Charming Imperfections of the Hand04/26/13
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the physical act of writing. I remember doing a lot of handwriting in pencil in grade school, and one day my teacher decided my cursive writing had improved enough to “graduate” to erasable pen. It was a pen called Erasermate I believe. It had blue ink and an eraser on the end. It didn’t write very smoothly, but it was erasable for the most part, and I remember being excited to no longer have to use a pencil. Either tiny things made kids happy back then, or I was a big nerd.
This memory came up while I was flipping through Andy Warhol’s Time Capsule 21. Andy Warhol used to keep everything and anything and toss it into a cardboard box, which was taped shut and put into storage when full. And then he’d start another. At the time of his death he had 612 of them. This book documented everything that was in Time Capsule 21. The items that really stood out to me were the letters, notes and stationery, which were all handwritten or typed with a typewriter, and slightly wonky. Personal touches and charming imperfections. I miss these things, and sometimes I forget I miss these things, and then I miss them again.
