Russh Magazine

There are days when we wake up and think we want change.  To cut our hair like a boy or even Keith Richards-style like Patti Smith did back in the day. To speak a new language, pick up a guitar or live on a different street where the light shines on us in the morning. Sometimes we wish to be spellbound by that stranger who made us laugh so hard last week, to enter their world for a while to see what it feels like there.

If we’re not sure what we want then some of us dream of escaping into one of those Lost in Translation moments. Stuck in some kind of anonymous 24-hour hotel where we can go for days without recognising anyone, surviving on room service and wearing just a robe, while we try to figure out the next step on this cosmic journey we seem to have embarked on where nothing is truly fixed.

Either way on these days we live in the hope that there’s something else out there for us, something we’ve not yet felt, some authenticity we are still to find. It’s then we believe anything is possible, that we’re lost at the hands of something bigger, more powerful than our whims and that it’s never too late to be who we want to be. And it feels good.

In stark contrast, as reality would have it, most days however, we’re happy passengers on this trajectory of life where we wake up at the same time and pull on the same old jeans, those that fit our bodies well. We listen to the songs that we know the words to, kiss goodnight in that warm familiar way and sleep under the same moonlight. This feels nice too but does it take courage?

For this issue we broke out of our usual orbit and embraced a transformation of sorts. We opened ourselves up to something mystical, spiritual, something all its own. In search of the celestial we got to thinking way more about the future than what has come before. We didn’t set out for it to be better or more clever or newer, but just different; a metamorphosis for the sake of it because the idea thrilled us.

Of course, a reboot is not always smooth. Phoenix as it rises can often remind us that change may be an untamed force we wished we’d not embarked on. And that the alchemy that touches our existence can seem like a harsh never-ending cycle of beginnings and endings. Eclipsed memories, it so happens, can be painful as well as pretty.

The people in this issue are architects of change; they see beauty in the incompatible elements and believe in a higher power. They see the flipside, find the hidden meaning and recognise opposing forces coming together as one. At first, and I have to be honest, some of them blew my mind. The mini-meditative moments looking into the wisdom of our dreams and the talk of giving into the force of Saturn’s Return, made them seem from outer space, but on a second glance I realised we were all manifesting the same things in our own way.

It’s the possibility something supernatural may just happen that makes our evolution so interesting. Cosmic believers or not, we’re all in it for the moments when the stars align. And who can blame us? Now to make way for the magic.

The RUSSH Be Magic Issue hits stands 6 June.

SNEAK PEEK: PHOTOGRAPHER ALEX FRANCO SHOOTS ULTRA SONIC