“Just thinking”—Itamar, a publication from Valencia, thrives on its in-betweenness

For those who still don’t know it, Itamar:  Revista de Investigación Musical / Territorios para el Arte is a publication based at the Universitat de València.  Under its coeditors, Jesús Alcolea Banegas, Rosa Iniesta Masmano, and Rosa Mª Rodríguez Hernández, the publication honors its title and subtitles because it provides a space—a freethinking “palm tree island”—for broadminded thought, a territory where no discipline or methodology dominates; a place that fosters “la pensée complexe,” as one of its honorary founders, the eminent Edgar Morin, could have said.  To be sure, Itamar celebrates its “in-betweenness,” as Homi K. Bhabha critical theorist would say, a space between spaces in an imaginary landscape of academic work.  You may see it for yourselves in the table of contents of the current issue.

Itamar’s latest issue has just come out and, among many other articles, Antoni Pizà publishes a think piece on the possible consolation of music and the arts.  Why do some people tend to rely on the arts to find balance in their emotional lives?  Pizà has published several other essays in Itamar.  In 2009 he wrote about fragments and unfinished artworks and specifically Schubert’s Reliquie, Piano Sonata in C major,  D. 840.  He also published in 2010 an essay on Chopin’s sexual life, a widely downloaded essay, if only for its title.

We are all grateful that Itamar exists and provides a needed editorial space for open-minded scholarship and writerly creativity. We’re all Robinson Crusoe now, sitting on an imaginary Itamar, a deserted palm-tree island, scratching our heads and thinking—just thinking.