The lost art of writing a letter

Stephen Bayley is the second cleverest man in England, thus he is someone worth listening to. I think it is important to quote in full:

"Thus the psychology of sending letters is significant. To write a letter is to show you have spent money, spent time and made an effort. I discovered very early on the power of the letter, a powerful tool in teenage courtship - more powerful still now that the majority of the post is garbage and any clown can generate something exquisite in Helvetica 14 point. The price of decent writing paper and a first-class stamp is one of the great bargains. A letter is an opportunity to write an advertisement for yourself."

As I am at the moment in the process of "selling myself", whoring myself around, these words are important.

I have in my 23 years written a lot of letters. I think it started when, as part of learning German in year 8 we had to have "pen friends", which is a horrible phrase. It almost sounds like something Ann Summers might sell (i went there once...but i will save that for another time). The idea was that we in England would practice our German and in turn the Germans would practice their English...it never quite worked out that way and we just ended up communicating in English, thus to this day i know roughly 3 phrases in German - all useless. The writing of letters was also a prelude to us going on the school exchange. I never went, but those who did brought back Blink 182. Something I think you will agree, we needed. It is what they call in History "Cultural Exchange".

I was paired with a girl called Annika, who to this day I am still in touch with. Though now when we do communicate, which is quite rarely, we use email. All her emails to me have always had an air of flirtatiousness which i can never work out...something may have got lost in translation. I have never thought of Germans as being flirty. They are more black and white, more down the line. Do they lack subtlety or am I being cruel? Anyway she keeps promising to come to London so I guess we will see.

So since about the age of 13 or 14 I have been writing letters, mainly to girls, and with a few exceptions, mainly to girls I wanted to sleep with, or in fact was sleeping with. Letters are sexy, provocative, seductive. You have to sit down and think about that person - you can distract yourself when writing emails, you can also edit a lot more easily. Thus you need to know what you want to say. Though when writing letters it is useful if you can write legibly - I cant. I think this is where I am falling down. I also used to write on terribly garish (and cheap) writing paper, I have put an end to that now. Orange A5 paper from WH Smith doesn't really say sleep with me does it? In fact it doesn't say much at all. Its also hard to read from.

Theo Van Gogh's letters to his brother Vincent are some of the most fascinating and insightful art historical documents ever discovered but what will historians of the future use as their primary sources? Emails, blogs and text messages are arbitrary - can be edited, destroyed. Where are they "kept"? Is their a big computer somewhere that has saved every email ever sent? And if so, imagine the task of sifting through all that information. Or does all this information, dialogue and discourse just simply disappear and cease to "exist". I wonder. If so making sense of 2008 is going to be a pretty tricky job in 2108.

A final thought on letters: I think it is important to remember that no one will be remembered as a Man of Emails.