EDITOR'S NOTE SETH CANNER

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I suppose it would be right of me to say, “Welcome to the first issue of Projector Magazine” — but, as far as I know, you’ve turned to this page without invitation and have no business being here — a potentially discomforting situation for us both. So, all things considered, I find it appropriate for me to ask instead: “How did you get here?” In reading, there is a choice to pick up a text, to put one’s self in a position to be influenced by its language — driven by some wanting on the part of the reader that a text can never replicate. In writing, the relationship between the writer and the text is equally simple. If one writes to be read by others, the act itself is a form of giving. If one writes for one’s self, the act remains the same. If both public and private writing is a form of giving, we must then ask what it is that’s being given; what it is that the reader must take. If Eliot is right and the writer’s mind is in fact a receptacle for seizing and storing up countless bits of feelings, phrases and images until all the particles which can unite to form a new compound do — then we must say that the writer is giving experience and that the reader wishes to take it. It follows that we must also say that writing, like ourselves, is the product of the acquisition of experience.

    Louise Glück tell us that the one aspiring to be a writer, that is to say, the one wishing to be engaged in the process of writing, goes through various forms of torment: wanting to write, being unable to write, wanting to write differently, being unable to write differently — fill in the blank. However, I find myself asking what happens if we consider Glück’s ‘torments’ as spaces; what happens if we consider ourselves as residing in the spaces between wanting to write and being unable to write, wanting to write differently and being unable to write differently? If we do, it follows that these moments of torment, these in-between spaces, are simply the refractory periods between uniting compounds. Perhaps it becomes beneficial to view these times of difficulty as arid journeys between two creative oases. Though there is an issue with this metaphor — it suggests that the next oasis has already been established, that the creative compounds of the writer’s mind have already united when they have not. Therefore, it becomes of greater benefit to imagine these oases as wadis in dry season, patiently awaiting rain. Thus, there are two facts that come out of this consideration: in arid times there is little consolation other than the fact that rain will eventually come, and, when it does, when our wadis fill, we must drink deeply.

    For its inaugural issue, Projector was privileged with the opportunity to select pieces from an eclectic and extraordinary collection of voices. From that collection we were able to extract various segments of experience, that, as a whole, truly function as a projection of human character, incident and culture. As you take from the following pages, I ask you to ask yourself one thing: “How did you get here?” The state of your invitation aside, I’d like to welcome you to the first issue of Projector Magazine. 

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T.S. Eliot, ’Tradition and the Individual Talent.’

Louise Glück, ‘Education of the Poet.’

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