Exercising Agency and Remembering the Rules are all Made Up

The following is the Letter from the Editor featured in Issue 001 of The Reprise. The full magazine can be found at inesmeow.com/magazine.

It must be wildly infuriating for those who have grueled in the publishing and literary industries to watch people like me play at participating while ignoring rules and unspoken etiquette, assuming a right to be here. As a stranger to the “industry,” what right have I to evaluate works and curate what I dare hope is a masterpiece?

Often, I have found myself, at such a young and everything-is-at-your-fingertips age, paralyzed by an inability to take action unless I feel perfectly prepared, qualified, and skilled. This project started with a desire to provide a kind and welcoming platform to artists in all walks of life. For those who’ve never had the privilege of formalizing their art form and making a career of it, and those struggling to find footing amid intimidating barriers to entry. There is only so much time to allow yourself to be beholden to institutional legitimacy before you start actively participating in what’s calling for you.

I refuse to accept that there is one most-correct way to keep your creative life ambitious. Artists without the ‘right’ connections, formal education, or endless time to devote to marketing themselves aren’t any less deserving of an audience. 

Operating within the confines of an automated and capitalized artistic world isn’t the right path for everyone. I never claimed to have a clue; and each of these contributors, from all over the world, wanted to be part of this anyway. What a humbling realization- that there is still room for leaps of faith, even in an overly privatized and safety-istic world. 

I’ve learned the relative ease of asking the embarassing and stupid questions and being okay hearing laughter or condescension. I prefer to live in a world where I anticipate things working out. There is no true success without gratitude for each piece of the puzzle that does inevitably fall into place. 

What I encourage myself and anyone willing to listen, is to come to terms with the fact that, in this life, we are sentenced to freedom. So do we exercise agency? Or do we resign ourselves to outsourcing our values, judgements, ideas, desires, and rules? 

“Reprise” is a word best known in musical contexts as a repeated performance, but it can also be used to describe a recurrence, renewal, or resumption of an action. I wanted to imagine this quarterly as a space for the reprisal of artists’ work. While many of our contributors have consistently been making artwork and writing, there are several who were encouraged to resume their creatvity by the very existence of this opportunity. To our contributors, thank you for your bravery and your willingness to be motivated in your artwork. To our readers, enjoy this anthology with the knowledge that we operate with no thesis of professionalism or conventionality. This is a product of love, community, and gentle aspiration. 

With a warm welcome to our Homecoming issue, 

      Inés E. Atterbury