And now for something completely slow
It’s National Handwriting Day.
The handwriting police race up to you, there is a screech of tires and the from the bull horn you hear: “Step away from the keyboard!”
Or at least that’s how I imagine it. But it really is National Handwriting Day. Handwriting may be a lost slow art. But even those who scrawl can enjoy the sensuality of pencil (in my case) or pen on paper.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I like my handwriting these days. And it’s getting better. It used to be appalling, so I won’t show you an example of that. Even I couldn’t read it. And the real reason for my previous obfuscating scrawl was that I was a nervous speller. Bad spelling was a source of keen embarrassment to me. I was even caned for not learning my spelling list as a schoolboy. It didn’t help. In fact it made me more nervous.
It’s easy to overcome bad spelling with software. And for me, the computer has improved my spelling as I now have the confidence to practice handwriting every day.
In France employers take handwriting seriously. They believe that you can make assumptions about people by the way they write. This maybe true, but like any test, be it Myers-Briggs, Enneagram, or any other system, the danger is to categorize and then only react to the label.
Handwriting does seem to be heritable. I see influences of my mother’s and father’s handwriting. In those days it was important to have an elegant hand. That was unless you were a doctor. I believe they had special illegibility classes for them in medical school.
My parents’ generation used to write, and calculate by hand. Handwriting mattered. It is a art, and like most art it’s a practice that improves over time. Handwriting has an immediacy that the keyboard doesn’t have. It’s authentic and expressive. Writing is drawing. It’s more somatically connected.
Even though having a handwriting day is probably a commercial idea, in these fast-paced times, receiving a handwritten letter or note can make a difference. It’s certainly a demonstration of slowing down.
When my broadband broke down for a week I couldn’t use the computer even to write on. It was like poisoned to me. So I used paper and pen . It was like a miracle. Thoughts I thought I could never think came out my pen. I started to write like I was thought in school and I never do that when I write short notes. I was not in trance, it was not a spirit. It was me. And it was wonderful.
Now the computer is working again…
Liselott,
I’m glad you had the slow-writing experience, and that your computer is working again. At one time, I was one of those IT guys who would come to the rescue of the recently insane, or rather broken people with broken computers.
I always imagined a way of diagnosing computer problems would be to break up the internal components of a computer in some sacrificial ritual, take some of the parts and put them in a black bag. When I would arrive in the office of the distraught and frustrated office worker, I would take out my bag, shake it up and throw the contents on the office floor. Then I would divine the problem, its cause, propitiate the computer gods with an incantation and see if that would work. In reality rebooting the machine was usually all it took.
The computer has its advantages. And of course there is even now speech recognition software! But the pencil really lends itself to doodling with ideas and pictures. Sometimes we need what seems like a failing or even disaster to make a change. However, keep up the penwomanship.
I must confess I do very little of my “creative” writing by hand. Funnily enough, I do most of my hand-writing at work, be it the writing of cheques, writing addresses on envelopes, etc. When I perform these otherwise menial tasks, however, even in this utterly utilitarian context, I do enjoy the process of slowing down, connecting loop to loop and feeling the ink flow out of the pen (admittedly a biro, but it works for me…) and onto the paper. When I write my cheques with mindful slowness, it is indeed a pleasure!
But then I also enjoy stapling, folding things… and you can’t beat a good shredding!
Dan,
Stapling, folding, and shredding are very transferable skills. I hope you are appreciated at work for having such passion.
When I was in school, one of the first lessons we did in art was to take a line for a walk. This just meant doodling. It didn’t make much sense at the time, little did. But making marks with a pencil can be one of those “in the moment” things. Who knows maybe a few words will appear.
Blimey, I remember “taking a line for a walk”!
I expect that taking a line for a walk was how the education system seduced some of us into becoming art-school fodder.
Perhaps all art teachers were taught to dole out the same curriculum.
You, too, can receive a letter from someone: take a look at this fascinating site: http://theletterproject.org/. I plan to donate stamps!
What a lovely idea, Lyn! I think I’ll drop him an email…