Pen Licence

For the first time since high school I’ve tried to start regularly handwriting again. I like the way it feels more pure and direct, with no chance to backspace and rewrite. The action of handwriting is smoother and less mechanical than typing. I like the way that it’s an uninterrupted conduit between my head, my arm and the page: the act of writing becomes a real, physical thing. Feeding words into a computer can feel formless and inconsequential—a 2000 word document takes up virtually the same amount of space as a 200 word one—whereas the exercise book I’m writing in is slowly being filled by words, by ink. The words I handwrite have weight and texture; I can run my hand over the page and feel the indentations of the pen marks.

And the words are unmistakeably mine—my handwriting may be messy but generally it’s legible (at least to me). And the pen itself and the type of book aren’t important—there’s actually something kind of satisfying about using inexpensive implements to create something that has more worth (well, hopefully) than what was used to bring it into existence.

I presume that I type faster than I handwrite, but my thoughts don’t really lose pace with my hand as I thought they might when handwriting. Rather the words seem to be stored in my head and as I write they form on the page while my brain remains a couple of words in front. A bit like breathing, it becomes difficult if you over think this process; you sort of just have to let it happen. I learned yesterday that the eye actually skims ahead while reading, so that if the light was suddenly switched off the brain knows the next couple of words ahead of the one that it is ostensibly ‘focused’ on. I presume something similar occurs when writing.

The above is a pic of the first draft of this post as it appears in my exercise book. It’s kind of strange to stop and think about the huge difference between those words appearing on a page in a notebook, which is personal and private, and then seeing those words (or at least a version of those words) up on the most public and pervasive sphere in existence—not that the fact it appears now online necessarily means that it will be read by any greater number of people. But the fact I post this means I am accepting of the possibility that someone may read these words, whereas when I’m handwriting there is a fairly implicit knowledge that nobody will see it (when I was writing initially I didn’t have the idea to put the picture online, thus I was certain that the words on the page would remain private). In some ways it’s a shame that novels etc. are not presented as handwritten manuscripts, because while fonts can be wonderfully emotive they are a barrier between the writer and reader—an extra layer that must be navigated and interpreted.

This may be why I find it so intriguing to see an author’s handwritten notes on pages—it is as if I’ve been invited to a greater level of intimacy with that writer. Indeed, handwritten notes are intimate even if not from ‘famous’ people, e.g. birthday cards or postcards. Handwritten words approximate something much closer to ‘thought’ rather than writing: most people’s handwriting is scrawling and imperfect, arguably like the nature of thought itself. It retains an ‘immediate’ or ‘fresh’ quality, direct from the source. Furthermore, handwriting is always unique—typed letters rob individual writers and their thoughts of their personal nature. Is this loss of personality in handwriting something we don’t miss anymore simply because we’re so used to typed characters? Style and voice still count for a lot, of course—good writers have personality and presence even when working in Courier. But the barrier remains, and perhaps deprives us of a deeper, more biological (even biomechanical?) connection with the writer that only handwriting can provide. 

(at)hotmail.com

Lately I’ve become increasingly self-conscious of my email address, in much the same way that I’m sure people who wear tan shoes with white socks sometimes question their choice before convincing themselves that they look great.

Of course, when I first got my Hotmail address, there really wasn’t much of an alternative—Gmail wasn’t available and, more importantly, a Hotmail address was a prerequisite to use MSN messenger, which was the real reason I signed up for one in the first place. I’m not sure I used Hotmail to actually send an email for quite some time. 

Thankfully, my current primary Hotmail address is respectable in the sense that it’s my name with an underscore, as compared to my first ever Hotmail address which was black_betty42@hotmail.com. This was due to my thirteen-year old self’s love of cheesy pseudo-metal rock music and, I hasten to point out, was selected before Spiderbait came out with their radio-friendly cover and destroyed what little underground credibility the address had. Such is the tragicomedy that is my online life.

The black_betty address is now my version of a dodgy industrial waste disposal site, in which I direct any and all junk and assume that by the time somebody has to deal with the consequences I’ll be long dead. I’m not sure how legally binding blog posts are (this may set a precedent) but I hereby leave my black_betty42@hotmail.com to my next of kin. The password is tattooed in my left armpit.

Part of the reason I like my current Hotmail address is that it’s a small fuck you to the overarching dominance of Google. Sometimes I wake from a nightmare in which Google has somehow programmed all the people with Gmail accounts into a zombie army intent on taking over the world and building a giant Death Star-esque satellite in the colour and shape of the Chrome logo. The only people left to resist the G-zombies are Hotmail users and we end up saving the world and are rewarded by Bill Gates with extra powerful spam filters for our accounts.

The @hotmail thing is getting a bit embarrassing though. The ‘hot’ part alone probably automatically puts any email I send in most people’s spam folders. It just doesn’t look quite as professional as @gmail and smacks of the early-2000s when email was still a bit of a novelty and not used as much for actual serious things like job applications and banking. I thought when Hotmail.com recently became Outlook.com (because obviously Microsoft were embarrassed too) that I would get a much more palatable @outlook address, but Microsoft were very generous and, in order to allow a ‘seamless upgrade’, let me keep my Hotmail address. Bastards.

But I’m averse to switching to a Gmail account, partly because of the aforementioned apocalyptic scenario but mainly because, like most people, I’m lazy and scared of change. Yes, I know that there are relatively easy ways to set up email forwarding so that I won’t really even notice the difference, but the truth is, despite it being sometimes embarrassing, I’ve grown quite fond of my Hotmail address. We’ve been through some good times together, and apart from the one time it allowed itself to be compromised by a mystery hacker, it has never let me down. 

Besides, I’m kind of hoping one day that I’ll be the last person on earth with a working Hotmail address, and perhaps I’ll become some sort of anthropological touchstone, like those people who are the last to speak a certain language, and when they die are mourned because they take with them a small but significant piece of human history.