Patti...Hi...as we are the same age I too have memories of those inkwell days, and I still use the Dylan phrase "hang around the inkwell." I abandoned cursive long ago regretfully allowing self doubt to replace practice. I still love looking at my father's handwriting... I think of those long novels by Tolstoy or Hugo written by hand or Baudelaire and Nerval roaming the streets of Paris with a jar of ink in pocket...and of course the tattoo a forever reminder of the lasting influence of ink. Thanks.
Woolgathering is for me a little Hanuman book cute and fits in the palm of my hands,a rAre .wonderful find. The story fuels my hopes and imagination . From Patti describe her self going to the window to looking an Visual in sight and the whispers of the the time mist expanding existing is. Like a golden possibility for , a dream state , share. Thank you for gifts you share the one, the only you. Patti smith. Juliet Williams .
Currently reading your book woolgathering. Thank you for writing this. I cannot say how much I love the german translation. It is do poetic. Next I'll read the original book ✨
Thank You for your reading, I have the tiny Hanuman Books copy of Woolgathering which I love and cherish. It is fun to read while travelling. I keep buying new editions which are also beautiful and with more pictures. Sometimes when I meet someone new I gift them a copy or I just leave it behind to discover as a surprise .ps i love your penmanship, i share a love of inscription.
"All men are brothers"...i still have all of the handwritten letters my brother Alan wrote me while he was dying of AIDS from 1988-'89 to, finally, 1990. I look to the envelope and postmark, his address in Los Angeles, one of my many vagabond addresses in the center, I flip it open and I slip the letter out and then..."Hi Doll!"...and he is here. I can see his unmistakable handwriting, like a snowflake, all its own. Do we still write letters? xx
I work at a high school - I have to print everything because the teens cannot read cursive. They can't read a regular clock either when they arrive late. If they lose their phone, I have to look up their parent's number in the computer because they don't know it...signs of the times!
The technological revolution, with its impersonal almost mindless tapping of keys to pass a thought has of course replaced the intimacy of the hand-written form, thereby moving it more into the realm of art. It’s like the rise of photography, replacing the painting as a documentation the world around us.
Yours is clearly an art. My handwriting on the other hand would probably be considered abstract expressionism at best, and mostly illegible. Kinda like if Picasso, Pollock and de Kooning had a baby on a sugar high who was given a box of broken crayons and a tablet.
I’ve always admired handwriting. Mine is not very nice at all.
At school if I wrote a story, the writing changed all the way through, as if different people added their own bits to it.
Unfortunately I could never put down on paper the absolutely beautiful thoughts that come into my head. Sometimes I hear things that just make me cry, but I guess they are just for me to hear because I don’t have the ability to write them down, I’ve tried but it’s as if those words don’t exist, like they are just feelings not translatable.
How do you explain birdsong or the sound of wind on the waves. I guess these things are like my inner books, just for me to read.
I am envious of those who can set free what is in their head by putting it down on paper.
Thank you Suzi, I’m so glad you could understand what I was trying to explain.
I’ve always been thought of as a little bit odd, even by myself! The only person that I feel comfortable talking to, is one of my granddaughters. A budding artist, she is able to draw things for people that almost make them cry. It’s what she draws, things that really seem to matter to them, a real treasure. Maybe, somehow I transfer something to her and it finds it’s way out that way.
I followed along in the book as you read, and you added words, reordered others. That was fascinating. Wonder if that was your original you read from, or you spontaneously added and subtracted while reading?
I love that I read this after doing a drawing workshop with inks. Synchronicity. Lovely post, thank you Patti. Gx
Patti...Hi...as we are the same age I too have memories of those inkwell days, and I still use the Dylan phrase "hang around the inkwell." I abandoned cursive long ago regretfully allowing self doubt to replace practice. I still love looking at my father's handwriting... I think of those long novels by Tolstoy or Hugo written by hand or Baudelaire and Nerval roaming the streets of Paris with a jar of ink in pocket...and of course the tattoo a forever reminder of the lasting influence of ink. Thanks.
Patti thanks for all you post in these tremulous times. Dave P
https://open.spotify.com/track/0KFnCHVyyzOQvWoJbjXi1n
Je ne connaissais pas ce jour. Merci Patti!
"Drawing" is fabulous. I especially enjoyed the phrase Ho-Ho-Hovhaness. Thanks also for the cross-post of Jesse's piece.
Literature and art male life worth living. At least to me.
Woolgathering is for me a little Hanuman book cute and fits in the palm of my hands,a rAre .wonderful find. The story fuels my hopes and imagination . From Patti describe her self going to the window to looking an Visual in sight and the whispers of the the time mist expanding existing is. Like a golden possibility for , a dream state , share. Thank you for gifts you share the one, the only you. Patti smith. Juliet Williams .
Currently reading your book woolgathering. Thank you for writing this. I cannot say how much I love the german translation. It is do poetic. Next I'll read the original book ✨
This beautiful text omits parts that require left rotation, such as the lower-case l.
Thank You for your reading, I have the tiny Hanuman Books copy of Woolgathering which I love and cherish. It is fun to read while travelling. I keep buying new editions which are also beautiful and with more pictures. Sometimes when I meet someone new I gift them a copy or I just leave it behind to discover as a surprise .ps i love your penmanship, i share a love of inscription.
"All men are brothers"...i still have all of the handwritten letters my brother Alan wrote me while he was dying of AIDS from 1988-'89 to, finally, 1990. I look to the envelope and postmark, his address in Los Angeles, one of my many vagabond addresses in the center, I flip it open and I slip the letter out and then..."Hi Doll!"...and he is here. I can see his unmistakable handwriting, like a snowflake, all its own. Do we still write letters? xx
I work at a high school - I have to print everything because the teens cannot read cursive. They can't read a regular clock either when they arrive late. If they lose their phone, I have to look up their parent's number in the computer because they don't know it...signs of the times!
Yup.
The technological revolution, with its impersonal almost mindless tapping of keys to pass a thought has of course replaced the intimacy of the hand-written form, thereby moving it more into the realm of art. It’s like the rise of photography, replacing the painting as a documentation the world around us.
Yours is clearly an art. My handwriting on the other hand would probably be considered abstract expressionism at best, and mostly illegible. Kinda like if Picasso, Pollock and de Kooning had a baby on a sugar high who was given a box of broken crayons and a tablet.
I’ve always admired handwriting. Mine is not very nice at all.
At school if I wrote a story, the writing changed all the way through, as if different people added their own bits to it.
Unfortunately I could never put down on paper the absolutely beautiful thoughts that come into my head. Sometimes I hear things that just make me cry, but I guess they are just for me to hear because I don’t have the ability to write them down, I’ve tried but it’s as if those words don’t exist, like they are just feelings not translatable.
How do you explain birdsong or the sound of wind on the waves. I guess these things are like my inner books, just for me to read.
I am envious of those who can set free what is in their head by putting it down on paper.
Jayne, I like your use of "inner books" as a simile for those ineffable thoughts and feelings.
Books filled with a language unique to you. Could you free those thoughts by speaking them
out loud?
Thank you Suzi, I’m so glad you could understand what I was trying to explain.
I’ve always been thought of as a little bit odd, even by myself! The only person that I feel comfortable talking to, is one of my granddaughters. A budding artist, she is able to draw things for people that almost make them cry. It’s what she draws, things that really seem to matter to them, a real treasure. Maybe, somehow I transfer something to her and it finds it’s way out that way.
I followed along in the book as you read, and you added words, reordered others. That was fascinating. Wonder if that was your original you read from, or you spontaneously added and subtracted while reading?