Who do you talk to about love?

I'd be interested to know. If you haven't someone, then it becomes a rather taboo subject.


I don't mean necessarily declarations of overwhelming love or the classic image of a girly heart-to-heart drowing in tissues and wine and all that shit. But there is a powerful part of our imaginations, our experiences, emotions and hopes and maybes and what-does-it-means that I'm labelling here as the things of love. Old loves and flirtations and possibles and alternatives and probably nots included. How do you share those personal thoughts or fancies without it going all heavy and weird.

Well I found a solution which I found really satisfying last week - I put it into some illustrated letters (of which the pics here are excerpts).

And it HAS seemed to have worked for me in exercising & exorcising some things, and I hope I don't weird out the people who I wittered on about it to. There's something so satisfying and relieving about putting pen to paper and writing - or in my case slowly doodling with words thrown in - about something on your mind, which you aren't yet sure how to express. By expressing something in-the-moment onto paper, you've removed that anxiety or uncertainty or whatever it was - the itch, maybe. And by being a letter - a thing shared - you avoid this becoming a lonely and an isolating experience. So thanks to the two recipients of my latest involved, self-obsessed and ultimately rather vague and indefinite ramblings. You helped me think some heart things through.


And a letter is a place where, as well as playing with statements and sentences (which itself is I think the main source of relief), you face yourself and your experiences and remember. So I remembered times from a year or so back, remembered how I felt then, and how I felt the morning before, and how I'm feeling now - something you're not always conscious of until you've written about it and you realise if the words and the pace and the definitiveness of what you've written sit well. Often there's a second stream of self-consciousness that follows on that which goes onto paper, and which you don't need to share with the letter-receiver, but you wouldn't encounter if you hadn't written to them. I am the better for that too.

Finally for this blog post, evidence from pete hindle that even short illustrated letters are FUCKING COOL. Like this postcard, which I hope he doesn't mind me transmitting to the web servers of california or wherever blogspot gets its servers hosted from:



Write postcards, people. If you're not sure who to send them to, send them to ME!