The Allegro Letters: a selection
In our reading period for Issue I: ALLEGRO, we received an abundance of gorgeous notes along with your even more gorgeous submissions. These letters showcased your overflowing love for melody, and we found such light in knowing that we had stumbled upon souls who adored song just as much as we do. Here, then, is a smattering of our favourite love notes from all of our Issue I submissions. Thank you for your endless passion, songbirds.
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The moment that I heard about your magazine, I jumped at the chance to submit my own writing, because it combines some of the best things in the world: poetry, music, aesthetics, and friendly people (honestly, shoutout to Topaz Winters and the rest of the staff for writing such darling notes on the blog and never failing to use voices that just comfort everyone reading them).
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Let us agree that any percentage of Mystic is a lovely attribute. Particularly for poets.
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One of my favorite quotes is Aldous Huxley's "After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music," and I think you understand what that means.
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I love music despite my complete ineptitude at playing anything (which I regret) and my inability to carry a tune in a bucket (which I don't regret, to my girlfriend's annoyance whenever I bust out singing in the car).
But beyond just songs, I love... sound. Part of it is because I've always written with something on in the background, and it's followed me through multiple cities in three countries. Sometimes it was metal and rancheras back home, sometimes it's just the piano music of keyboards clacking at the coffeeshop where I did the bulk of my thesis work….
Rancheras and norteña music are obviously very dear to me, but something I've found very appealing with this genre of music is artists can make the accordion cry. Like, this is an instrument that's incredibly happy, but artists like these are able to turn that happiness into bittersweet sounds. That's also why I really love country music, because those artists can get that same emotion with the fiddle.
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I picked Half Mystic as the recipient of my first journal submission, because it's your first issue. There's some kind of Symbol in there, I'm sure.
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What I should say, what I really mean to say, is I took piano lessons for seven years, so I remember allegro the way I remember adagio, in my bones.
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Music has in no way been anything to me that I am not already to myself. To me, music is something we as human beings are meant to synchronize with, something that completes us in ways we never knew we needed until we found out there was something in the world that had a heartbeat just like us. Something that made our hearts realize they were not alone in our chests…
Who among us does not want more beauty, more life than we already have? There is always a base longing, pulling on us, and no one I know has a name for it…
I have yet to find something that completes me, but I think this is a good way to start.