Zingmagazine #21 (hard cover)

Including a Cassette by Jonas Mekas, CD by Mike Donovan & Chris Johanson

“But never tell the truth about this business of rooms, because it would bust the roof off everything and undermine the whole social system. All rooms are the same. All rooms have four walls, a door, a window or two, a chair and perhaps a bidet. A room is a place where you hide from the wolves outside and that’s all a room is.”
—Jean Rhys, Good Morning Midnight

Rooms, boxes, issues. First one, then another, slowly, then suddenly, they accumulate. zingmagazine issue 21, girl in tears, Beat poet on the back. And that poet, Ginsburg, isn’t happy. He is rather bothered to fulfill another monotonous request for a needy client, bookseller, fan. He asks, almost demands, refuge. A place to hide from the “wolves.” Another signature, another book, another room, another curated section. All done.

There’s a new TV product for sale called the “Tater Mitts.” Basically, they are rubber gloves that allow you to rub the skin off a potato in eight seconds flat. No waste from peeling with a knife, no accidental cutting, doesn’t remove any nutritious vitamins, and you can get a special French fry slicer, too. You can make a potato salad, you can julienne, you can apply a whole mélange of abilities to your starch products. Bring on the bushels. “Another” is not just enough, when you have Tater Mitts at your disposal. The truth is out.

And the social system? Well, invigorated, I would say, rather than undermined. And the business of zingmagazine, not the dull drab affair of a room, but the delicious tumble of the curatorial format we created—the curatorial crossing. Notwithstanding its appropriation from other magazines. “Four walls, a door, a window or two, a chair.” Rooms are all the same? Alfred Hitchcock said, “Style is self-plagiarism.” Let the plagiarism begin.

Devon Dikeou
editor/publisher