I’m the kind of person who relishes in looking forward. A trip, a concert, a race, a graduation — a wedding, even. If I don’t have some proverbial pot of gold waiting for me (if I can just be patient enough, determined enough, whatever), then I don’t know where to focus my attention. I grow listless. Morose, even. The stuff of a thousand half-empty composition notebooks. But inevitably (thankfully?), time passes, and the beauty of that is getting what I want. Hello.

We’re starting off slowly here at Manqué. We are taking our time, soaking in the growing process as best we can. But while we are still stretching our limbs and determining which directions we’d like to lean into, we are — either way — terrifyingly, exuberantly here.

If you’re in the business of creating things (and I use the term “business” incredibly loosely), there are thousands of places you can go where people will tell you (often, with a price) what it is that you should be making and how you should feel about it. Maybe those places have a time and a place, but those places aren’t here. In an interview with the Longform Podcast, New York art critic Jerry Saltz urged listeners not to “pay so much attention to the gigantic institutions. You have to start your own institutions.” I’ve been thinking about that a lot. And well, here we are. We better have some fun.

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