This is entry number 14 of my newsletter, A small list of knowable things. As a reminder, if you are reading this entry but haven’t subscribed to the newsletter yet, you can subscribe here. Thank you for reading, as always!
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I’ve always thought of writing as a process of translation, an attempt to pluck from the sky something otherworldly and intangible, that exists beyond the realm of language and description, and clumsily cram it into the short stupid list of little stupid words I barely know the meaning of. Language is an blunt tool that attempts to convey what we are trying to mean to each other, and when I think about it too hard, it feels utterly impossible that anyone is able to translate any idea into anything that anyone (including themselves) is able to interpret in any sort of way. It feels miraculous that anyone can read this and parse any of what I’m trying to convey, because it doesn’t feel like I am choosing the right words, of the right amount, in the right sequence, with the right methods, to articulate this, or to articulate anything, any time I try to articulate it, ever.
Basically, what I’m trying to say is that writing is difficult enough as a translational process, theoretically, without even beginning to factor in the translational process physically. Using the blunt tool of language to describe what can never be fully described by it is hard enough that writing as an act of physically, literally getting words onto blank page should be as easy as possible.
I used to write with a soft-leaded wood pencil, and I enjoyed how direct that act felt. The pencil itself is its own blunt tool, which makes it fitting as a... physicalizer¹ of language. The pencil's solid core scrapes itself onto the surface of the page, so as you write, you transmute that dense, solid element into a flat field of thin scrapings, like gold bar to gold foil.
If writing (theoretical act) is one of translation, then writing (physical act) is one of transmutation, of material from one form to another. And in the process of that change of physical state, meaning is created, almost as a byproduct.
A ballpoint pen never felt natural to me in the same way. It never felt like the ink inside them ever ran out — I always lost my ballpoint pens before they ran out of ink, and so it felt to me like the ink inside them was somehow fake. And writing with them felt less easy. The pen didn’t scrape across the page as directly as a pencil. The ink always felt sticky, and stuck. The ball bearing in the tip never carried enough of it onto the page as I wanted. I always found myself pressing really hard onto the page to get the pen to flow properly, so that the blank page underneath it became marked by the indentations of the letters I had written on the page above it, which made that lower page hard to write on when I got to it because it was no longer blank — it was like it had already been written on, but the ink had disappeared off of it. And for so much of my early life, I thought the ballpoint pen was all there was in the world of pens, but at some point, I became aware that there were other pens you could write with.
All of this to say that over the last few years of my life, I have become completely enamored with fountain pens. They feel intuitive the way a pencil does. Liquid ink moves through the pen tip and directly onto the page. I understand that the ink flows through gravity and capillary action — there are no complicated ball bearing tips or anything to get in the way of the direct transfer from ink capsule, through pen, onto paper. And because the pen tip is metal, there is a really satisfying directness of dragging something solid, with no moving parts, against a surface. Or, perhaps not dragging, but gliding. A lightness is required, in fact, to make sure the pen works properly. If you press down on the page too hard, you risk splitting apart the two splines of the pen tip, and then the ink won’t flow down it anymore. So you float the pen tip across the page, the ink flows out smoothly, and there it sits on the page, having been distributed from inside the pen to outside of the pen. Easy!
It’s a delightful, intuitive and satisfying motion. And writing with a fountain pen makes me excited to write. Sometimes, even when I don’t have the words or desire to write (theoretical act), I will just feel compelled to the feeling of writing (physical act), and I’ll try to find some excuse to do it. So I suppose that writing (theoretical act) is made easier when writing (physical act) is made easier. Because then the translational act gets less harrowing; all I want to do is distribute some ink onto some paper.
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¹ "Physicalizer", by the way, is one of those stupid little words on the short stupid list of words I barely know the meaning of (is it even a word?) that I am trying to clumsily cram an idea into. If you have a better word for what I'm trying to say, let me know!
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From quietly provocative international best selling author and TV writer Jonny Sun, A small list of knowable things is a weekly illustration and reflection on a personal object close to his heart. If you haven't already, you can subscribe here.
Fountain pen
