On Not Waiting for Permission
by the Editor
The truly great, truly fun thing about the Exterminating Angel Press online magazine (aka playground) for me is that it does just what it was meant to do in the first instance: work as a small magnet for people of like minds, no matter what age or background or level of professional expertise. And not matter what profession, too. What I really love to see when stuff comes in over the virtual transom is people who don't wait for permission to say what they see right in front of them. What I really like is people who don't wait for permission to exercise their skills and creativity out there on the tarmac.
And what I really, really, really like to see is young people behaving like that.
Mind you, I'm not talking about the kind of person who feels entitled to express her/his innermost feelings and have them instantly approved by an admiring audience. I'm not talking about the kind of person who has little or no empathy for the people she/he is trying desperately to impress. Boy, am I not talking about those people (and I'm getting a little better at spotting them immediately these days…those careerist writers masquerading as heart torn progressives). I'm talking about the writers and artists— and people who don't even think of themselves as writers and artists but who are, just the same—who feel no one's saying what they are, and so they might as well get to saying it. And if no one listens, well, anyway, they've done their job. And will keep doing it too.
There's a kind of modesty in that I like. A gracefulness. The kind of thing that is a better answer to the PT Barnums and Donald Trumps and similar of the world than any amount of bitter riposte.
What I really like is that not waiting for permission thing.
We've got a bunch of new contributors who found us here and there on the highway, who didn't wait for permission. Marissa Bell Toffoli has a lovely website, Words With Writers, and EAP met her when she interviewed a bunch of us for it. She didn't wait for permission; she just up and did it. And she doesn't wait for permission to be a poet, either. The poem she sent us this issue is one of EAP's favorites.
(And I'm reminded of another poet, a Russian, who was on trial in Soviet Russia. Asked by the judge, 'Just who gave you permission to be a poet?', he shrugged: 'I don't know. God?')
I loved Jody Harmon's SUNVILLE TIMES , too, which we'll put up in its entirety, bit by bit. It's another EAP Fairy Tale for Adults of All Ages, and what I particularly like about it is it doesn't bother thinking it is impractically idealistic to demand a better world right now.
And Patrick McGann is right: Radio Girl Says What Matters .
And thanks, Margaret and Marie , for A Lesbian with Money ! Everyone needs to be reminded that groups that are marginalized by the mainstream are just as human and have just as many problems as everyone else. In other words, we're all in this business of righting ourselves, our relationships, and our world, all together now. Well, anything less and we're just not gonna make it. It's too big a job.
Welcome back.