September 15, 2005
The sensual intimacy of pen and paper
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I am a resurgent pen-and-paper advocate and thanks to my man York I was pointed to yet another wondrous post by Doug Johnson (he of a million monkeys typing and d*i*y*planner.com fame).
To quote Doug:
Try and curl up with a TabletPC, laptop or PDA for a few hours. Your eyes hurt, the hard shape is awkward, you’re constantly checking for remaining battery time (or juggling a cord), and –despite this day and age– it’s not easy to build any sort of bond or connection to a machine, especially ones so transitory and mass-produced.
However, pick up a nice little leather-bound journal, grab a smoothly-writing pen, and all of a sudden, things become sensual. There is no hunk of metal, plastic and wires acting as an intermediary, nor is there any intimation of data being temporary. What you write on paper is immediately there, forever, and the flow of thought and creativity knows no middle-man: the connection is personal, free-flowing, spontaneous, and free of modern-day digital “interpretation”. You write, sketch, doodle, draw lines and circles, add stars, and otherwise feel the flow of ink laid smooth upon the grain of the paper. It’s a throw-back to another time, and we might just as well be our great-grandparents writing by nib pen and inkwell alongside the dim glow of a candle. For once, we can abandon our reliance on modern technology, and experience a connection with our innermost spirit, letting it roam free upon a page. All of this, and much more, heightens our sense of intimacy with the paper before us.
Oh Doug, that is precisely why I have taken my trusty leather-bound A4 binder back into my life. The sensuality of pen on paper, the lack of noise and cables of a powerful notebook (the endless fan noise drives me insane!)
Delightful post, Doug, and thanks again to Dan for pointing it out to me.
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One Response to “The sensual intimacy of pen and paper”
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September 15th, 2005 at 6:09 pm
I think this is similar to the relationship people have with magazines. There is, as Guy Consterdine put it, an emotional link. He identified the relationship between a magazine and a reader as being like ‘a friend dropping in’.
There will always be a place for writing and a place for the intimate link with magazines.