25 October 04

Letters to Anywhere

Diego plays with my envelope structureThe second workshop we took yesterday was entitled “Letters to Anywhere,” an intriguing title we never seemed quite to cover in the class…

We DID all have to write to someone whose face appeared on a postcard, of which there were many, or imagine the person on the postcard writing to someone else on a different postcard (and on and on; you get the gist). We constructed different envelope models for correspondence, things you can actually put in the mail. I liked Karen’s insistence on the ephemeral, on eschewing the sacred archival that we may have learned elsewhere. Have fun, she says. And SHARE it. It doesn’t have to last; it has to get mailed.

Ideas that came up on the drive home: Write a letter to a place. Write a LOVE letter to a place. Write a letter to yourself at a younger (or older) age. Write to a fictional character in your place, or a place you know well.

It strikes me that this blog is an ongoing letter to anywhere, actually: it’s certainly a letter to many places at once. So, anywhere: how are you? I am fine. Wish you were here…

Posted by at 06:30 PM in Design Arts | Link |
  1. Exactly!

    — dave    26. October 2004, 14:20    Link
  2. Indeed. Our blogs are growing stacks of postcards—with some posts destined for archives, others ust for the fun of getting it out there, even if some of the contents may spill out in tranist. But, yes, most of our posts sport that tag line in invisible ink: “Wish you were here….”

    — maria    26. October 2004, 23:02    Link
  3. If a blog post is a postcard, then some of them only travel down the block or across town, to local audiences who hopefully encounter familiar places with new eyes as they read. For them, perhaps we’re saying “Did you ever notice that…” or “Next time you’re in X neighborhood, check out this….”

    Thanks for the useful analogy.



    — Tim    27. October 2004, 06:21    Link
  4. Yes to the blog analogy, but I’m still a little envious about what sounds like a great hands-on workshop!

    — beth    27. October 2004, 13:10    Link
  5. And I wish you were here….....

    — tattler    28. October 2004, 16:55    Link

  6. I’m fine, thanks. How are you?

    For further ideas along the imaginary letters line, see mcsweeneys.net, which has an ongoing series called “Letters to Persons or Entities Unlikely to Respond.” Better than it sounds.

    Beautiful post.

    Jarrett

    — Jarrett    29. October 2004, 14:59    Link

Previous: Next: