I met someone a few days ago who was starting his own magazine — of songs, written in his own hand, called The Time Has Come For Cherished Pain. He was collating the pages at the quick-copy shop, still unsure what to charge for it. “Fifty cents?” he suggested uncertainly. Having just paid myself, I magnanimously handed him a dollar, took his first copy and wished him well. “This is how I got started,” I told him.
How far have I come? In the ten years since I sold the first crudely printed SUNs on Franklin Street, I’ve taken giant strides toward realizing my own “dream”; and I’ve wandered in circles, lost in a dream of cherished pain; and I’ve learned to pinch myself when I’m dreaming — that’s a different kind of pain, but waking up is never easy. Maybe THE SUN helps us to wake up — not with shrill alarm, or with “news” that is pitifully old, but with some light coming toward us, too much for closed eyes to ignore. It’s not an easy magazine, notwithstanding the spiritual platitudes that sometimes light it up fluorescent. Its heart has a different glow, of truths that can withstand terrible heat because in terrible heat they were forged. The heart of the sun is a nuclear furnace where distinctions between “matter” and “energy” break down; it’s too bright to look at directly — but its light illumines our lives. A powerful metaphor to live up to.
