Editors Note

Volume 1, Issue 4

David London

 

I want to begin by talking about my process when working on this publication. After collecting the essays, I read them and edit them. They all get copied and pasted (in no particular order) into a Word document, at which point I look over the entire collection and develop a concept for the cover. Once I have the cover design in front of me, I write the editor’s note, place the essays in a pleasing order and go to print.

 

I’ve had almost all the essays for this issue collected for several months now. They had been edited and placed in the Word Document. I had looked over the entire collection and begun to think about the cover. But with this issue, here is where things departed from the norm. It wasn’t even that no good  ideas were emerging, rather that no ideas at all were springing forth.

 

At this point, I feel it is important to give you a bit of back story so that you don’t think I have been simply staring at the computer screen for several months now, wondering what to do. April and May were two of those months where time seems to speed by and stand still at the same time. I was scheduled to present a lecture before Rick Maue’s lecture, on the Double D Lecture Tour. Rick ended up regretfully injured and unable to travel, so Arthur Trace stepped up to fill in, and come June, we were on the road                   lecturing in 9 cities across the Midwest, in 10 days. Accordingly, during the months leading up to this, I found myself surrounded with work to do, and often, without recollection, work that had somehow been completed.

 

This magazine was in the mix to be completed then, but as my departure time grew nearer and nearer, it became clear that my creative juices were flowing elsewhere. That being said, I assured myself that when I return in mid-June, my first task would be the finalizing of what you now hold in your hands. When the time came, I knew that my manuscripts would be complete, the tour would be over, and my energies could be focused at the singular task at hand. Not the case.

 

Once again I found myself stuck when it came to developing the cover. With the tendency of being slightly rigid when it comes to topics such as my creative process, I found it rather difficult to move forward without completing the step before.

 

I decided to do what I often do in these situations… call Rick Maue. After clearly expressing my dilemma and the root of the problem, he quickly retorted with one of those suggestions he always seems to be surprised I listen to, not to mention, actually follow through on. “Leave it blank,” he said half- jokingly. And with that statement, a cover was born.

 

Despite the overwhelming appeal of a cover with nothing, the conversation did not end there, for now it came time to discuss the logistics. What ensued was one of those conversations that makes you wish you carried a tape recorder with you at all times.

 

At the beginning, the questions seemed simple. Should the blank space have a border? Should the name of the magazine still appear on the front? What about the back?

 

Before long, it became quite apparent that these questions had far deeper implications than simple logistics and mere aesthetics. Suddenly, we found ourselves amidst a discussion of nothingness. Not the Seinfeld sort of nothingness, but rather the nothingness that mystics speak of. I know this thought may bring shivers down Rick’s spine, but alas, what are friends for?

 

Questioning whether the blank cover should have a border around it soon turned in to thought about what happens when you try to isolate nothingness. Does nothingness need something to contrast it in order to exist? Wouldn’t a border or a name destroy the very nothing that nothingness is made of? Could it be that nothing is the only path to everything?

 

I am generally not one to let a new concept of interest simply pass me by. Since that phone call, I have had conversations with many of my closest friends and colleagues regarding the empty box and the blank cover. Accordingly, my ideas about nothingness have expanded exponentially. In terms of the cover of this magazine, the opinions I encountered are strong, but vary greatly. In the end, I believe I now have enough thought in place to stand by the decision to leave the cover completely blank, and now, having completed this essay, I am ready to finish the magazine.

 

Enjoy!