I need Borges and Proust. Proust and Borges. Memory and infinity. The precise and the mystical. The human experience as both very concrete and full of flavors, scents and visual impressions, and at the same time sublime, universal and earth shattering. And I suspect that Gerald Murnane’s novel “The Plains” is possibly and actually a kind of representation of Borges’ Aleph where all time and space exists in one small spot, in this case a settlement on the Australian plains. So I need Murnane too.
I never gave my writing much thought until a few years ago. Long before that I sometimes wrote down ideas, thoughts, dreams, wishes and other things in a notebook. Mostly using any writing utensil available.
Then, in late 2007, I discovered the fountain pen, probably from browsing the web and getting my curiousity piqued. I also happened to have a pen in a drawer gifted to me many years before that but seldom used. There is no turning back now. I use fountain pens daily. Notice the plural. One pen quickly became many, now more than thirty.
Using a good fountain pen is but one way of reaching a heightened sense of presence, curious as it may seem. Good fountain pens can be cheap or expensive. Above a certain price level, which is lower than you might believe, price is dictated more by design and marketing than quality. After all it is a fairly simple product.
The essence of the fountain pen is the nib. The right nib gives you a very comfortable writing experience and helps you to a personal writing style. The right nib gives you a tactile experience of writing that is one of a kind. While a nib with good ink flow lets you write more quickly if you wish, the pure tactileness encourages you to slow down and enjoy the feeling of putting your thoughts and pen to paper. Much like walking by foot slows you down to a tempo in line with your physical self, and placing your mental self in the same spot, a fountain pen can support you to thoughtful writing. If the nib is made of gold the softness of the metal adapts the nib over time to your style of writing, depending on how and how much you press the pen (a fountain pen, however, should be used with a light hand) and at what angle, thus becoming more personalized and thereby enabling you to express your personality even more through writing. Try it. It may change your writing life or simply just improve it.
“I’m looking for perfection in form… I’m trying to capture what could be sculpture.”
(Robert Mapplethorpe)
My view is that culture is important because it is our way of, through the arts and the artistic expression, have a continuous and living discussion with our selves and others about who we are, what we experience, what we dream about and wish, for the inspiration, understanding and knowledge both of our selves and others. I feel this should be obvious but sometimes it needs to be stated.
Sitting at an international conference that is dragging out for too long where many opinions and positions are repeated in similar words I get tired of the language. Or rather, in Tomas Tranströmer’s expression, “words but no language”.
I had an immediate longing for poetry, a paradoxical need for “language but no words” (TT).
David Kim explains how he uses a black Leica M6 Classic with Tri-X black and white 400 film for emotional detail and a titanium Leica M6 Classic with Portra color film for sensory detail. That is an interesting thought for the use of film.
This is Jomon sugi. He is an old guy if there ever was one - “a grim titan of a tree, rising from the spongy ground more like rock than timber” (Pakenham). Tree-ring dating indicates that he has been standing here for at least 2000 years. But the circumference of the trunk, 16.2 meters, puts this in doubt and suggests that he is closer to 5-7000 years old. Whatever the case, it is mind blowing that he probably was a veteran Earth citizen already before the first pyramids were built. If you want to meet him he stands tall at 1300 m altitude on the island of Yakushima, just south of Kyushu, Japan. It is easily worth the five-hour mountain hike getting there.
