Right Where You’re Supposed To Be

I wrote most of this letter sitting on a crab dock in Garibaldi, Oregon, thinking about magic. First things first, I have never been on a crab dock before, never been crab-fishing, and, considering I didn’t catch any crabs, I might not be invited back. So it goes. Back to the task at hand: I don’t know exactly why I was thinking of magic, maybe it was all the conversations I’d been having about something spiritual happening, something historic, something current. Or maybe it was because of a quiet collective wish for magic to happen again. I didn’t know where this issue was headed until the very last interview I did for it. And to be fair, it usually happens this way; a bow is tied, a “t” is crossed, and an idea is fully fleshed out. This issue is about being exactly where you are supposed to be.

For context, Robin F. Williams told me about their own moment of magic. It happened in 2024, at the opening of a survey of their work at the Columbus Museum of Art. The survey had paintings from twenty years ago hanging next to paintings from last year all in the same room, in the city Robin grew up in and had just moved back to after decades in Brooklyn. And on that exact day of the opening, the Great North American Eclipse passed over the sky. Downtown Columbus experienced a 99.6% partial eclipse, literally at the center of this rare celestial event. Which is, to be honest, kind of magical, spiritual even. Robin looked at all of it—the past and the present of their own work, the ordinary sky gone strange above them—and said something like: “I think this is exactly where I’m supposed to be.” Right here, right now.