The most unique part of Waterlogged August is the magazine’s primary need: two strangers working together. Meeting new people is difficult enough, let alone collaborating on an intense artistic endeavor, but this magazine requires it. Needs it. Sure, you might assume the magazine therefore thrives on awkwardness and uncomfortable situations, and on one level that can be said for all artistic undertakings, and yet the product of such collaboration often displays itself as the very picture of comfort, of safe, of right.

 

And that is what our collaborators have achieved this month.

 

I met Erin Morgan in 2003 in a college classroom. She had a sullen look about her, a knowing face that held in all the information I only imagined I could one day get my hands on. She exuded an energy that intimidated me, and to this day I remember the feeling I got when I heard her speak in class: I am out of my league here.

 

I did not know her then. After years of conversations and collaborations, however, I saw a new, more complex side of Erin that indicated a thriving well of not only knowledge, but also compassion and understanding. Her poetry speaks to the lot of us, those of us sitting at home wondering how we dug that rut and realizing, at some point, only we could be the catalyst for lifting ourselves out of it. With that tragic yet hopeful juxtaposition, Erin’s poetry resounds in the cramped hearts and minds of those longing for a change.

 

And so I threw her in the fire of issue two with Landon Michaelson. Until only a month or so ago, the only thing I knew about Landon was that he could take one hell of a photograph. I didn’t know his capabilities as an artist, but photo editor Joe Arthur assured me that this guy could knock my socks off. So I took off my shoes and waited.

 

I didn’t wait long.

 

By the time I had seen three of his photos, I knew he was our photographer for issue two. But I wondered how Erin would react to his work, which made me even more anxious to see the final product. Would they get along as collaborators? Would they completely despise each other? Would their work match up? Would it mesh, or would it separate? What would become of Waterlogged August as a result of these collaborators?

 

That’s part of the joy of getting to know strangers. Sometimes they’ll scare you and sometimes they’ll pleasantly surprise you. And sometimes, they’ll do both. What you will find on the following pages is the unique encounter of two strangers, two people on opposite ends of the country with a similar vision but different voices. On these pages they began their first conversation and circled around each other, sniffed the air, sized each other up, shook hands and got to work.

 

And what came out of it all, what resulted from the tense and awkward stinging of a new encounter, is something so wholly unique in its existence that it seems only fitting it collided from opposite ends of the country. After all, it is only from different vantage points that we can see the same thing in such strange and different lights.

 

I give you Erin Morgan and Landon Michaelson in Issue Two of Waterlogged August Magazine, Everyone We Never Knew.