Keep Me In Your Heart For A While

07/04/2016
Rife Editor

We say goodbye to Antonia, Cai and Grace.

One of the few life lessons I’ve taken off David Duchovny (I’ve failed at the only one I wanted — how to look like you do not care a single bit about how hot you are) is in series 2 of Californification. He plays a successful writer struggling with his own ineptitude. He tells someone he has been writing about that every time he finishes a new book, he listens to Warren Zevon’s ‘Keep Me In Your Heart For A While’. I really like the sentiment. That we have to take the moment to hold on to things, keep them close to us, keep feeling the emotion, the joy, the happiness, the brilliance they brought us, before we deal with the thought of losing them.

That’s how I feel every time I say goodbye to another team at. Rife Magazine.

I have to keep them in my heart for a while.

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Antonia, when she first came to Rife Magazine, was in the process of setting up gal-dem, because she wanted it to exist, because it didn’t, and because it needed to. She, and Liv Little, started the magazine because they knew how many electrifying voices of women of colour are out there and how little they get platforms to write in a space where their experience hasn’t been romanticised, fetishised or stereotyped. She wanted to gain real magazine experience from Rife and put it into gal-dem. She came to the wrong place. We don’t really work like how most magazines do. But we supported her to continue to build gal-dem to be one of the most important webspaces around. She’s grown from being an out-and-out music head, quiet but full of ideas to being a personal essayist and commentator of nuance, power and level-headedness. I remember someone once telling me, she has a brilliant mind. And she does. Her first ever piece is now one of the most popular pieces on our site

Cai, oh Cai, we’ve worked with Cai for many years. From just before he was about to finish sixth form and he was thinking about whether university was for him to launching his own successful online business. Cai’s thoughtfulness, fearlessness and playfulness have made him a joy for six months. His approach is, what do I know about? What don’t I know about? How do I make the journey of discovery interesting. From a glossary of LGBTQIA+ terms, to ridiculing himself in an aerobics outfit, to schooling himself, and us, on the EU referendum, he has built up a varied portfolio. And battled me with exclamation marks (god, I hate exclamation marks!) the entire time. He came to us an artist, and is leaving an experienced all-rounder with the ability to hold a room.

And Grace — Grace and I bonded over her bemusement that I thought I was battling my age (36, I know, I don’t believe it either) to be really into grime, by being like, if you like grime, just like grime. She made us spit-take laugh and cry in her interview. Every single piece she has done has contained an unbelievable amount of personality, courage and humour. She has continued to make me laugh, and cry. Her video about her grandmother is one of the most profoundly personal and brilliant things she, and the magazine has ever done. On her third day, I asked her to do a voiceover for a video we were making, and she threw herself into it with gusto and a carefree attitude. I knew she was a keeper.

Each of them has produced incredible content for us. And, again, I am sad to see them go. A new time starts next week, but between now and then, Antonia, Cai and Grace, I’m going to keep you in my heart for a while.

Goodbye.