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  • Home
  • About
    • Mission
    • Meet the Team >
      • Partners
    • Contributors + Recognition
    • Press + Updates
    • Resources >
      • Black Lives Matter
      • Indigenous Resources
  • Projects
    • Documentary
    • Previous Events
  • Musings
  • Submit
    • Staff Applications
  • Issues
    • Issue 16 - Entropy
    • Issue 15 - Allure
    • Issue 14 - Isolation
    • Issue 13 - Best of 19
    • Issue 12 - Retrospect
    • Issue 11 - Hunger
    • Issues 1-10
  • Contact
    • FAQ

Editor's Statement

Hey there,

I won’t try to weave some cliche about friction (it’s hard to move an object without it, etc.). But I will acknowledge its inevitability and necessity in art and the other aspects of our lives.

Tolstoy once wrote, “happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” But paradoxically, when it comes to art, this individuality implied in ‘unhappiness’ unifies us. Of course, associating unhappiness with friction is a somewhat flawed connection, but we’ll just assume that friction implies unhappiness.

But very frequently, it is in this tension(/friction/unhappiness) that we (at the risk of a cliche I’m trying to hard to avoid) find a reason to examine and create art. Of course, art can’t be grouped into “happy” and “unhappy” pieces, and neither can families. But with art, I almost always view profundity and friction as Siamese twins: inseparable and symbiotic. All of my poetry comes from friction, as mentioned in the March issue.

Per Frank Ocean’s words: “when you’re happy, you enjoy the music, but when you’re sad, you understand the lyrics.”

Does friction imply understanding? Not necessarily, but perhaps it heralds a sort of connection that artists (or at least I - I don’t want to speak for anyone else) have been trying to create since who knows when.

But I don’t feel like unnecessarily prolong this editor’s statement. As usual, a huge thanks goes to our readers, contributors, and staff. We sincerely enjoyed these pieces and we hope you do as well. Happy reading!

- Ana Chen, Founder and Editor-in-Chief
​Poetry
​Blog Posts
​Visual Arts
​Performing Arts
​Issue#4 - Friction
Copyright © 2020 by It's Real Magazine. ​All Rights Reserved.
ISSN 2688-8335, United States Library of Congress.
publ. Bellevue, Washington.
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