Well, this is new ...

Usually (read: every time) when we request interviews, we’re the ones doing the interviewing. The interview itself often becomes more conversational; in fact, I hope it does. But what appears in Penumbric is mostly about the interviewee—I don’t figure you come here to find out about me. Yet when we approached artist toeken about being interviewed, he asked that he get to interview me at the same time. And, well, I accepted. And then wondered how far under the rocks I could hide.

He asked really good questions, though, and so very un-hermit-crab-like I came out of my shell (or would that make me more hermit-crab-like?). I like to think I asked some good questions, too, and hopefully what we ended up with is in fact something you do find interesting—besides, toeken’s art is featured throughout, and that is always a good thing.

February’s Penumbric is full of great work, albeit not really as part of one theme (even accidentally, unless you’re the sort who can connect dots that probably aren’t even there ... which I sometimes am lol). So how do we go about putting together an issue without an overall theme? Honestly, usually there’s still a flow to it, still some sort of unconscious connectivity in the way we select works for an issue, at least in sections. For February, Don Raymond’s “The Feast of the Shepherd” ties in some sense (without giving too much away) with Cat Scully’s The Summoning and to Nnadi Samuel’s “The Earth Never Forgets,” and further (thematically? Perhaps in this case) to Rekha Valliappan’s “The Mirror Effect.” “Coalescence” by Anne Carly Abad flows into Fariel Shafee’s Drowning and, in some small way, to Jay Caselberg’s “Syntax.” I would say this perhaps acts as a bridge to Max Sheridan’s “The City,” Denny E. Marshall’s The Outpost, and thence to Avra Margariti’s “Neon Vandals.” Peter J. King’s “Heading for Home” acts as a kind of crossroads between these and Karen Mandall’s “The Edge of Doom.” I admit we have a bit of a break for Christina Sng’s art series “Ironies” and “Pleasant Valley” by Nick Scorza—a break into the strange, really, perhaps an X-Files sort of break, but this leads into the transformative with Marge Simon’s Woman/Wolf and Andrew Dunn’s “Hand-Me-Down Days,” and maybe into both transformative and strange in Garrett Rowlan’s “Target with Four Faces.” You’ll see how The Emerging Man by Carl Scharwath and Jessa Forest’s “The Promise” tie together when you get to them, although to me this was a visual tie more than a thematic one, along with John Grey’s “Great Beast” at the end. Well, near the end ... Jesper Nordqvist's Mondo Mecho is kind of its own thing, as always.

OK, so yes, there’s the evidence that I’m one of those “connecting the dots” types. As you go through this issue, or any issue, you may find none of these connections works for you. Or you may find it such an amazing linkage that you’re sure there’s a secret message wound throughout. (I wish ... it would be secret even from me.) Hopefully, though, we’ve succeeded in at least not jarring you from the stories, the poetry, the art as you wander through, immersed in one great image after another. Our work is to show off these pieces, already great in and of themselves, without detracting from them; a sort of train moving between different dreams of different worlds. Hopefully we’ve done that.

All the best here in these chaotic times,

Jeffrey Georgeson
Managing Editor
Penumbric