Thank you.

Words cannot describe how grateful I am for your visit to the site, for you to read my work, or to provide your feedback whether it be positive or negative. Being a writer in any regard has always felt like a faraway dream meant for others, but just to know that you were here, that I got to share even a little of my own art with you, means the world to me.

I’ve long had a bleak, albeit ominously motivating philosophy regarding any given person’s role in their own existence, especially in relation to their passions. Billions of people have existed on this Earth. Born, lived, died, and passed into the blank nothingness of memories lost to time. Billions of lives across human existence bleeding together into the white noise of time’s unending march into the total irrelevance of everything. For each famous figure, each icon, pioneer, celebrity, emperor. Behind each of them in their time, were countless names and passions lost and voiceless within their shadow. Fading ever more quickly into that white noise.

The philosophy is simple. Do not allow yourself to fall into the white noise. Make a noise all your own. Be known. Be seen. By God, make something loud and huge and brash and indelible. Paint, write, make films, cook, lift, teach, care for others, invent something, lead others. If not for others, be great for the sense of yourself, to hear yourself calling, atonal and furious that you will not fall into the white noise of time.

When you read my work, and hopefully, mention that you enjoy it, or can’t wait for the next one. When I hear that you hate me for making you wait for the next part of a story, or you hate how I’m treating a character. Whatever it is that you say to me that lets me know that you actually took the time to read what I’ve written, that is my affirmation that I am not yet falling into the white noise.

Seriously, thank you.

• Nick Santoro