Voices

KEITH: Good questions, Hutt, and some of them -- what makes an effective partnership? -- seem best answered in practice. We'll see how Being Point Press does, and that'll answer the questions.

But you asked how this is different from editing OMNI. Obviously, we don't have the staff OMNI had, but I suspect you're not talking about mechanical details.

One of the things I sought when editing the magazine was as wide a variety of voices, styles, tones, insights as possible. If we had twenty-five by-lines I wanted twenty-five different voices. That was pretty unusual for a national magazine, many of which are edited to a single voice. Not all, and the exceptions are among the finest and most important and interesting magazines of our time. But many magazines have a "house style" and material is edited and shaped to fit it.

So I would say that what I hope for with Being Point Press is a variety of styles and tones and insights and ideas, a sense of breadth of perspective and range of inquiry that makes reading so rewarding.

How's that?

Dogma Catchers

HUTT: Well said, my brother. Why Being Point Press?

Well, several reasons. The traditional publishing model is clearly broken. Technology makes becoming a publisher more straightforward than ever before, and our mutual obsession with communication, growth and evolution provided an opportunity to create a forum for works that move us forward.

And you said it well relative to our reasons for engaging with each other. I value the creativity that is generated when we discuss ideas. Single-minded thinking turns into dogma very quickly; and, here and now, I'd like to declare Being Point Press a Dogma Free Zone. I always ask my clients to consider the ideas and feedback that I present to them, but never to accept anything at face value without subjecting it to questions. We are dogma catchers for each other.

And since the quality of the answer is generally a function of the quality of the question, I'd say that Being Point Press now exists both to question as well as to serve up a wide variety of potential answers from authors and creative folk in gracious service.

Then there's the personal satisfaction I find in partnering with you. A worthy partnership is, I think, the greatest relationship. How's that?

How do you see Being Point Press evolving? How is this different than when you were editing OMNI? What qualities do you expect in a business partner and collaborator?

Why Being Point Press? Why Us?

Why Point Being Press? Why Us?

KEITH: We've known each other for forty years or so, Hutt, the best of friends possessing the most opposite -- in detail, anyway -- of beliefs about the universe and the way it works.

So how is it we decided not only to write Tougher Times and other books together, but also to start Being Point Press?

Since I asked the question, I'll go first.

That very tension inherent in our contrasting -- possibly a better description than opposite or opposing -- beliefs has always informed our friendship. In doing so, it has also sharpened and refined our thinking. Our differences of belief provides a breadth of insight and approach that has always been invitational rather than exclusionary. We've always enjoyed putting our beliefs on the table and playing them against each other, rather than seeking out only the company of the like-minded.

And we've both been long preoccupied with the idea of a better world, of the quest for that higher understanding of consciousness and existence that unlocks doors and reveals new ones, resolves mysteries while exposing -- and creating! -- new ones.

That dialogue and those explorations are, I think, what Being Point Press and its evolution will be all about. A press and a place where the dialogue can expand, with plenty of room for other explorers and their approaches to join us.

Your turn.