The last issue of BMA, Issue 351, was my 30th as editor. I took up the editorial helm of this fine rag in mid-March last year, after traipsing through India and Nepal for a few months. Naturally “what do you do?” came up regularly, and it always sent a small charge down my spine to reply “I’m a magazine editor,” just as it does 16 months later.
But you’d think after 30 deadline Mondays (o those dreaded deadline Mondays, at the end of which I’m so frazzled I’m incapable of making even the slightest decision – beans or cup-a-soup? Beans or soup ARGH!?), that charge would have left me. It hasn’t.
The moment I get my paws on the latest ish every second Wednesday I tear through it feverishly; my eyes furtively scour the still warm pages for formatting and spelling errors, forgotten ads, dodgy registration, wonky binding, missing borders… for any of the myriad things that can, and often do, go wrong. The pang in my heart I get when I find an error isn’t as painful as the stab I got when I first started, but the satisfaction I feel flicking through the mag, particularly when it’s a fine print job, hasn’t faded a bit.
However, it doesn’t even hold a candle to the glow I get from spying people reading it. Flipping through it at The Front, poring over it at Essen, in the queue at Dendy, at the bar at Transit, on the geriatric couches at Phoenix… Knowing the words I’ve placed and proofed are being read, the images I’ve sourced are being ogled, and people are picking up this publication every fortnight to see just how much is going on in our town gives me a thrill I’ll never forget.
The thing I’m most proud of though during my time as Ed is introducing a local story quota of three per issue (which is entirely separate to Exhibitionist, whose coverage of Canberra arts is literally second to none). BMA’s coverage of local music will only continue to grow, just as our burgeoning live scene continues to grow.
I made a new friend on Saturday night. She was Canberra born and bred and had been reading BMA for 15 years. “It’s been the only consistent thing for music in Canberra” were her sentiments. As we discussed our respective jobs and I described my wonderful working environment at gorgeous old Gorman House, the wittiest man I know, my boss, and the endless perks of being a street presseditor, the thought reoccurred to me, as it often does, that there is no job I would rather be doing right now. I am exactly where I want to be, doing exactly what I want to do. How many people can say that?
So despite the fact that every second Monday I suffer a minor meltdown; that I berate and agitate one particular friend with my-brain’s-turned-to-grey-custard despair despite constantly promising to never do so again, and that I almost always awake in the wee hours on the morning we go to print panicked and grief stricken with the fear I’ve missed an ad, I know it’s all worth it because I’m giving back to the city I love. I’m giving back to its musicians whom I’ve admired from afar, to its musicians I hold dear to my heart, and to its musicians whose music I will cherish forever.
I may only be able to bash a tambourine or drum a beat on my lap or occasionally attempt to harmonise, but music is my life, and BMA has afforded me the privilege of truly making it so. It’s also afforded me the privilege of pissing off to Splendour in a fortnight with a few mates and VIP tix. Now that’s the good life, ain’t it? I guess hard word pays off.
