To Synapse 4 contributors (and everyone else)

To all of you 60 Synapse contributors: I will begin mailing out contributors' copies in December. It will be a long process since I have literally no capital to print them at all once (or to pay all of my bills next month), so I'll be sending them out in small batches every two weeks. This staggered printing schedule is a part of the larger strategy that I outline on the website. My apologies for the wait, but don't pay for them unless you're in a damned hurry (and actually, even then just let me know and I'll try to send it out with the next batch).

This issue has taken 2 years to put together. In the interim there has been a three-month run of bi-weekly events, an international Post-NeoAbsurdist Festival, two festivals in Roanoke, VA, the production of a Jarry play, and a year (or more) of nearly utter stagnation. Some of you probably don't even remember giving me this work! Others gave me work just weeks ago. So it's an even more heterogenous issue than usual. At the same time, it covers a fuller range than ever before and begins to reflect the expansion of Post-Neo activity into various networks, communities, traditions, and fields of action; a development that will be much more fully at play in the next issue.

It is also the last issue to be hand-collaged. I love this intensely laborious process, I love the multifaceted and intimate relationship that it forces me to develop with each text and image in the journal; but it is simply not sustainable, and for Synapse 5 I will be switching to a digital process to lay it out. The advantages, however, will be many. The next issue ought not to take two years to put out; the reproductions for images will be clearer, formatting prose digitally should free up a bit more space for additional material; and the positioning and juxtaposition of contributions can be more pointed and refined.

Amid so many preparations--the website, Synapse, the new books, and all of the other invisible infrastructure being put into place, it just wasn't possible to prepare a CD Sound Supplement with this issue. Synapse 5 will see the return of the Supplement, with the cover that Aaron Andrews had originally designed for this issue (a year and a half ago).

...and there's a blog, too...

I smash a Gargantua-n bottle filled with marmalade and meat chili against the hull of this maiden blog.

I view this blog as an extension of the mOnocle-Lash website, insofar as whatever discussion and communication ends up occurring here (if anything) will play an integral role in how mOnocle-Lash continues to develop and operate. What form that takes remains to be seen.

In addition to responding to individual releases or making observations about our general strategy and catalog, this is a venue to let us know what you would like to see published, or (better yet) would like to help us make a reality; or to arrange collaborative projects; or to fill in or add to the context of a publication, or follow up its effects; or to ask questions or provoke discussion with those involved with the press; or anything else you (and we) decide to do with it.

In this spirit, we'll be making charming use of the otherwise-often-annoying 'poll' widgets such as the one to the right.links will be added within a few weeks; until then, there's the links page on the website proper.

Somebody start this off...