Editor’s Note: Issue 3

Hello!

John again.

What a fucking start to the year, huh? Just one new storm after the other, and almost all of it unnecessary, pointless violence. Things are looking dire in many realms, the writing world included. It’s hard to keep going day after day with little hope to hold onto, but still we must.

When I announced opened Cold Signal up for submissions late last fall, I did so without a prevailing theme. I wanted to let the submissions coalesce into a theme like they did for Issue One, and so they did. Even before we drove off the proverbial cliff, the collective unconscious understood which way the wind was blowing.

Hence our theme this go-round: UNDERWORLD.

What you’ll find in this issue is a feast of incredible writing from established voices and newcomers alike. Work filled with anger, sadness, grief and longing, looking at the unraveling world, at death and its great wheel. Sunken worlds and hells of our own making sit side by side with the prayers of lost souls seeking absolution, mercy and love. Some of Cold Signal’s darkest and most challenging offerings can be found in this one running parallel to sincere, honest work that looks at the darkness without letting it take root within. I understand and appreciate both approaches, and there’s value in finding them side by side.

For the collages, I kept finding myself going back to the Symbolists. The rejection of realism, the yearning towards deeper truths through dreams, fantasies and nightmares, colored dark by the rising violence of the early 20th century resonated deeply with the work in this issue. I’ve come to deeply love the collage-making for CS, because I think it puts the work we do in a historical context. It’s fulfilling to see the things we make speaking in a warped unison with work in the public domain, the shared heritage of humanity.

This one took a long time to put together, partially because of the horrors, but also because of the changes in my own life. My partner and I have, through a strange chance of fate, started a small bookstore in a larger multi-business space in downtown Buffalo. Starting our own store has been a dream of ours since we were both laid off by Powell’s in the pandemic. It’s a tiny, one-room operation for now with the hope of growing in time, if the fascists don’t burn the crops and salt the soil before we can stand on our own two feet.

This year has in many ways been an interesting mirror to the pandemic. A continuation of the reckoning and collapse. The personal writing I’ve been doing since then is about to be put out into the world this year in the two books I’m publishing, deepening that tether from my own perspective.

If there’s one thing I’ve internalized since those days, it’s that we only make it through by building community. I struggle sometimes to be present and fun company at times, but I love people. I love writing, I love literature, I love the community of shared passion and purpose. I love true expression, work that comes from the soul first and the market last.

Cold Signal is here to celebrate that work. Our culture. Our shared bonds. Even in hell, we can celebrate the strangeness of our souls. It’s worth the time and effort, even when it doesn’t make money. It’s vital. It’s life, and life never ends with death. Even if the world dies, we have to carry on with living.

-John, EIC