Issue 1 – Welcome
When a parent walks up to you shoving their offspring into your face for your opinion as to their good looks and quality, a lot of that is really about their own insecurity.
However, I believe that most of the time they just want your honest opinion, because they can’t see past their own love and bias. It was (and still is) for Lisa Keïfel, and I.
When we began, Topsoil took on a life of it’s own. But it wasn’t slam, bam, oops, thank you madam; this conception took a lot of five play. Years before we had sat down to plan this grandiose Magazine Project. It buss. Then a few more years passed and yet another big meeting. that buss too. So we said «This; time we will Nike » and we took what we had and we just did it. We spent four days putting together work we had lying around and we presented it like eager mommy and daddies to an unsuspecting public.
You said you liked it, but we couldn’t be sure if you were bullshitting us. Even after the second one, we were still skeptical, but we started to see what our child really was. (And like any good Trini/West Indian) Topsoil has a mother, a father and an outside sweetman, and a hundred tanties, godfathers and cousins, and nen-nens and pou-pous and mowsies.
This volume (beside breaking new, uncharted ground) is really about paying respect to that long list of care-givers who nuture and sustain Topsoil in good spirit and (since no one is paid for this) kindness.
We Lisa, keifel and I, dedicate this issue to you: The few, The Proud, The Unpaid Contributor. Tan-Ta-Da-Dah! So with only one last favour (Allen’s and Agostini’s are very bold faced, or didn’t you know) keep spreading the ‘Soil’ and we love hearing from you.