The last time I wrote a letter from the editor, I was unsure about the future of Broad Sound. If anything, I might have laid bets on Volume One being a one-off project. It had been wonderful, but the future for this sort of passion project is always hazy. Then I got to thinking about the ManOps.
ManOp is short for (and, for a variety of reasons, probably preferable to) Manic Optimist. This was the name of my college a cappella group—we were the ManOps and we were a passion project, a labor of love. We didn’t perform competitively; we weren’t interested in that sort of glory. Rather, to quote Josh Ritter, we were “singing for the love of it; have mercy on the man who sings to be adored.”
The contributors you’ll read in this volume of Broad Sound are, to my mind, a class of ManOps. We’ve all worked together on a book of passion projects, essays that might not find a home anywhere else. I put out a call for pitches on any topic at all, and I was stunned by the breadth and depth of the submissions I received.
Which brings us to the “Part One” on the spine of what you’re holding. I never expected the level of interest that Broad Sound garnered, and was faced with the difficult task of narrowing down over a hundred pitches. I did a bad job. I accepted at least twice as many as I’d intended to, and so this volume has been split into two parts, the second to come later this year. But I don’t want to bill these as two volumes, or even two issues—these two “parts” comprise the 2024 edition of Broad Sound, which has simply been split in half for your convenience. When we resume with Part Two, there will be no letter from the editor; rather, we’ll pick up with the first edition of the Broad Sound Interview—a long, in-depth conversation with renegade filmmaker Guy Maddin.
This first half of the second volume of Broad Sound boasts the diversity of topics and viewpoints I hoped for when I launched a loosely defined “journal of arts and culture.” We have essays on everything from Shakespeare to Creed, and from basketball to photography. We have personal essays, reflections on the meaning of art, and work that braids the two. This is the Broad Sound promise: a playground for writers willing to throw in with an unusual editorial process. Broad Sound works without firm deadlines, and with lots of room to experiment and let pieces find their shape organically. Not every journal can run like that, but I’m proud that this one can, and that there seems to be enough interest in it to sustain a future. With that, I’ll let you get to the good stuff. I’ll see you here for Volume Three. Count on it.
- Ethan Warren, Editor-in-Chief
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