Routine takes over your life. You sit at the same warm, familiar, uninteresting table and chair, scribbling the same black lines on the same piece of paper, coming and going from one side of the page to another without error. Your cognitive bandwidth becomes relegated to completing the same tasks asking you to analyse and evaluate some data trends and frameworks and content designed to occupy your time. You memorise and regurgitate the same concepts and ideas so that you can earn a favourable letter on a PDF file emailed to your biological ancestors so that they can be in a content, placated, sedated state of mind. You walk down the same pathways and wait for the two hands on your watch to be in a different position so you can travel home on a metal can with an engine and wheels, so you can distract yourself with supernormal stimulation. On your weekends memories of days spent being in a state of connection with other human beings consume your mind, but you don't reach out because you don't share the same values anymore and you can just feel that there would be some friction and lack of real connection. Complacency becomes comfortable.
I don't feel pessimistic about the future anymore. My idea of self has shifted from viewing myself as a shell of my former self who has no friends to being one where I view myself as just a regular guy who might not have the deep connections he wants right now but will have them with time. I've stopped complaining about my situation, wallowing in self-pity and sabotaging the meaningful connections I have my offloading emotions to other people. Life is going steady. I'm on top of stuff academically, I've just taken a more chill, laid back approach to things, and progress is being made. But I'd be lying if I said I'm pleased with my current state of affairs. I've reflected on similar past eras like this and what would usually derail me would be pessimism, comfort with complacency, or a misguided attempt to create fast change. The common denominator is always a lack of any passions or things to push the standard in and accomplish. Getting high grades in school was something I pushed the standards in and definitely accomplished, but what separates work from a passion is a sense of connection to what you do.
For me, I think I know exactly what my guiding light can be. It's writing. It's music. It's art. And in a way, the zine meets all three criteria. I've been making a consistent effort to improve the quality of the writing in this zine and it's been pretty fun. In the first paragraph of this editorial I was able to make what appears to be monotonous—routine—sound interesting, which I'm happy about achieving. A key part of becoming a good writer is just writing. A lot. You write about daily occurrences, you write to describe events and objects. Over time you find out how to tell a story in your own way, and that becomes your style. Thanks to that, I've been able to describe music—whether in the form of live performances or recorded in a way that few are able to capture, which inspires me to keep doing it well, because it sharpens your cognition and you feel a special type of connection when people connect with your work. I've been able to make photos come alive through editing them and practicing photography technique. There's a lot of photographers in the scene, but few are really able to capture the colours, emotion, and aesthetic of what it's like to actually be there.
Hope is a really powerful thing. When you have hope, you are more inclined to make choices conducive to positive outcomes as opposed to when you don't have hope and so you don't care and don't want to prove your ego wrong, and so you make negative choices. I read this book called "Man's Search for Meaning' by Viktor Frankl, a concentration camp survivor, and it was very moving. It helped me recognise why having a 'guiding light'—a passion, something to forward to, people who are there for you is so important. I can relate to it myself. Having a concert for a band I liked to look forward to made the daily monotony feel like it meant something. I do believe that if I continue to make choices that align with the values of growth and kindness that things will become exponentially better.
It takes a desire for change to get out of a depressive rut. I do feel somewhat down from time to time but I'm fully confident in saying that my depression is gone. The fact is that when you see things for how they truly are, it's very easy to be where you want to be in life. Our individualistic society that believes in determinism and competition makes it so that many people don't see the light. I was one of those people. You have to come to your own conclusions about things and ask yourself if how you see things is distorted and if you are willing to accept the possibility of pain or adversity to create change over the state you are currently in. We as humans have such great ability to be sentient, make choices, and connect with others. Yet we describe people with mental illness as if they're a slave to their neurobiology, completely ignoring their autonomy and free will.
What separates a mediocre artist from a good artist is how revolutionary it is, and how strongly their art evokes connection. The Beatles started out writing pop songs but what made them into legends was how they bridged the gap between popular music and avant-garde art. This zine started as a way for me to be someone and share my experiences. I do think that it can become something much greater, and it already has. It went from looking amateur to having the aspects and standards of a professional music magazine and has gone beyond that through having a unique, innovative approach to combining writing, music and art. None of this would have been possible if I didn't realise the great power I had to change my life, and how much your life can change so much simply by viewing things in a different way.
In this issue, we have special coverage on the band Phantasm Street, who have taken a unique approach to the typical alternative band concept and have a unique approach to creativity, music, and image. Thanks a lot for all your support over the one year and six months this project has existed.
'If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.'
-William Blake
From the archive. Editorial · November 2025 · phone notes carried verbatim.