Change keeps coming, more furiously than ever, but the best things, often — usually — are the things that stay the same. Change can be invigorating, but it’s also bewildering, enervating. Arts and letters hold up, and that has surely been a comfort to readers through every perplexing change of tides.
We believe in striking out boldly, grappling with the great and sometimes terrible unknowns. We not only anticipate that rocks will be hurled at us sometime in the near future, we even weirdly kind of like it. We like it not for what it feels like when it’s happening but for what it does for us, to us, for where it takes us, when all is said and done. “All human nature vigorously resists grace,” Flannery O’Connor tells us, “because grace changes us and the change is painful.”
Change is good. Except when it isn’t. Inherent to the process is struggle, and sometimes we get tired. Good lit is the balm of Gilead to weary web-crawlers wired up on too much social media, on those rarer and rarer occasions when we can pry ourselves away.
To better acquaint you with Change Seven in the coming weeks, Tony and I thought we’d give you a sense of the immutable works that have held a sort of soothing spell over us, year after year. Works that still settle our rankled nerves, even in these unpluggable days of trying to keep pace.
We’ll also tell you what’s currently thrilling us out there in the small press and lit world. Stuff so edgy and fresh, it scares and delights and inspires us with its boldness.
Stay tuned… Change is coming.
Change Seven Magazine 