March 1998 feature by leslie harpold |
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Dear Readers -
Video killed the radio star, and email killed correspondence dead. While it's true that people likely write more letters now than ever before because of email, you can rarely consider those letters. With all the quoting back what people said and responding to it line by line, the art of the letter is dying a slow and ugly death.
The loving caress of a pen on carefully chosen paper leaves a lot of room for interpretation. Intrigue and wonder, and even the delicious frustration, if a letter is received as a response, looking for answers to questions that remained unaddressed posed in your initial letter to the respondent.
Some of the most interesting letters I've gotten were written in interesting locations as well. Once I got a letter written on the steps of the Louvre at 3am Paris time. There were tear stains on it, very romantic. A friend of mine had lost her love on vacation and had to pour her heart out to someone who spoke the same language. More recently, I got a letter composed in Singapore by an old flame who was waiting for a train. basically, all he said in the letter was what he saw and how people were looking at him. At the very moment it was happening. Email is experience once removed, most of the time. The very act of sitting at the keyboard creates a certain near official environment.
Don't get me wrong, I love my email. Especially those really long delicious letters that my good friends and readers put a lot of thought into. It's like candy - an unexpected treat, since I'm never really expecting them, but secretly hoping I get them. I just miss the days when I could go to my mailbox and know that once in awhile, there's be something besides a Val-Pak and a phone bill. Email feels immediate because we know it arrives moments after we send it. We know, or at least we believe it arrived at it's destination.
Why can't we have both? I know when I write letters, in pen on paper, I tend to speak differently, choose my words more carefully than I do in email. Ask yourself this: If you were going to email a letter to the staff, would it be the same as the letter you would drop in the mailbox and let the postman carry to our "office".
Snail mail is the thirty two cent miracle. Think about it. In the US, where we live, it costs a me 32 cents to get a letter from Alaska to New York, or Florida to Hawaii. It never really takes more than 5 days to arrive, and things almost never get lost. This issue is a theme issue, something I promise you we won't do often. Themes are kind of tiring and limiting. You will find that most pieces in this issue are about letters, the paper kind. So, dive in and hey, go ahead and send us email. Truthfully, we hardly notice the difference anymore. We're just happy you sexy people talk to us at all.
Love and Kisses,
or send her a "real" letter:
leslie harpold in the junk drawer
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