I would be lying if I say that I have had an expectation of things. Afterall, it is in the practice of the best (bester? bestest? best-ish?) artists to not have an expectation of things. Things come, things past, things linger - no one can know for certain, no one can be sure. If there is one thing that is definite, it would not be progress nor regression, it would just be change.
How quaint is it, to think of present time, present day as a continuation of the past. It is factual, of course, that the series of events (unfortunate or otherwise) should follow from what had occured before; causality needs to be followed, entropy eliminated. But just as likely as this understanding of the present as a follow-up of before, it should be regarded as the origin of the next too.
In the time it took to move from the previous issue to this - three months - it has taken a lot of soul-searching from a lot of people to genuinely ruminate on a permanently pertinent issue of Singapore: that of the future. People fear, people loathe, but beneath all these displays of fatalism, people crave, people look forward. There is hardly a better time for optimism than now - can the subaltern speak? Of course they can, they are doing it now, no matter if complaints rise like the plummage of incensed birds.
In this issue, you will find pieces looking forward and pieces looking backwards and pieces looking both ways. In this issue, you will find issues. Issues that you never thought to think about and the ones that follow constantly.
We hope you enjoy it.
Read issue 3 here.