Dispatch from the Parallax Triangle
by Cordula Frei
Dispatch from the Parallax Triangle
(One screen. Three worlds. A weekly séance disguised as an editorial meeting.)
Every week, across glowing rectangles and tangled time zones, the Parallax trio convenes—not so much a team as a living, twitching editorial organism. Three corners of a triangle: Palma, Paris, Basel. And at its center, a shared orbit of creative chaos, critique, and improbable tenderness.
Tom Amarque dials in from downtown Palma—half philosopher, half disruptor, always part flame and always hungry sharp on 12.30. Often armed with a hair complaint and a heretical question, he slices through idealism with the precision of someone who has seen too much theory and not enough truth. He is the founder. The flint. His voice sharpens the air: What is this for? Does it matter? He carries the weight of purpose like it’s a wild animal on a leash.
Andrew Sweeney usually arrives with the soft echo of domestic life behind him—children’s footsteps, a kettle boiling. He speaks in aphorisms, in tides. Musician, poet, teacher—his cadence floats like incense. From his home near Paris, or a university hallway, he offers the unexpected angle, the hidden thread. He’s the diplomat of discomfort, charming in silence, devastating in metaphor.
And then there’s Cordula Frei, last to enter, often from her art-filled kitchen near Basel. The female additional presence more than a posture as a intuitive forcefield. As life long magazine editor, author, and reluctant priestess of marketing, she radiates experience like heat from a stove with the smell of her basil pesto in the back of the screen. Sometimes she disappears—into the garden, the stables, into herself. But when she returns and speaks, the call tilts. In this way she doesn’t command attention; she grounds it.
What happens in these meetings? A little of everything. Book ideas fly past course outlines. Budgets meet metaphysics. There are arguments, silences, unexpected bursts of laughter. Sometimes it’s about survival—financial, emotional, creative. Other times it’s about storytelling as salvation. The whole thing feels like a séance, a confessional, and a startup sprint rolled into one.
We are not always in sync but that’s the point. This triangle isn’t equilateral—it’s dynamic at times like monks, then like pirates, often just weary comrades clutching cups of something warm, praying to the god of creativity. What holds us is friendship confrontation and then surrender in the fact that you cannot choose to become a writer. The question is rather, how do you survive it. And then: there is belief—however often fragile—but there is a common trust that raw, honest media still matters.
This is a first glimpse into the Parallax pulse behind the pots and screens. Every now and again a small dispatch will arrive further on—feral, imperfect and mostly true (mind you, a little storytelling my be added). A bark from the kitchen, a whisper from Palma, a philosophical ripple from the Parisian woods. A reminder that behind the books, the essays, the strange beauty of Parallax, we are just humans. And we are still just figuring it out, one mad meeting at a time. Meet us at our weekly podcasts, roundtables, poetry saloons and in the many great courses the Parallax academy is offering ongoingly - or simply write to one of us about your dream project, your latest book venture or article and how Parallax can contribute to bring your voice to the tribe -and to the campfire of the crazy troublemakers and quiet dreamers.
Contact us on: Here s the team