Death. Big word. Scary, huh? But have you ever stopped and thought about why it is so? Is it the fact that it’s something inevitable and it’s the only thing you’re sure of and have absolutely no control over? Or is it that you’re afraid no one will remember you ever existed? No matter what the reasons might be, this foreseeable happening is something that always scared us and even terrified some of us. We think about it for a few minutes. We start to imagine how it will happen: getting electrocuted by the toaster, being crushed during a zombie attack or even slipping on a banana. We then shake it out of our heads and get on to doing something that we think is useful or productive. Others delve into it further but we’re not even gonna go there. “It”, death, can be a tragedy for some, bliss for others and a celebration for the rest.

We are the rest.

Today we pay our respects to the legends who have shaped our lives as we know them, to those who enhanced our sense of style, set rules and standards for anyone with a pencil (or a brush or whatever tool that can transfer ink or paint to a blank canvas). We revive the memory of Vinyl disks and disco balls, 8 mm films and extraordinary love stories. Today we envy the frames of those who had their heads under a black blanket, popping one light bulb at every snap. Today we celebrate them and pay them homage for giving us something to look up to, for making us want to do something worth being remembered for in hopes of one day joining them.

From a film that took hours to develop down to a single “print” click, we will forever be grateful for what they’ve given and taught us, how they make us smile whenever we think of them and make us die of envy at the same time. This issue is a celebration of everything holy, beautiful and begrudging. It’s a carnival of reality that brings us thrill, fear and a reason to get out of that stupid warm bed every morning after it keeps luring us to stay.

Get that bloody coffee heated up, put on your favorite pair of jeans/ skirt/ dress on, match it with your oh-so-cool hipster shirt (please don’t), get the hell out the door and go be the new Marylin Monroe or the next Martin Luther King or whoever you sang along to in the shower when you were seventeen.

We will all croak at some point, but if you’re reading this right now, you still haven’t expired. Move it!