Perigee: Publication for the Arts (Poetry, Fiction, Non-Fiction, Photograhy, Art)

When I was in England this summer, I heard that Terry Jones (of Monty Python fame and a first rate, Oxford trained medievalist) discovered that during the First Crusade to liberate Jerusalem from the terrifying and evil infidel, a group of some 25,000 men women and children choose as their leader for most of the journey across the Continent was . . . a divinely inspired goose. Sounds just like today.

These days, I am simply trying to make some sense of this world—political sense and common sense. And nothing seems to make sense. We are in the midst of a difficult (to attempt to keep my rant under control) campaign that gets more and more beside the point as the smear tactics go on and on. At least, with Jon Stewart of The Daily Show and Bill Maher and others, we are seeing some humor come into the debate. But so much is at issue and we, depending on our color (red or blue) simply follow blindly our leader (or goose), whether it be Kerry or Bush. (Nader is utterly beside the point and a bit of an ass as well, I’m afraid.) The attacks are vicious.

There is a bright light however. Air America has come to my home town, San Diego. To listen to my very own wing nuts is pleasure indeed. Yet I long for considered discussion, without being shouted down or told, as I was recently, to just leave the country. What is going on here? Where are the considered thinkers? Buried under the blindly shouting masses? Following geese? I despair that the ability we have always had (to one degree or another) to think freely will be even more impinged than it is now.

If you don’t think it is impinged, then I invite you to consider what has just happened on my campus. Michael Moore was scheduled to speak last year, but all of San Diego was on fire (a prelude to the usual earthquakes and floods and plagues of locusts) so the event was cancelled. Moore’s agent let it be known that the event could be rescheduled if Moore had an opening. As it turns out, he has an opening in October. He was, thus, invited by the student council, with the support of the dean of students. The president of my university, however, decided that Moore is simply too controversial and rescinded the invitation. There has been a bit of an uproar on campus and in the media.

What is interesting here, and to my point, is that both students and faculty are being treated as though neither entity had enough intelligence to listen to Moore, to make our own decisions about what he has to say (he is not beloved by everyone, although why not is a mystery to me), and to engage in that conversation which produces thought, which engenders the capacity to imagine, which provides an arena for creativity. And the entire extended community is deprived of this, not just my campus.

What is it about our times that makes it so very scary to take a risk, to see what might happen, to open conversation, however rowdy it may turn out? That risk, after all, is what art is about. The artist takes a risk putting her ideas on a canvas or carving her vision on a stone or writing her thoughts and emotions. There is, however, good news about the arts and artists and risks. For this issue of Perigee, we received well over 300 submissions from all over the world. Quantity aside, the quality of many of the submissions was outstanding. My suggestion to you: instead of blindly following the risk-free goose, read this issue and, as I always say to you, enjoy. Just enjoy.