|
The Violet Magazine website requires that you have Flash version 6 or greater. |
||
Editor's Note | Keki Mingus, Editor-in-Chief Violet started like this: Early last year I was looking for a magazine to buy. Everything "cool" was a turnoff. I was sick of paying $4.95 for magazines that basically told me that they were too cool for me because I was getting old and had a kid. I also didn't aspire to be "living" behind a white picket fence in a pristine, manicured community. I was a mixed-race mom and a New York City transplant living in an unkempt house in Laurel Canyon. My life was "real" but it would never fit into "simple" little "perfect" compartments. Most of all, parenting magazines irritated me. Although a mother and a wife, I was interested in reading more than just articles about the latest cure for colic or how to whip up the perfect dinner for my family. A perfectly-cool, perfect-living, perfect parent? I had no desire to be any of those things. Eventually I found others who shared my views, people with every bit of the warts-and-all baggage of imperfect living, and that became Violet. So here we are now. Our staff is young and old, gay and straight, multi-racial, single and married. It's hard to tell Violet's story without also explaining my own story a bit. Charles Mingus was my dad (if that name doesn't sound familiar, look him up and you'll find plenty written about him). The most important thing that he conveyed to me was the idea to approach art with honesty. One day he took me to see Van Gogh's "Starry Night," where he sat and cried for about an hour. We talked for a long time about honesty in art, the gift of being able to make people feel, and the pain it often causes. My father died when I was 17 from complications stemming from his having Lou-Gerhig's disease. I soon found myself far from the comfortable homes of my past, Upper East Side, Woodstock and New Paltz, to homeless and squatting in an abandoned building on Sixth Avenue and King Street. But I have always been luckier than most. I landed a menial job at Conde Nast, which turned into a staff position at GQ. Over the next few years I worked at Rolling Stone, then for Herb Ritts, and eventually became a stylist for bands. This is only a magazine. I am neither a composer nor an artist. I am the tone-deaf, flat-footed, spastic daughter of a great musician. But I have been tortured over Violet. I have cried at the beauty of our magazine's art (Dean Tokuno). I have woken up in sweats worried that readers won't get it. I have asked perfection from everyone involved yet have nothing to give them, only the hope of success. I have asked a favor of a good friend (Sarah) and hope this won't ruin a friendship. Lastly, I have used my father's name, which I have never done before out of sheer stubbornness and pride, always wanting to prove myself without him. As we get older we find that we are more like our parents than we thought. I am stubborn, proud, hard-headed, and passionate, too, and I cry when I see–no, when I feel "Starry Night". |
|
|
