During a typical provincial summer evening in the suburbs, where mosquitoes – thirsty for blood and sweat – are the only real distraction, I pretended to be involved in conversation and almost saw her from a three-quarter angle: leaning against the bar counter was La Livella embodied. This is how the project manifested itself for the first time, as a natural response of the imagination to complaints about the cultural environment, complaints that reek of staleness.
After a long gestation, La Livella has become almost real as have her tireless authors and what you will read in these virtual pages of ours. It became immediately evident to us that being brilliant and foolish were both old-fashioned qualities. The aurea mediocritas seemed to be winning on opposing extremes.
What will it say about them, about us, about the misfits at their apex, that futuristic world neither hot nor cold in which we already live but are eternally distraught, distracted and distorted?
All we have left to do is try, try without winning omens, facing up to criticism with the best use of logic and rhetoric.
In these months of work there have been coups to the magazine still during its embryonic form, demonstrations of masculinism immediately removed and scheming worthy of a Spanish soap opera. It was evident that we had voraciously eaten all the sugar-coating of this project and were fortunate in doing so: finally, our exquisite human nature was able to manifest itself without artifice. We have come to realise that we are giving significant meaning to life, and that every creative act is an act that passes initially through the self and stems directly outside the self. So much so that we are beside ourselves with joy.
We would like to inform you that our magazine has the ambitious task of talking about what happens and what had happened, which is slightly different from today’s news; taking time to analyse writers, philosophers and poets to whom we are devoted to as sensual lovers. Besides dealing with the events of yesterday and those of today with a viable and honourable observation, we are taking extra care of the graphic aesthetics as well as of the World Wide Web.
All this is what we want to share with you dear readers. We have taken on the burden of doing so in two languages, to give a legitimate passport to our contents in order to cross every border, never forgetting that everything can and should be said in the right way: that humour must not antagonise and that light-handed actions allow us to leave the world undamaged after our transition.
We ask you, dear readers, curiosity and patience, to love us as one would love a frail child, to love us more because you are the only ones who can. We promise to grow more interesting and interested. For you and for us.
The Director,
Veronica Berenice