It’s funny how, as I start to write the editor’s note, what I am currently reading extracurricularly, somehow automatically becomes fodder for the next issue. It used to be that zing citations or quotes were in the backlog or library of zing world. Now they infiltrate zing’s very existence almost as easily as ESPN, CNN, or MTV. Well this literary taste is not just white noise, it’s José Saramago to be precise, and the piece that won the ‘98 Nobel prize. Let’s meander reputations and accomplices . . .
It takes little or nothing to undo reputations, the merest trifle makes and remakes them, it is simply a question of finding the best means of engaging the confidence or interest of those who are to become one’s unsuspecting echoes or accomplices.
—Baltasar and Blimunda, José Saramago
11, the latest in the zing edition tradition, (and let’s give a nod here to D Eggers and his copyediting brilliance over at Timothy McSwinney’s eleven is a numerical figure rather than spelled out as it has previously been in this sentence). Nonetheless, the accomplices of zingmagazine are of the very best, now 11 issues later. There is a curatorial vision in our unvisionary approach—our trifle our letter, which comes from William Gibson, the voice of Annie Sullivan “The Miracle Worker”. And who better than the “miracle worker”/teacher of Helen Keller to be the voice or the echo for zing 11. The image on the cover comes from an advertisement for the Women’s US Army Corp from Co-Ed magazine circa ‘71, and reflects cross the pollination so much the make up of zing—for it really is the no template spirit that drives us. But there is no blindness in 11, rather dreams, very special dreams. Again Saramago, again Baltasar and Blimunda, “They all slept as best they could, each with his own secret dreams, for dreams are like human beings, bearing some resemblance to one another, but never quite identical”.

Devon Dikeou
New York, New York
1999