To accompany your writing or just get the juices going, now that our submissions are (finally) open, we created the ultimate bittersweet playlist (… or almost) ! We could probably keep adding songs till infinity, but here are some more or less obvious ones that immediately came to our minds when we were contemplating the mood of this project.
Give it a listen below and comment / message us suggestions of your own!
Read More »by Shamik Banerjee
And weeps the river when the parting year
Deprives him of the sunbeams’ waltzing flame;
And tears the father as the time draws near
When his dear girl will take another name;
Read More »I’ve concluded that bittersweetness is not, as we tend to think, just a momentary feeling or event. It’s also a quiet force, a way of being, a storied tradition—as dramatically overlooked as it is brimming with human potential. It’s an authentic and elevating response to the problem of being alive in a deeply flawed yet stubbornly beautiful world. Most of all, bittersweetness shows us how to respond to pain: by acknowledging it, and attempting to turn it into art, the way the musicians do, or healing, or innovation, or anything else that nourishes the soul.
– Susan Cain, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole
WONDER, noun
verb
Source: Google by Oxford Languages.
We said it and we believe it. For us, wonder is at the root, the core of it all, the Amazine community and this whole project as much as life itself. It is an attitude that can, bit by bit, make, is making and has already made this world, this humanity a bit less indifferent, a bit more sensible, a bit sweeter in all its bitterness. It is interconnected with feelings of joy, love, curiosity, openness, as well as with values of inclusivity, empathy and respect towards all beings. It is the perspective we chose and will hopefully keep choosing with you by our side. But why wonder?
Read More »The Amazine community’s manifesto of sorts.
The world can be a weird, bittersweet place, so full of pain and so full of beauty. Humanity is weirder still, capable of such atrocities and foolishness, ignorance and hypocrisy, as well as amazing scientific discoveries and works of art that take our breath away, even more, humanity is capable of profound connection, companionship and joy. It aches to be alive, but that ache is sweet sometimes, isn’t it? You know the clichés: the flowers grow in dirt, the earth longs for rain, there is no butterfly without a transformation, no light without the dark, the sky excels its art only with the setting of the sun and the time right before the sunrise is the gloomiest.
We don’t deny any of it. We are deciding to embrace it all and by that open our eyes, minds, hearts and spirits for the many wonders, joys, beauties, uncertainties and paradoxes of this world. Be in search of the crack Cohen sang about. Because we can be disappointed by the world as we know it, even expect it to end pretty soon, and still keep on creating the one we want to live in. Push one word, thought, question, song, scene, story, hug and laugh at a time for the world that would actually be worth fighting for.
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The Amazine Community 