Time is a rubbery thing around the proverbial AG offices. This October issue, for example, is really a child of September, where we had to pretend to be feeling crisp autumn winds and spooky season energy in the midst of what I like to call August Part Two in New Orleans. Wherever we are on the calendar, your AG crew is already living in the future—which can be tough when December comes and we’re all stuffed full of eggnog and cannolis but have to imagine having already crossed the threshold into the new year with that lean-and-mean resolute attitude.
Then there’s the nowness of time when we put these issues together—“history’s first draft” as we say in the media biz. Always the timeliness, always trying to be on top of the current news wave. We try to guess about the future—and sometimes it’s easy with a month like this, where Halloween sets the table, as well as reliable, annual events like this year’s New Orleans Film Festival—but it’s not always so straightforward. It was no small newsroom miracle that we were able to fly in a photo of Dolly Parton on the evening of her death, announced mere hours before our upload of the September issue to the printer. It made that issue extra special as Dolly’s smiling face beamed out over thousands of back covers around town in honor of our fallen national hero.
Of course, there’s the time between upload and the agonizing handful of days before the new issue shows up at AG HQ, neatly bundled and ready to hit the town. They say God is in the gaps (between what we know and don’t know), and on those days where the issue is completely out of our hands, and thousands of dollars’ worth of paper and ink are being whizzed through a massive offset printer, I certainly pray to something beyond me. This is where time seems to stand still, like stepping outside during the eye of a hurricane.
Once the issue drops at the top of the month, time feels like a beachfront perch on the Gulf, where next month’s deadline still seems somewhere far off in the horizon. This is the time we get to catch our breath, do a little housekeeping for the magazine and in our own lives, both woefully abandoned around deadline. But then like a rollercoaster, we creep slowly towards the apex of the month until our cart crests and time becomes a punisher, racing us toward the next deadline. In these last few weeks, time is like oxygen in a stuffy room—just barely enough to survive.
We also play the long game here at ANTIGRAVITY, where time stretches out over decades. As much as we want to capture that nowness and document New Orleans for the people living here at the moment (and those in far away places living vicariously through our pages), we are also speaking to future generations. This is one of the core guiding principles we use to curate content. And Dear Advertisers—I know it’s not the sexiest pitch, because you need butts in seats now, but please consider how your message, if captured in our pages, will resonate into the future, and anyone who finds a copy years from now will be instantly transported back in time. Have you ever picked up an old LIFE or Rolling Stone or National Geographic from the ‘60s or ‘70s and marveled at the ads? This is not just cheap newsprint you’re holding in your hands, but a veritable time machine. How cool is that? It’s the ultimate trick, crafting instant nostalgia in these pages, where we write a monthly love letter to this city for everyone here and now, but also to people we will never know, but who will know us.
At this point, you may be thinking, OK Dan. Time to pass it. So let me end on a sincere note by saying that while some of the elements of time may be treated like a vapor or wet noodle around here, one extremely important exception to that is your time, Dear Reader. We always try to treat it like the priceless jewel that it is. It’s the most precious resource we all have, and it’s the ultimate duty of the ANTIGRAVITY crew to respect it. We’re all so overburdened and having our time taxed constantly. This can be an issue in New Orleans, and not just in the way that half-assery and lazy, amateurish efforts abound here. It feels like too often these days we don’t respect each other’s time, and AI will only make this worse. I and the AG crew are taking our time to communicate to you, making sure these signals are as clear and crisp as they can be, full of love and intention. We could never disrespect you by giving this information over to a glorified summarizer. So if nothing else, whether you agree or disagree, whether you find love or offense, I hope you turn these pages feeling like your time has been well spent. —Dan Fox
illustration by Laura Frizzell
ABOUT THE COVER
When asked to do ANTIGRAVITY’s October cover, I knew right away that I wanted to illustrate a New Orleans Halloween Party. Not some big bombastic bash but something depicting a much more mellow meeting of merriment, the kind of get-together that will happen at houses all over the city on Halloween night: Folks hanging out with other folks in a non-digital, physical shared location. I think choosing to spend more time with other people IRL (In Real Life) helps to offset the toxic digital phantasmorgia being projected at us daily. With our present climate course, every day in New Orleans is a reason to celebrate with others. While we’re waiting for the wild waves to wash us away, we will waltz with the wild and wonderful. I luv ya, New Orleans. This cover was drawn using my Apple iPad Pro. I started with rendering the house background layer first and then proceeded to riff drawing different folks at the party. The final parts I added were the little Halloween details like the cat, bats, and Jack-O-Lanterns. (Hey Folks! There’s something on the cover that references the origin of ANTIGRAVITY magazine back in the early 2000s. IYKYK. Also, someone in an Elmer’s CheeWees mouse costume. In the early 1950s, Elmer’s Fine Foods, a New Orleans snack food company, licensed its puffed cheese curl snack to the Frito-Lay company, instead of simply selling it to them for a big payout. I’ve always thought that was pretty cool.) —Circe Meadows
