Blog — Half Mystic

“We are so filled with feeling, even the gods must relent.” (Angela Sucich on Sevdah)

Psyche’s desperate desire for Cupid evokes sevdah, the human condition humming like a sad organ across a mythopoetic soundscape.

Literature, History, MusicGuestJuly 7, 2025Zanin Berbić, Damir Imamovic, Lucius Apuleius, Hippocrates, Ovid, Homer

“Music leads me to the threshold and silence allows me to step through it.” (An Interview With Sjafril)

Desire, for me, is a form of devotion. A sanctuary of melancholy in the lack of having. A shelter against frenzy. A prayer with no need for sound.

Art, Music, InterviewsMia Arias TsangJuly 2, 2025Sjafril, Kansas, The SIGIT, Kiai Kanjeng

“Why do we want or need to have our hearts wrenched again and again?” (Kathleen A. Wakefield on Sevdah)

The work of poetry is a perishing, hauntingly apprehended in the songs of sevdah.

Music, Literature, Personal EssayGuestJune 26, 2025Kathleen A. Wakefield, Ennis Cehic

“Memory and music are as inseparable as they are elusive.” (Natalie Marino on Sevdah)

To be young is fleeting. Love and life pass like the ungraspable wind, never to return again.

Music, Literature, Selections, Personal Essay, HistoryGuestJune 18, 2025Hippocrates, John Keats, James Joyce, Lucille Clifton

Songs for the Sevdah Issue (A Selection)

The sevdah playlist is a lush echo of the pulse of sage & velvet that defines this issue, with songs chosen by our editorial team in the process of curating & dreaming.

Preorders are Open for Opus II, Issue II: Sevdah

A damask veil. A clipped swan’s wing. A memory of a late-night lake with a long-gone lover, when the sky & water turned the same colour & met at the edge of the world.

Everything a Little Mystic

The Long Crescendo is a year-long physical & digital celebration of Half Mystic’s histories & futures, the promises borne of & made to the world we’re spinning together.

Announcements, Gatherings, MusicTopaz WintersApril 18, 2025

Announcing Half Mystic’s Nominees for the 2025 Pushcart Prize

Each of these pieces pulls us into sharp-eyed focus, reminds us why we’re here & who we’re becoming. Best of luck to our nominees. Here’s to possibility.

Introducing Sevdah

In Issue II of our second opus, desire is holy & heavy as the still before the train comes. Moor us in the unquenchable. We want a begging to believe in.

Music, AnnouncementsTopaz WintersJuly 18, 2024

“It’s the dancer’s leap on the downbeat that gives the illusion of flight.” (Will Cordeiro on Presto)

Bang, the universe began—and ended. A cosmos is reduced to an epigram. Narrative allows us to dash through eternity as quick as a quantum leap.