The echo and the shade

Clemente Althaus
(1835 - 1881)

God with man who loves him
Always open-minded and good,
an echo gave him his voice,
and gave shade to his body,
thereby wanting, although he beats down
the barest deserts
of all yet he gets nowhere
and with two friends.
To one I silently contemplate
dropping to his feet on the floor,
his movement adjusting
to his own movement.
The other invisibly listens
which responds to his accents,
repeating in the distance
his last sounds.
The shade of his eyes serves
as company and consolation,
and is consolation and company
for the sounds of the echo.
From the shade, we imagine
the solitary traveller
whose steps accompany
a taciturn black slave;
and from the echo we guess
that an invisible genius friend
who only talks to him,
as he follows his long voyage.

EDITORIAL

From a "tiny physical movement" to (infinitely greater) "virtual travel", there is an echo ringing with mysterious conversations whose grammar we must decode. We are dealing with new types of space that go beyond the physical and, by their nature, allow all kinds of language to filter through, becoming absorbed into "new rhythms" that merge with their hypnotic ways of working. There is a new connection to a "neighbourhood" that is both accessible and satisfyingly close, a contact "on the doorstep" of a much greater multitude of users of "alternative" media; evidence of a mental leap that is helping to expand human imagination, uniting it indivisibly with a fascinating and diverse environment. Here an unexpected "bond" is being formed: infinite virtual space is joining with the most personal perceptive space of an individual, that area composed of desires, dreams, expectations, unfettered imagination. We believe in the vision of a great new collective type of relationship and, with it, a new sensitivity in the form of an "empathetic" value: communication in a "shared area", the fundamental nature of which is to vibrate and therefore to communicate with particular resonance, giving rise to a whole new set of "proximities", of places where exchange and interchange can occur. The to and fro of information generates metaphorical wind tunnels, where reciprocal activity moulds complex identities that are all working parts of a great thinking machine.