Letter Writing

Dear Reader,

I thought I’d write to you today in the form of a letter. Clearly, it can’t be sent as such, placed in a postbox such as this, because I do not know your address. Perhaps that’s the crux of why the art of letter writing is dying out. In as far as we communicate at a distance, we no longer deal with the physical. We have mobile numbers and email addresses for people but we rarely have their physical addresses. If I want to send someone a letter I often have to email them first, to get their address. It kind of defeats the point.

I’ve been pondering the question of whether an email is equivalent to a letter. Is there really any difference other than the mechanism by which it is sent? In these days of texting and instant messaging, the personal email has partially assumed the mantle of the letter. There isn’t necessarily the expectation of an immediate response. The etiquette is that a few days delay is quite acceptable. You can reply when you have some spare time to consider your words, when you’re not rushed.

Except that I always do seem rushed. I find myself writing less often. My personal email correspondence is getting sparser and shorter. My sentences are becoming clipped, with less concern for style. I fear I’ve become infected by the prevailing ethos of instantaneity. 

Perhaps blip bears some responsibility for that. I feel less inclined to express myself individually to people when I can do that more easily here in a collective way. And my thoughts and feelings on Blipfoto are preserved and curated by default. My email correspondence is most likely to disappear into electronic oblivion, while there is a chance that my words here have a more enduring posterity - should anyone ever be interested, which I tend to think is highly doubtful.

On the other hand, I know how much I would love to have some insight into the daily lives of the previous generations of my family. I can’t think of anything that would give me more excitement than the discovery of a box of old photographs taken by my parents, or my grandparents, each dated on the back with a few words about the day the picture was taken. It would give me a deeper connection to the past and a better understanding of them as people. Perhaps I’m hoping that my descendants will feel excited to come across this blip journal and better come to understand me as a living, breathing human being, just as confused by the world as they are likely to be. It would help to lift me from being just this historical figure that they’ve heard a few crazy stories about.

If one of you is reading this entry far into the future, I bid you a hearty hello from the past and dearly hope that my generation didn’t leave the planet in too much of a mess for you. I hope existence isn’t too hard in whatever year you’re in now. I hope Blipfoto is still going. If you’re not already blipping, perhaps you should consider it, and give someone in your own future the very experience you’re having right now. There’s a challenge for you!  

Letter writing used to be a vehicle for expression in the same way that a blog is nowadays. It was possibly the only way of putting words out into the world short of getting them published. People who blog, like blippers, are those that perhaps used to be keen letter writers. For me, blipping fulfils that need I have to express myself and let friends and family know what I’m doing. It’s my daily posting of a letter to the world, and perhaps to the future. I let a photograph function as a surrogate for words on many days now, but it’s good to have this vehicle when the urge grabs me, like today, prompted by taking a random photograph.

It still amazes me that Blipfoto has never taken off in quite the way that Joe, and a lot of other people, anticipated. Perhaps it was only ever a small proportion of the population that were keen letter writers and photographers.

Whether you are reading this today (as I post this), or tomorrow, or years into the future, I hope this finds you well.

With best wishes,

Bob