Postcard 006 - Henry Moore

Henry Moore, sent to [Dad].

Henry Moore in workshop, by Allan Warren, CC-BY-SA 3.0
via Wikimedia Commons

I just came back to this blog, because it's lockdown and I like sending things to people in the post.  I found this post in draft; I'd not touched it for four years or so.  

I picked this card out weeks ago, the day I was running a training event at the Glasgow School of Art.  I thought I'd find inspiration, amongst years of history of world renowned artists, and across from the slowly-rebuilding Charles Rennie Macintosh building.  But the only thing I know about Henry Moore is something that my Dad told me, years ago, about the holes in Moore's sculptures being something to do with his wife not having children, or miscarriages.  I don't know if that's true.

Since I wrote this bit of draft, the Art School has burned down, again.  

Today - lockdown's made me appreciate the post again.   I like letters, I like the longer time period we have for reflection that the ink-written word allows.  And I say that as someone who spends a lot of time at the computer, for both work and play.  I like the digital world, I like its immediacy and the possibilities it opens for connection and discovery.  One thing that lockdown has changed for me, since the beginning - in what already feels like the long, long ago - is our sense of time.  I'm busier than ever, whereas some of my friends, now furloughed, have rather too much on their hands.

I'm drawn to Baudrillard's writing, Simulacra and Simulation, and The Perfect Crime both got a mention in my PhD.  In the latter (IIRC, I'm not in front of the right bookshelf to check), he talks about how time gets shorter with electronic communication, and I think about that a lot.  I like writing.  I've dug out my fountain pen again.

These days I find that writing a letter with pen and ink is a more intimate experience than that of email, text, phone, regardless of content.  I'll not think twice about long and emotional and hearfelt Whatsapp or FB messages, but it can feel that I'm crossing a boundary, somehow giving myself away, when I write a letter.

This feeling is made more intense because of an experience a few years back, trying to mend a friendship - although in hindsight it was really probably just what Captain Awkward would call FEELINGSMAIL - and the ink-written word was fine, but when we got to email, it went downhill.  Too immediate, perhaps.  But also, that friend did not value the same things I did, and felt judged by me, and deflected by telling me that I was being hyperbolic, and too black & white.  All stories have three sides.  Our friendship had run its course.

None of this is about my Dad.

I got stuck on this entry partly, I think, because I didn't think that he'd like me talking about him on the internet.  We see things very differently, and very similarly, depending.  I haven't been home for a long time; that's not unusual because I live in a different part of the country, but lockdown made me more aware of it.

I miss the trees, and the thousand acres of sky.

Hey Dad.
x