up a piece. Finding an outlet again, and the space to utilize that outlet, is a treasure.

The pieces in this issue revolve around doing things together with your community. Creating a small little newspaper to keep the people in your day to day life aware of what’s going on with each other like happens in “The True Things Archive” or dancing your ass off and then hanging up protest flyers around town like in part 1 of “The Underground Gardeners.” This issue is full of art, finding meaning, beauty, community, and deep appreciation for how those things connect us. Making things with other people is a good medicine for the weariness of the world. Let this issue be a rallying cry: Go make community! Go make something be it art, food, music, a garden, or whatever! Or, go make both at the same time!

…end transmission.

In Community, 

M. J. Woods

Editor-in-Chief

Reading List: 

If you would like to connect this issue with the larger world of writing here is our suggested reading list. This is a mix of things that were mentioned in the issue and also other works with similar themes.

• Grievers series by adrienne maree brown
• Amplitudes Stories of Queer and Trans Futurity edited by Lee Mandelo
• The Surrender of Man by Namoi Falk
• Mutual Aid by Dean Spade
• Wayfarer series by Becky Chambers
• To the Young Who Want to Die by Gwendolyn Brooks
• Lucky Mud and Other Foma by Christina Jarvis
• Idolfire by Grace Curtis
• Lucky Day by Chuck Tingle