I'm not sure what first attracted me to So it Goes. Perhaps it was the whimsical title that played against the weightiness of a biannual arts and culture journal. Then again, it may have been the curious mix of subjects: James Franco's tale of the demise of his Palo Alto high school friend Ivan, the "mad one" who became his muse; the work of street-hanging photojournalist Boogie, a man addicted to junkies and gangsters; the magic of the circus and the characters who have time and again run away with it to preserve a 250-year-old British tradition; and the post-Lanza struggle for peace in trigger-happy USA, a land where firepower gives the citizen a false sense of security and where "gun control means using both hands", as hip hop legends De La Soul observed.