Smitten by the Written
On soulful spell-work in rerouting wrongs, through words and songs
“To whom it may concern…”
When was the last time you wrote a handwritten letter?
It’s all @ electronic mail this century, and yet, millions of individual postal items are being sent and delivered globally every day.
And so, dear subscribers, this is to honour the collective desires and cultural achievement, of ‘Us’ — those who wish for the continuation of correspondence by the palpable process of paper and penmanship.
(I also acknowledge the unseen influences of the winged messenger.)
📮Please remember that if a reader should consider regular donations for these digital missives, a perk I include is the sending of postcards.
(p.s. stamps now cost the same as what cups of coffee used to be priced at…)
🎶 This is partly dedicated to . We’re both students of Marshall McLuhan / The Medium Is The Message, and since he’s already submitted a brilliant piece of musical media ecology homework, with Fill in the blanks… I’m going to be cheeky, and publicly challenge him (a playful request) to perhaps pen something lyrical about the merits of posted airmail, that isn’t just about romantic love letters.
"Mechanic of bones & fleshy stones" / Ink Drawing by Xianing Plaskett (April 2024)
Poetic Possibilities
Once upon a time, before the lockdowns of 2020, my friend, the poet
, was having a bout of that writer’s block. Though I didn’t quite believe in this fleeting plight, it provided a wonderful opportunity for us to play with these Metaphor Dice that I use to teach art students about creating meaning from the chance method of serendipity. In tandem style of He wrote, and She wrote, Rishi & I stitched together Scuff The Air, which was delightfully published by Magma Poetry in Issue 78.My cryptic record of this collaboration, is less haiku and more fragmentary.
Its folktale origins from friendship via Tiny Web bar, having coffee at Southbank’s branch of Le Pain Quotidien, with the side dish of geomancy, and combined humour of two brown bread Brits. Rishi describes our synergism as having started with a squib, a sketch of a scene he inked in a Newcastle hotel room, overlooking the Tyne, that he then passed to me. We played our parts in lifting it away from the mundane towards the magic, smoothing one or two slightly rough corners into lines. The dance of pen pals, and swapping of postcards.
My favourite lines from Penny Penates is:
We attain new dimensions,
When we dare to puncture and poke…
This is quite a potent seed. What are we ev-oking, inv-oking and st-oking into being?
Currently, I’m still a student, scribbling pages, to give the joy back, as part of the Irish Writers Centre online course - Notes on Memory. I’ve been pondering the possibilities for generating stories when we make the time to scribe with physical penmanship. Instead of mere posting online, we continue the classic craftwork at snail pace, before they wonderfully fly off into actual air space (and not cyber).
If you seek an antidote to the screen, I recommend two practices that are worth trying out:
🔴 SEND | What is #InCoWriMo / 01.02.25 ?
International Correspondence Writing Month starts on pinch, punch, the 1st day of this upcoming February month. It’s hilarious that it’s being marketed as ‘vintage social media’, when it’s surely just a low-key continuity of an ongoing method of letter sending. I’ll be participating again of course, and perhaps you can join the rebellion.
🔴 RECEIVE | What is StampFans?
If you want real, ink-on-paper post through your letterbox/mailbox, then you can send some funds to have the online printed. You can try out Rishi’s set of TIME Stamps.
Permutations of Personalised Proximities
🔴 LOVE Mail? I have really come to love the postal heritage here in the UK. A favourite playful passion project, that gives evidence of what’s worth celebrating, is still Harriet’ Russell’s ‘Return to Sender’ in 2008 — where she tested to what lengths Royal Mail staff were willing to go to to ensure the safe delivery of 130 artfully-addressed and ingeniously eccentric envelopes, that featured a sequence of complex puzzles, pictorial riddles, and fun ciphers. The case study is wonderfully available as a book too.
🔴 HATE Mail? There’s also the mischievous works by Mr Bingo, who in 2011, started a campaign of sending offensive postcards to strangers. I received one of them, and the illustrator and I got to hang out in the Philippines when he was a speaker at Grafika Manila in 2017.
Letter Bombing: Not electric, just eclectic sent
PROVOCATION: Given that it seems pretty certain we’re moving into a new upsetting age with AI + ChatGPT, what, like the wheel, is now an active shaping force' that will become obsolete and will move into a more subsidiary role in the culture?For an assignment, I sent
and x5 other Classmates, separate handwritten letters, that tried to answer the question above. I did not type out what I thought, but specifically, in spontaneous response, I let my purple inked brass Kaweco, wonder and transfer in freestyle a series of unique explanations. The themes of each reply, prompted the following themes: 🫂 THE HUMAN WITNESS
Overall, what I consider ‘an active shaping force’ is the embodied awareness of a person as narrator, observer, or witness. Chroniclers of events and happenings belonged to the literate who could read and write. They were historians, journalists, diarists, and powerful decisions makers such as monarchs, ambassadors etc.
The machine is able to generate content at speed, but authority remains ‘within the hands’ of people – and whether imperatives for action are issued by signature or typed out information on paper or digital devices, the power to control, govern, or influence is still a human act, and not subsidiary.
📓 NOTEBOOKS, DESKS & PAPER
There is also the continued existence of the SECRETARIAT – that is, ‘one entrusted with secrets’, and the BUREAUCRATS – that is, a person with an ‘office or desk’. Despite the digitisation of information, the administrative process still requires paperwork with signatures and official seals or stamps. Files & Folders will exist inside computers or stored in the cloud (via hardware servers), and yet they are also still stored in printed analogue form, catalogued in filing cabinets.
What is curious is that ‘keepers of secrets’ remain in the shadows, and with surveillance systems in place, there are various DATA-BASES with people’s information that can be misused/abused, subject to cyber-security breaches.
✍️ HANDMADE GESTURES
Since the invention of type-machines, the manually written letter is not a source of public information, but rather of private correspondence. Historical evidence of context will include letters, when analysing the social impact of wars. The memories of soldiers and veterans, will still more intimately and viscerally know the horrors and miracles during wartime, even if Midjourney might artificially interpret what happened.
The habit of sending written post is still practiced by those who demonstrate their friendship/relationship ties by sending greeting cards for events – such as birthdays, weddings, new homes, etc.
Sending ‘TRAD MAIL’ could be considered a leisurely pleasure or unique activity. It’s not as cheap/free (compared with electronic messaging services), but the slow edition is perhaps more valued because of the extra special effort involved to present it.
🖊️ PEN AS MIGHTY WARCRAFT SWORD
Examinations by essay writing was the norm for acquiring your educational qualification here in the UK, and perhaps that will be replaced soon with timed analog typing, or oral VIVAs.
Penmanship is considered a marker of craft class and rogue stealth education, even if people will be self-conscious about their marks and cursives. Some practice calligraphy and are more considered when they put ink to paper, collecting different brands and types of pens and inks as a special hobby.
📁 SECRETS & SURVEILLANCE
The wheel may not be as fast as the electric/digital sends or broadcast via the internet, but symbolically the wheel exists (fortune, fates, cycles). Secrets too, have always been a ‘force’ for controlling people and populations, which is why intelligence agencies, blackmailers and whistle blowers exist. In Mission Impossible scenarios, missions ‘self-destruct’ and evidence that can be incrimination is destroyed. So how will ‘truths’ be revealed? There is an increasing attraction to groups of ‘truth tellers’ who want to disclose evidence of real conspiracies.
If most information is catalogued or recorded digitally, what about the esoteric and occult? Will there be a return/retrieval of the confessor or confidante? Perhaps oracles will be sought after with their sage and specialised wisdom - gnostic knowledge, rather than mainstream algo information.
🪄 ARCHIVIST ARTEFACTS
The pencil wands are still in use even though there are different type-writing machines. For as long as there are people who enjoy drawing and using miscellaneous materials such as charcoal, crayon with paper, then hand-made notes will continue to exist, even as subsidiary communications rather than mainstream media news-feeds.
The Return of The Book Keepers. Libraries & Librarians, are the OG too nerd school for the impoverished and superficial cool. There’s also the Andy Leek’s Notes to Strangers waiting to be discovered.
Yours earnestly, I’m more than just another scribe, am some kind of royal Oracle and Chief Divinator for Rogue Futures Initiatives. I continue to battle against the tide, by insisting on the 3 core Rs for cultural resistance - reading, writing, and little arithmetics.
Happy Chinese New Year of the Wood Snake + New Moon! To more salve of soothing snaking scripts!
The wise supposedly say, that ‘the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, and the second best time is now’ - well, today is the start of what’s next for 20 years henceforth.
Welcome to Pluto in Aquarius Time, and The Calling is Mediumship - the practice of purportedly mediating communication between familiar spirits, or spirits of the dead and living human beings.
Since the medium is the message, what if we are the psychic mutant ninja wizards we are searching for?
NB: “We are the life that runs through the books.” - O.S.
Class missive. I’ve got my marching orders. Will keep you posted!
“I am the diamond glints in snow”