I’m writing to you on a day that is dappled with sun. Just ahead of the solar eclipse, beams glint off the cars outside my window, warm my skin through the glass. It’s been a fickle spring—cold and rainy where I am, most of the time. Spring is sun hoped-for, and this one thus far has been an interstice during which I take what scarce light I can get. But on days like today, I am reminded that sun is not something we’re at the mercy of, but something more abundant than we remember. 

This issue feels like trying to photograph the sun: catching flashes of it bouncing off of objects, and visions, and sounds—receiving telegrams across space. Missives of dailiness: a bright voicemail from a loved one held close, a scrawled note by snail mail sprayed with cologne, or left on the nightstand letting a love know you’ll be right back bearing breakfast. “Sending My Love” by Zhané, blasting out of a passing car. When the central theme of Issue Five began to emerge, it became clear to us that these works were inscribing new ways of seeing and hearing, recording, and transmitting. And yet we must respect that while we can attempt the picture, the subject itself isn’t ours to own, only to hold. Contributor Shanita Bigelow says it better than I can, in her poem, “Uphill”: 

I wanted to stop/along the road, felt the need to take a picture of the scene, but it was not for the taking. Held,/a flash, only in memory now, the heron and the woman, all that blue against/murk of pond, destabilizing, uncut grasses.

As artists, the fact that meaning is elusive is obvious, but does not stop our meaning-making. And thank god. Like contributor Michael Betancourt’s visual approximations of passed-by lettering that refused to cohere, this work sheds light on new language, on discrete lines that say something different, take us beyond. 

Quite literally, the word heliograph means sun-writing. And we come to the living room again and again, to use sun as our medium and material. We write with it, hear it, see it, catch glimpses of it. We let it bake into us and share it with each other. Solstice has passed and there’s more of it now. The moon will cover day for just a moment today, making light that much more palpable. The world is darker than ever, which calls on us to invent better methods of solidarity as best we can. At the same time, sun is starting to feel less hard to come by in some ways. Slowly, we can emerge and gather again—in protest, in praise, everything coming into focus, into sharper relief. 

With all the love in the world,

KAC

April 2024

Abundant thanks to my co-editors on this issue: Rowen Aster and Logan Ward.