The Grazioso Letters: a selection

In our reading period for Issue IV: Grazioso, we received so many love letters alongside your stunning submissions. Your words made us laugh & thrill & cry, & we found such joy in getting to know the people behind the work, these souls who adore song just as much as we do.

Here, then, is a smattering of our favourite notes from Issue IV submissions. Thank you, dear songbirds, for sharing your softness with us. We do not take it for granted.

Half Mystic Journal’s fourth issue is full of the rare kind of light that never drowned anything, the kind of night that knows only song. We have hope that this creation might help draw our aching world out of its endless, cacophonous dusk.

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Now. Music.

What is music?

It's a background static that you listen to, trying to drown out the howl of the wind with the howl of your headphones. It's the second heartbeat that reminds you you're still alive. It's poetry that you want to carve into your bones, tattoo on your heart, burning into your soul with every beat of the drums.

So. What is music?

It's how we know that the universe is singing back.

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I wrote this poem after watching a Ted Talk that described fireflies as creatures who, opposed to other animals that sing with their voices, sing songs with their light. And I thought to myself: isn't that beautiful? Every spark in the darkness as the note of a love song, all this longing—and how I wished I could do that, too. Could sing a melody like a flame in the darkness.

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To keep this musical, I have been listening to the bands Iron & Wine and Bon Iver all day. Since it's finally October, I can shamelessly listen to all of the slow, brooding bands that I want. (I have still been listening to these bands in other months, but now it feels even more seasonally appropriate to listen and sip my coffee.)

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I am a lover of music, movement, and embodiment. I love the unarticulated and uncomfortable, the sound of a pause right after a question. Lately I have been listening to music that explores growing up, nostalgia, and hindsight. I like amp feedback, lush atmosphere, guitar riffs, untrained vocals, raw emotion, tongue-in-cheek lyrics. The poems I am submitting sit in the warm spot that comes from the sunlight through the window, exist in the breeze through an open car window on the highway, lay across an old couch. They are the beanie baby you still keep around and cradle every now and then. I hope I can convey the tenderness and musicality you search for.

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I wrote these poems fairly recently and I think they are some of the softest things I've ever written. I feel as though they would fit your theme for this issue fairly well despite everything.

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Here is a piece I wrote inspired by your journal's theme, Grazioso, which is one of the loveliest words I have ever heard. It took a while for me to think deeply about what a waltz means, but I found myself slowly hypnotised by its recursive and swirling form, its associations with dancing and various kinds of shape-shifting love. What I have written is a hybrid thing that is part essay, part love story. It tries to linger in those liminal moments where feelings sharpen then smudge as some delicious, dawn-soaked glow. Feelings that persist but are buried in the daily, only to emerge at certain blinks of brightness. I have been tracking down new waltzes but mostly discovering waltz-time songs from my existing musical archives. Each fragment was written whilst the song in question played in the background, sometimes emerging as foreground. The artists whose songs provide titles include the secret work of a personal friend, Philip Glass, Mogwai, The Delgadoes, Beach House, Boards of Canada and Elliott Smith. Hopefully they also represent a kaleidoscope of moods, as good music should when played in variant, special order. There is something about your journal that appreciates lyricism in both music and writing, the chiasmic impulse between two forms. It definitely inspires me to continue exploring the creative slippages between expression and ekphrasis.

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I have been blessed with a family that places a strong emphasis on music of all kinds, whether they have the gift of a good voice and the ability to play an instrument or not. I can truly speak from the bottom of my heart and say that I've seen the power of music save lives. I feel music has saved mine at times as well.

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Sometimes you just have to press play and see what happens, you know?

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There are days I can't believe in grazioso and I think those are the days I need it most of all. Reminds me of music that way. Thank you for warm, golden space. It’s full of peace and possibility.

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Half Mystic Journal’s fourth issue, around the theme of grazioso, is available for preorder now. Dropping on December 12th, the grazioso issue is a stunning compilation of art, lyrics, & writing in celebration of music in all of its forms. It showcases the the dream-bright waltz – the soft-stained song – the place where sunlight settles & nothing really hurts… & is not to be missed.