My perspective in summary: the boosted efficiency of verbal communication has dawned at the expense of the true and full substance of the human presence.
Irony = me typing this.
(1) Background – forest and folklore
So before I delve into the meat of my theory, I wish to begin with the charm of Irish folklore as referenced two notes prior – the “So...ummm...how do you feel about rainbows?” episode. We heard a bit about the Irish legend of faeries and leprechauns, deep magic and mysteries of the Irish woodlands. We’ve also heard (even used) the expression “knock on wood” or “touch wood”. Well, surprisingly (or not), that familiar adage is also Irish in origin! So I hear you saying “gosh Brandon, you’re obsessed with the Irish!” Correct, and I beg that you bear with a few more lines of Irish myth meld with my own intuition, which, in essence, sets the foundation for my claim. You see, trees and their wood have been associated with “good spirits” in Irish mythology, and even with the sanctity of the wooden cross. Long ago, it was typically considered good luck to tap trees to let the residing wood spirits know of your presence. Tradition of this sort still persists in Ireland today, and in a less (consciously) mythical sense, globally perhaps; with “knock on wood” being used by those who tap their knuckles on a wooden object with the hope of staving off bad luck. So thus far, we gather the following: (1) that wood, in general, is connected with “positive energies”, and (2) that the wood of a tree is believed, in myth, to act as a receptacle of ethereal presence.
(2) El papel – the “Contact” theory
Much of today’s paper fibre is, at the core, the fibre obtained from pulpwood logs and the “waste” remnants of logging and sawmill operations that can’t be made into lumber. Now here’s where things get a bit less factual, but never-the-less, practical. Based on the psychospiritual esteem typically offered to woodlands, trees, and wood at the ground level, I believe that trees (wood) do display an affinity for “life energies”. Herein lies the heart of my “contact” theory. From trees, we have paper, from paper we have scribes, and from scribes we have letters/messages/notes, and by these, we communicate. Since the core/base substance of paper is wood, I believe that paper retains its ability to act as an extractor and receptacle of a range of life energies. Paper is not merely a template to be written on, but a vessel that captures and transports, between communicants, the energy behind the inscription as much as the actual inscription itself. The unspoken relevance of “knock on wood” gives emphasis to the power of touch – of contact, in that we kindle within wood the latent “positive energies” through physical touch. In turn, we are able to impart, in a very personal sense, our life energies by conscious, purposive, and “intimate” contact with paper, which acts as a modified “blank” of the natural wooden vessel (the tree). The handwritten letter/note, then, is (theoretically) a phenomenal medium of human transport. In penning a letter to a friend or loved one, we engage, by pressing hand/fingers/pen to paper, not only our deepest thought and emotions, but the fullness of our human substance. Hand-paper synergy permits a transcription of the whole human, as energy (which is what we are, essentially) into the fibre of the page. We may think of a blank page, then, as a transport vessel waiting to be filled; with our words, yes...but also with he who has crafted the word itself – the whole being of the author. Then he who receives the vessel encounters not only the word, but the author himself, and furthermore experiences the word as though avidly spoken by the author leaning close and whispering to his mind. So what am I saying? That the paperbound, handwritten letter is a highly effective transporter of the human substance.
(3) Efficiency – the fall of human contact
Anywhere, any place, instantly! A tag line we might use to describe what the digital media of today permits of human verbal communication. But before text had began travelling the invisible of cyberspace – screen to screen, point A – B in seconds, came the marvel of the printing press, which, if not the tangibility of text, had at least valued the timeless twinge of paper cuts, still. It was only a matter of time between typewriter and the HP® Deskjet printer, between which we inserted computers and between that, still, Microsoft® Windows®, Office and Word. Nonetheless, block-printing and typewriters were our closest encounter with natural hand-paper synergy, since our discovery that penmanship was a painful way of talking with the hand since we desired to become more standardized and efficient in developing our text. What is ironic is the fact that I have “cancelled” a selection of text via the strikethrough function of Word. Why and how would such a function prove relevant when “backspace” or “delete” functions are permissible in soft text? And what is “font” if not the programmed humanization of soft text itself? There remains, however, an element of the natural, personal, tangibly artistic quality of penmanship that soft text simply does not impart. The immediate effect of the printing press was to multiply the output and cut the cost of books. It was, undeniably, an ingenious invention that offered the merits of convenience and efficiency! But as inked blocks of wood became a surrogate for fingers, following with key-tops of typewriters to keyboards of PCs and laptops, our pages had slipped from the snug of our palms, to paper feeds spitting through the monotone of keystrokes, to white reams in bellies of metallic print machines. A subtle yet profound transition had occurred – our hand-paper synergy was broken. We had lost that mutual bond with paper, with trees, with nature and the natural of human verbal contact itself. To a large extent, the energy of human substance is lost between block-print and paper, more so with the typewriter, more still in conversion of soft text to print, and near absent in the full soft of cyberspace. The outcome, most often, is one of superficial volubility – the text with enclosed message, a product of the human, but lacking the soul substance of the human being. The author of today, therefore, unaided both by the passive and conscious transfer of the whole human, once afforded through hand-paper synergy, must wrestle with words in the hope of capturing himself in the sole substance of text. This be “mission impossible” of the web-based author, who lacks entirely the contact and carrier factors of the tangible page. He can neither embrace, nor share, the mortality of the tree – a reminder of ourselves. He cannot stir the heartwrench of knowing temporality, of pages now creased and dog-eared, yellowed of age and growing frail to the touch. The mentality of “keep-behind-glass”, in the fear of loss to clumsiness of fingers, or of the terror in thought of tearing the human you held between palms, encountered on that page, experienced by reading. The mortality of the handwritten note, then, paradoxically renders it immortal by merit of unfailing desire, awakened from the heart, to treasure the wholeness of the human it permits us to experience. But when it takes a few seconds to compose, deliver and respond to an SMS, BBM or E-mail, the timeless of cyberspace degrades to mortality; insomuch as the human form degrades into keystrokes and loose letters, dying as quickly as his words are given birth. He does not travel.
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