Since reaching an age that even I find surprising, I’ve tended to live each day as predictably as possible—avoiding mistakes, conserving effort, keeping things within the bounds of what I already know. It’s a kind of wisdom shaped by painful past experiences, but living that way leaves little room for challenge, broadening one’s view, or nurturing new ideas. Even so, it would be unrealistic for me now to live each day with the unclouded eyes of a child or the raw, visceral sensibility I once had in my youth.

As I wrote in the introduction to this issue, there is a kind of “inner surety” that exists only within myself. Intuition is its entry point, though it is not as firm as conviction. The phrase “center of gravity of feeling” may not describe it perfectly, but it comes close. It’s something that has slowly taken shape over time—through confusion, failure, self-reflection, and conflict. At times, I’ve been moved by someone else’s expression, using that resonance or friction to locate where my own sensibility stands. Perhaps this inner surety is like a feeling that gradually settles deep inside through those repeated moments.

Yet this inner surety is not the same as “correctness.” Correctness is measured against external standards. It can be useful and helps maintain order, but depending on it too much makes life feel constricted and blurs the contours of who I am. This inner grounding lives within. It allows me to believe, without logic, that “this is truly how I feel.” When I am aware of it, even the calmer rhythm of my days now is dotted with small questions and subtle unease. From time to time, I recall those questions, loosen the usual boundaries of my thinking, and try to think things through completely. I try to put those thoughts into words. Letting go of ingrained assumptions and those neat little explanations is never effortless, and often uneasy. Yet when I keep digging, something faint starts to form, as if slowly surfacing, and I notice things I could not have noticed any other way. Newness does not exist only in the outside world; there are still places within me that remain unformed, untouched, unnamed.

If even someone as imperfect as I am experiences this, then the paths explored by the artists featured in this issue must be all the more solitary, and what they pursue, all the more pure and singular. You can feel it quietly when you spend time with their work.