We have a fondness for music. This is to say: we like music that haunts us whole and gives us language for beginning. Music ochre and buried, intimate and limitless. We like music that laughs too loud and kisses too hard. Music that watches without flinching. Sky-stretched music. Open-mouthed music. Music tender and tremulous. Music swathed in becoming. Music that knows what it can’t live without. Music meaning open palms and open psalms, meaning laughter as part of the bargain, meaning eyes up and homesick for tomorrow. Half Mystic, established in 2015, is an international and independent publishing project dedicated to the celebration of music in all its forms. Our staff, contributors, and authors have been featured in and recognised by Best American Poetry, Best New Poets, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Paris Review, The Chicago Tribune, Ploughshares, BuzzFeed, NPR, Teen Vogue, Simon & Schuster, the Pushcart Prize, the MTV Video Music Awards, the Billboard Music Awards, the Grammy Awards, and beyond. We believe in sacrifice and solitude, in dissonance and defiance, in wildflowers and wallflowers, in the mundane and the marvellous, in all things full of gods. We believe in listening to the ghosts. We believe in laughter so hard there’s no sound and in the still before the train comes. We believe in every verb. We believe in cataclysm. We believe in truth. And mostly? We believe in music. To be honest, even after eight years we’re not entirely sure what that means—but this project is our best attempt at figuring it out, one carefully-crafted release at a time