We sent out this issue’s call for submissions while lining up some changes at TSR. The first of these changes will probably be apparent to you if you’re reading this note. HYPE is the first issue of TSR to be released into the world/wild through our new web-based publishing model, which we hope will make the work that we share more accessible to more people. After a year, this issue will be absorbed into our digital archive, which is available to read for free (something to be hyped about, we hope, for both readers and writers).
We’ve also said goodbye to a number of cherished team members, whose hard work, thoughtfulness, and friendship I’d like to acknowledge here. Our Layout Editor, Mikayla Bamford, Associate Editor, Megan Payne, and recent Intern, Joel Keith, will be truly missed on the TSR team, and always part of the TSR community. For all the writing, editing, studying, and organising they have ahead, we wish them the very best there is 💖. We’re also excited for the first Chair of our Board, Caro Llewellyn, who has taken up a new role at the City of Asylum, Pittsburgh. Caro’s wisdom and belief in our project have been invaluable.
Apart from being hyped for ourselves and our team while working on this issue, we’ve spent our time learning from our contributors. Sean West’s poem describes hype perfectly, while actually describing a cuttlefish. It’s ‘a baby fist of melted skittles / or faux inspirational tea towel, holographic seahorse / fridge magnet or multicoloured ransom note’. The fish is seductive, kitschy, malevolent, and going at a discount, all in the space of three lines. I love these turns in footing and feeling. They remind me of the turn Indigo Bailey’s narrator takes watching a co-worker package up lamb loins at a supermarket butcher’s counter: ‘I imagine them feeling choked in their harnesses. Then, I imagine them feeling held.’
If we understand hype as a glittering thing, we can also remember that glittering is a trick of light and of darkness, and that shapeshifting is part of its work. Hype can be a distraction from the stickier strata of our social lives. Rebekah Roma’s protagonist witnesses this as she searches for adequate rental accommodation during our current housing crisis. Luna Tunes’s illustration of this story captures the feeling of this search acutely through the quality of its linework—you’ll see what I mean. Hype can misdirect us. Maki Morita returns to teen-drama viewing as an adult, reconsidering the kinds of coming-of-age that the film and TV produced for teenagers in the 2000s made possible. Hype can be an effect of tragedy. Fionn McCabe’s comic follows a father truly trying his best to find a pet who will outlive his whole human family—a pet truly ‘worthy of [his] children’s love’. Hype might also be what compels us to reach for a better life. Shu-Ling Chua’s poetic protagonist fantasises about many things, amongst them ‘quitting her job and never working another day in her life.’ Same.
We were also thrilled to receive so many crush-based submissions to this issue. Lucy Robin’s ‘Wrestlers’ gives us bookstore-employee obsession in San Francisco, while Emmy Cherry’s ‘whatever he did in those leather pants’ imagines the ‘worldwide wet dreams’ on the night of an Elvis concert. Nicholas Wong’s ‘Mid-Typhoon Tinder’ sees its speaker swipe on potential matches through changeable moods, both personal and atmospheric. We love love, and we love obsession, especially when it’s not all rosy.
Renee Melia’s cover artwork for this issue prompted one editor to reflect that ‘nothing screams HYPE like a loop-the-loop bugle’. I want to toot from the rooftops about the contributions to this issue, and about the work that our staff have done to prepare it, especially in this new format. I’m also reminded by Renee’s illustration that hype is a cue to direct attention to the important things as you see them.
With this in mind, I want to reiterate what we have already made clear: that we stand for a free Palestine, and urge our community to join efforts to push for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza, and an end to Israel’s genocidal actions. To find ways to put your solidarity into action, you can follow social media accounts like BDS Australia, Australia Palestine Advocacy Network, Artists for Palestine, Creatives for Palestine, and organising groups in your area. These groups share opportunities to join rallies, to sign open letters, and to write and call your representative or nearby institutions. Donations are being received by many individuals and organisations, but I’d particularly like to highlight Medical Aid for Palestinians.