It’s been several years since I first started thinking about a journal like Broad Sound. It seemed like such a promising idea that it honestly bothered me it didn’t exist. And so, towards the end of 2022, I took matters into my own hands.
Why, I thought, couldn’t there be a home for essays of any length (in these pages, you’ll find work under 2,000 words and work that surpasses 11,000), written in any voice (here you’ll find both the confessional and the academic), on any topic the writer might choose so long as it could be grouped under the term arts and culture? The idea felt too rich to remain an idea. I began reaching out to writers, some of them friends and some of them talents I’d admired from afar. I extended an invitation that was more like a creative blank check: what essay would you love to write but doubt you could find a home for anywhere else?
The results have exceeded anything I dreamed of. In the first volume of Broad Sound, you’ll find reflections on music, literature, film, and TV. You’ll find a consideration of a unique work of architecture, and you’ll find a poignant memoir. As a parting note, you’ll even find a poem. What do these works have in common? Very little except for their shared desire to push the boundaries of how we typically write about arts and culture. Why can’t an impeccably researched academic paper be written in a curious first person? Why can’t we analyze just a few seconds of a symphony—and why can’t we frame the essay as a consideration of just how hard that task actually is? Why can’t the arts and culture essay be a sandbox where we can write however we want about whatever we want?
This issue of Broad Sound is labeled Volume One. I don’t know when there might be a Volume Two. I made a lot of discoveries while putting together this issue. Primarily, I learned that a journal with an editorial staff of one (two, counting the inimitable Sydney Urbanek, who gave us that last polish before we hit your doorstep) probably can’t operate on a regularly scheduled basis. This kind of work—in some cases from writers who’ve never been published before, in all cases from writers who’ve never published something like this before—takes time and care. We started off with a schedule, but little by little, it fell by the wayside. You can’t play in the sandbox on a strict editorial timeline, and I thought some free play with a bunch of talented writers and great people sounded like a good way to spend an indefinite number of months. I suspect you’ll see Broad
Sound again one day, and when you do, it will be worth the wait. I can promise you that this issue certainly is.
- Ethan Warren, Editor-in-Chief
Leave a Reply