From the Editor: The Synaesthesia Issue

I’m slow to reach for music these days. Maybe because I am learning more than ever to find her in places where I don’t have to scratch for her name: the moment as it exists in the midst of its own mess, heart bare & fresh, shaded outside every possible border. The more time I spend with Half Mystic Journal’s Issue IX: Synaesthesia, the less concerned I grow with the clean.

Curating this issue for the past year, I’ve recalled over & over that we did not make ourselves—we are less gods, more listeners, sites of pleasure dedicated always to sound. Every piece here holds an echo of the next, unbelievable & interconnected, years turned stars turned riot of warmth. The synaesthesia issue reaches out to touch water & comes away with gold hands, jazz tingling along its spine, the taste of cayenne in its mouth. Gentlest kind of wound, thinking, how does one walk through a world like this & not believe in miracles? Issue IX knows above all else that some things are worth the risk of living. Mostly, living.

For our ninth issue, Half Mystic emerges in full colour, in every wild & gentle embrace. We can be corporeal here, humming & envied, anything but forgotten. There exists no quiet anymore that couldn’t fissure into song. Such a strange alchemy in this issue. Such a hope for change, stinging, shivering, struck by the miracle of movement. I am slow to reach for music these days, maybe because music doesn’t feel out of reach anymore.

Synaesthesia is a song tethered to space, shocked in the present tense, undelicious as longing & surreal in fever pitch. This is a story about touch which means hurt, hurt which means salt, salt which means movement, movement which means joy, joy which—of course & always—means music. The synaesthesia issue is here, right here. What else is there, really, to be?

Issue IX showcases the theme of synaesthesia: the blue undressing of voice—the song-scent wafting on wind—the tongues of memory & light. It features the voices of Sara Elkamel, KB, Bessie Flores Zaldívar, Darnell “DeeSoul” Carson, Calvin Olsen, Arya Samuelson, Jessica Poli, J.I. Kleinberg, Paola Bennet, Lucy Hannah Ryan, Caroline Grand-Clement, Tmyself, Kirsten Shu-ying Chen, Ryan Griffith, Erin Jin Mei O’Malley, Grace Qi Song, Sunny Vuong, Trini Rogando, Evy Shen, Amy Liu, Anne Kwok, & Janelle Cordero. It is out now.

Order your copy today. We're so honoured to share it with you. xx