EDITORIAL

Years ago, I began the editorial piece for another journal of art and poetry I edited for the Johns Hopkins University Press, with a reflection about Jorge Luis Borges. My opinion about literature, art, and ideas has stayed the same. Thus, it is valid to write these reflections again, but differently. After all, this is what art (and all disciplines) is: a redescription of a redescription of a redescription, ad infinitum.

In his story titled “The Book of Sand”, Borges writes, "[t]he line is made up of an infinite number of points; the plane of an infinite number of lines; the volume of an infinite number of planes; the hypervolume of an infinite number of volumes… No, unquestionably this is not, more geometrico, the best way to begin my story. Nowadays, to claim truth is the convention of every fictional story”.

The Argentine writer was fond of questioning the essence of truth and reality, perhaps because he suspected that nothing is true or real, but only a collection of arbitrary definitions within a specific language game. In the case above, mathematical language. He went as far as suggesting that universal history is the history of a few metaphors, or more specifically the history of the different intonations of a few metaphors.

An artist is a reader of what we call reality, but a reader gone mad, a mischievous reader, an impertinent reader, a reader who sees everything in a way that is unfamiliar to most and who produces work that forces us to look at reality twice and allow ourselves to be surprised by the obvious.

And with these words, I am pleased to introduce the work of four exceptional readers of reality who have gone mad. The talented writer Philip Casey, whom I met through another writer, Michael Augustin, and we stayed in touch until his last days on this reality. He understood the apparent weaknesses of modern society and denounced them through metaphorical language. He also saw the beauty of humanity, the magical sense of light, and the genius of innocence. Alexey Titarenko, who knows the essence of language is a set of signs that stand for something else, a metaphor for a certain reality, and creates a universal history of modernity, with a multiplicity of effects produced by bleaching and toning and helps us immerse in a world of dreams, where everything is easier to see and understand. Ben Osborne, a photographer with a clear idea of how light affects our perceptions of reality, and through manipulating light, masterfully makes us see the obvious in civilization and nature, which otherwise remains hidden. And the multimedia artist and painter Robin Jack Sarner, whose work invites us to enter the realms of color and light allowing us to discover our-selves and learn those of others in a medium where we feel we belong.

It is a privilege to read the readings of reality of so many artists and choose to publish those that I like because they speak to me in a way I understand.

I am confident that you will find the selections in this issue inviting and reflexive.

Jorge R. G. Sagastume

Editor