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Calligraphy - Brief Flame

I write best if I write fast. (I also like the tactile feel of my fingers tapping fluently over the keys.) But I can't write fast unless I'm mentally prepared. I guess that's good although sometimes I just spew out pieces rather than compose them and work them over with some kind of "good essay writing" checklist in mind.

I gave up on calligraphy for the opposite reason. My hand refused to be spontaneous so the line of my freeform calligraphy was never as fluid as I envisioned. What I did best was highly controlled, stay between the guide lines, every O a perfect O, consistently angled roman letters. The more I did them, the better I was. Not that there wasn't fluidity in the best of my work… it still took concentration and mental preparedness. I took a two-week course with the type designer Herman Zapf during the summer of '79 and my little letters got even more well-behaved.

But the guys I admired had big broad pens that flew across the paper leaving textured trails as the ink dried. At the same time Jim told me stories about how Zen masters would meditate upon a blank sheet of paper for a long time then — pow! — grab a brush and produce their stunning calligraphy.

I tried. I took classes. I bought all the right tools. I had the occasional success. In October 1981, I got a piece in a juried show at the Master Eagle Gallery in NYC: Calligraphy in the Graphic Arts. (I flew down for the opening… only for the thrill of saying to someone in the future, like today: "Oh, yes, my New York City opening… let me tell you, dahling, the place was mobbed…")

But I really didn't have it — It — and I gradually backed away. I blamed my hand, always tense and cramped. Can't say I ever blamed my lack of mental discipline.

Now with my writing I know better, right? Let 'er rip. Quit trying so hard and let your true voice emerge. Maybe my mistake with calligraphy was aching to have someone else's style and not having the insight or the courage to pursue a fluid style of my own. Maybe I gave up too soon.

2.12.00

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