One of my favourite independent musicians is Glen Hansard of Swell Season. The first CD of his that I purchased has recordings from a live concert in Milwaukee. He’s the type of artist that likes to talk to his audience between songs and I remember clearly listening to one of the things he was saying. It resonated with me so much then but even more-so now for reasons that I will explain.
Glen was talking to the audience about how wonderful letters were and that while email had its advantages – he then went on to list the reasons why he preferred an actual letter. I wish that I had could listen to the song right now to give a direct quote but basically he says that you can tear up a letter, kiss it, put it under your pillow, frame it…I think that his general mindset is clear, that the letter has a tangible and physical presence.
I recently inherited an old chest that belonged to my father’s uncle. This chest remained locked and no-one had the key so for the longest time, the contents were a mystery; I liked to joke with my daughter that it surely contained a pirate’s booty and there must be gold and jewels inside.
Well, my daughter isn’t much of one for letting things go. For months, the mystery was driving her crazy and she wanted to know if we could figure out how to get the chest open. A couple of weeks ago, she kept on bugging me asking if she could try to pick the lock. I eventually relented to her badgering and went into my room. No more than 15 seconds later, I hear “Dad! It’s open!” Yes, she had picked the lock with one of her hairclips!
As we spent the next little while going through the contents, I found many interesting documents, but none more-so than some letters between who I believe to be my great-uncle and some woman – a relative, I believe. To see these letters and the time that was invested in writing them, Hansard’s comments became more meaningful to me as I understood completely.
Now, I’m not the type of person to write letters, and I never will be. There is something about physically writing that is very difficult for me. It’s time consuming and writing things by hand is not something that I do well. I’m a very keyboard-ish kind of guy as it frees my mind to think of the content without having to think of how to physically write. I looked at these letters though and it occurred to me that when someone has taken the time to write a letter, it must be so much more meaningful than a quick email or a text message.
It’s not even the fact that writing by letter would be slower but it would have needed to be done moreh more methodically as one would need to compose the contents in their mind and then write it down on paper. When I write my articles on a word processer, it is free form – no holds barred – damn the torpedoes, just get what is on my mind on the paper and fix and edit later.
I read those letters and I was completely charmed by the eloquence and the clarity of the letters, although trying to decipher handwriting wasn’t my favourite thing to do.
In a lot of ways, Mr. Hansard had this bang on, there’s something very romantic about having a physical letter. The emails that we send have their uses and their places and in a lot of respects they can be a more effective method of communications. At the end of the day though, they have no presence, there’s no physical aspect of them other than the bits and bytes.
What I type in these articles will always look the same as long as I’ve used the same font and format of the characters; you have no way to derive my state of mind or emotions. A T is a T regardless of how I’m feeling or how tired I am and I think that this is the true beauty of a letter from the heart -- that there is a message beyond just the words that is being delivered.
