“PERIODICALS”: Just People (Issue One)

The first issue is called “Just People” and it is inspired from a quote by George Sands in the preface to her novel, The Haunted Pool:

 

“ALBERT DURER, MICHEL ANGELO, HOLBEIN, CALLOT, AND GOYA HAVE MADE POWERFUL SATIRES UPON THE ILLS OF THEIR TIMES AND THEIR COUNTRIES. THEIRS ARE IMMORTAL WORKS, HISTORICAL PAGES OF INCONTESTABLE VALUE. WE DO NOT WISH TO DENY ARTISTS THE RIGHT TO PROBE THE SORES OF SOCIETY AND TO REVEAL THEM TO OUR EYES, BUT IS THERE NOT SOMETHING TO DO NOW OTHER THAN TO PAINT PICTURES WHICH APPALL AND THREATEN? IN THIS LITERATURE OF THE MYSTERIES OF INIQUITY, WHICH TALENT AND IMAGINATION HAVE MADE THE FASHION, WE PREFER THE GENTLE, SWEET CHARACTERS TO THE DRAMATIC VILLAINS. THE FORMER CAN UNDERTAKE AND ACCOMPLISH CONVERSIONS, THE LATTER TERRIFY; AND FEAR DOES NOT CURE EGOTISM, IT INCREASES IT." [1846]

 

This first issue of Periodicals is dedicated to each contributor and each reader. I hope these pieces of expression find themselves in the pleasure amongst strangers. I remember a moment when I was about three and half years old. I had a best friend that I adored. I remember one day that a new girl started and my best friend said to me, out of the blue, she said to me: “I want to be best friends with the new girl now.” And I was only three and half years old and so was she. I felt so sad, a pitiful feeling of rejection and loneliness filled me and I felt lost. I went to the reading corner because I didn’t know what else to do, I didn’t really have any other friends. I got told off by the teacher because it wasn’t scheduled reading corner time. I went to the bathroom and I remember crying a little. That afternoon, I didn’t have a best friend anymore, and we had to draw sunflowers. We had to draw them with our fingertips. I focused too much on the middle of the flower and instinctively, I used my finger tips to make small sad petals. The teaching assistant told me I wasn’t doing it right and she tried to show me but I didn’t want to do it like that. She never put the picture up with the others…… But after all, they were just people. A best friend who saw her opportunity to make new friends. A teacher who judged the better sunflowers. And then people inevitably get left behind. But there is value and beauty in the left behind. It reminded me of the film Sunflower by De Sica. It reminded me of my aunt's funeral when I was about 2 and I wore a hat and dress with sunflowers on it. How did that teacher know my relationship to a sunflower? “Draw a better sunflower Lucy! Draw a better one!”

 

I hope you enjoy the trailer, and a big thanks to Elizabeth Short for providing me with technical video making assistance. Thanks to Beth Wilkinson for her singing voice on the trailer too.

Good Press, Glasgow, Scotland, UK

Greenhouse Books, Manchester, England, UK