Letter from the Editors: Flight Risk
Ho Lin
Certain utterances seem to stick in the mind for reasons unknown. When acting great Max von Sydow recently passed away, our first thoughts didn’t drift to Ingmar Bergman, or The Exorcist, or even Strange Brew. Instead, it was an exchange from Three Days of the Condor (a movie that grows more prescient with each passing day), in which von Sydow, playing a remorseless professional assassin, provides Robert Redford with some practical escape advice. “Personally, I prefer Europe,” he says. Ever the true-blue American with a conscience, Redford responds: “I would find it… tiring.” “Oh no,” von Sydow chuckles. “It's quite restful. It's almost peaceful. No need to believe in either side, or any side. There is no cause. There's only yourself. The belief is in your own precision.”
Whether your idea of an ideal retreat is the Continent, an undiscovered quadrant of the globe, or just another corner of your neighborhood, any talk of Europe (and all its imaginary variants), sides, causes, or even self-reliance currently seems as distant and silly as a dream. In the age of COVID-19, there’s nowhere to hide, much less retreat. As politicians jockey for position, maps and statistics portend doom, salvation or the great indefinable in-between, and citizens dig in or look to bust out based on prefabricated viewpoints (Is this all fake news? Or just the tip of the iceberg?), we’ve been left to our own distancing: hunkered down, in stasis, jobless, motionless, our homes more like mausoleums than domiciles as we cast a wary eye towards an invisible virus, the perfect virtual enemy for our hopelessly virtual age.
It’s incumbent upon us not to make blanket statements during this crisis—or at the very least, not disregard others’ suffering. But dare we get a bit presumptuous here and say that as artists, this is all in our wheelhouse? Toiling away in isolation and obscurity? Check. Seeking refuge in our own thoughts, our own senses of time and place? Naturellement. Observing the turns of the earth and transmuting life into imagination? Still at it. And no war, invisible or otherwise, will stop us.
Not that such reckonings are free of discomfort. Adam Cohen, who runs the Winning Writers website (a respected and recommended resource for poet and writer contests), kicked off an email update with a controversial subject line: “Coronavirus got you stuck inside? Enter writing contests!” A bit crass in intent, to be sure—Cohen was roundly criticized, resulting in an almost immediate apology. Still, we nervously raise our hand and say that Mr. Cohen has a point. Stuck inside—what else are we going to do? People are dying, nations are fumbling, and by most accounts the Way Things Are will see irrevocable change. Civilizations under duress: primetime for artists.
It’s been said (not by us) that art is essentially valueless yet priceless; we submit that in strange times like these, the production of art might be the only thing worth a damn. We’re pleased to offer numerous items of priceless value in this issue, custom-made for these unusual days. Our photo gallery captures life during virus-time, while poet Richelle Slota, artist Michael Kerbow and filmmaker Waylan Bacon look at the whimsical side of apocalypse. On a more contemplative note, Joseph David Witkowski’s stark film “Quarantine” locates the ache at the center of isolation. While much of this issue was assembled prior to the pandemic, many entries find resonances with our current predicament, from our own Christopher Bernard’s trio of poems about existence on the brink of collapse or change, to Alexandra Karam’s poetry about beauty discovered in lost pasts and tumultuous presents, and D.G. Zorich’s anticipation of a swerve in the weather, and beyond. The awkward conversations in Holly Day’s “Quiet Day” are representative of our New Normal, while the roughhouse interactions in Thomas McGonigle’s “The Glacial Carnival” now seem like fond transmissions from another era.
It’s no longer just Caveat Lector, reader beware—now it’s Caveat Terra. But while this globe is still spinning, and as long as the electricity holds up, you’ll find all of us here, imagining our own private getaways, committing them to text and image and sound. Stay safe, fellow imagineers, and we’ll meet you in Europe.
Ho Lin is co-editor of Caveat Lector, and author of China Girl, published by Regent Press. For more on his work, visit www.holinauthor.com.
Image: Ho Lin