out of your head, on paper

the semester is just over enough that I can start getting reasonably excited and anxious and breathless about the next one. I am emailing people about registering for Fall classes. I am scrounging around internet classifieds and such for somewhere lovely to live in this new place. I have another shiny, empty .edu email address. my fourth, I think. unless I had one in England? I surely did. but I cannot remember. I suppose it might have been .ac.uk anyhow...

hm. remembering things seems like an important skill. but is it that, or is it knowing which things to remember? knowing which things need to be remembered and finding a good way to remember them... that is difficult. perhaps impossible. and perhaps that is why we invented writing and google.

speaking of writing and google and remembering things, I cannot remember how I came across this guy named Craig Oldham or his art project all about handwritten letters. it was probably through one of those british blogging designer folks I still have in my google reader. Ben Terrett or Russell Davies or someone (and no, Brandon slash any other Doctor Who lovers, not that Russell Davies).

anyways. the link to this handwritten letter project has been sitting here as a thing to be blogged about for months, along with...

thoughts on Roland Barthes + Thomas Jefferson
connections between Shakespeare + The Cardigans' "Lovefool"
discussions of God, syntax, + David Hume
something about Marc Chagall + 2 Corinthians 13:1

...and a few other random lists, memories, and photographs. (maybe I should try for a blogger drafts collection of zero this summer, or something.)

now I am blogging about the handwritten letter art project. yeah. I like it. handwritten things are lovely and I think making space for them in all the non-handwritten parts of our lives is very neat.

it would be cool to embark on my own letter-writing project. one year it was a resolution of mine to write one letter every week. not getting responses made it sort of a sad, short-lived project though.

the 'share this' link Mr. Oldham has included on his page about handwritten letters opens a printable letter form:

isn't that amusing and backwards and perfect?

on the project's about page Mr. Oldham describes his project as part of "a visual narrative on the cultural transition in which we find ourselves." hmm. visuals are cool. transitions are cool too. connecting things and people and ideas and stories... I like it.

and as a completely random post-script, the same artist fellow has apparently created this very, very convoluted and strange but intriguing something else. I'm not sure what to make of it other than those adjectives.