O Equador das Coisas #2

jornal de literatura e arte
número 2 | issue 2 | mai-jun 2012

« La littérature [ou l’art elle-même] sert à nous éclairer sur le monde en ses multiples états, à nous en révéler les hideurs et les splendeurs, les astres et les désastres, à nous faire comprendre sa logique et ses contradictions, à nous faire sentir sa cruauté et sa tendresse... »

Hubert Nyssen, in Mais à quoi donc sert la littérature?

It can’t be more joyous when you have your life replete with literature and art, their pieces of madness, their flaps of delicacy; tormented lines and pages, even simplest emotions and sounds and such an imagery about to disclose or keep in everlasting secrete all the trash or all the wonder you – and your existent or fictionized Others – may be blown away with in life…

Joyous and marvelous if you are endowed with art both pulsation and vividness coursing through your veins, making you flute with them, and resigned to enriching the myopic-limited vision you have – of the world and of every single gesture or murmur from persons and personas you are barely familiar with… in your… frenzied tick-tack fragments of days…  

For what it’s worth in our very “contemporary times” or just for those who’d rather dress up to take part in this or that “bombastic, spectacular episode”, and whatsoever, literature [art, itself] does serve a purpose, for it has a preponderant role. Not a $-plin-plin “function” as it’s instilled in many atoms of ours, but a role… Art has a sensible undisciplined role… So that it plays the misfit part of that dormant [yet existent] spark inside us over those nights of disgusting exhaustion over whatever that brings us drops by drops of sweat, rather than uniqueness. Art plays the captivating part of that footloose reminiscence we may bring back to heart in dawns of desperation or solitude… or just insanity, one of that sprounting from our so beating discombobulated moments…

So if it’s really possible to say that literature and art serve a purpose, there’s nothing more touching and true than this everything – as exact as beautiful – said once by the fine scholar, Hubert Nyssen, during a magnificent speech at l’Université de Liége, in Belgium: “literature [art itself] serves to enrich our vision about the world, shedding light on its multiple states; it serves to disclose the world's horrors and splendors, its asters and disasters; to make us understand its reasons and contradictions; and to let us sense its crudeness and lightness…”

My so zigzag words today, dear friends and partners in this amazing crime – literature and art – serve a purpose as well… I’m [over-]honored to bring you, even through these misfit words of mine ever, the issue #2 of our O Equador das Coisas, a project for a journal of literature and arts we came up with in the beginning of this year… even in times of too many screens and their much more enticing spectacles…  

When I say I’m extremely honored, I refer to a double preponderant reason: to contribute to spark the interest of others in this vital field – literature and art – which has been enlightening my own twisted life’s forward motion my childhood now; and especially because in this issue we were beautifully blessed by so many sensitive, talented artists who still believe, like ourselves, in the redemptive power of art.

Our most special acknowledgments to Miki Turner, this so talented photographer who generously accepted to enrich the pages of our journal with her pictures and words; to poet Mike Meraz, and his “asphalt pains and verses that dream flowers", brilliantly sellected and introduced by our poet-editor Karime Limon; to the wondrous IARA FERNANDES, and her delicious "tracing-in-zigzag" short story; to the fabulous TATIANA CARLOTTI, and her intriguing, captivating story on such an ordinary woman with her misadventures sprounting from her "crushed" eveyday life; to writer SARA RAUCH, whose words are nothing but that enchanting everything which gravitates around all us making us contemplate the delicious side of a brilliant creative writing; to poet Ricardo Rother, and his incredible post-traumatic strokes and verses; to the amazing CLÁUDIA LEMOS, whose story gave us the gift to step into a very sublime literary encounter, between creators and their creatures, their personas somewhat close and distant from ourselves; to the major fictionist LISA ALVES, whose writing we had the honor to feature once again, for it beats all inside us, and it pulses so beautifully, so rhythmically within; to the brilliant Ana Lúcia Sorrentino, with her terrific “casual lovers, stimulating desperations”; to Uianatan Alecrim, whose first-part short story on the pages of the first issue grew in new contours and climaxes, and had its upshot in this second one; and to all our readers, supporters, appreciators… partners in this wonderful crime of still believing in art and helping us to reverberate it all over…

Tim-tim!