Benched Week 59: coming back around

It started with a carousel – the second I've come across in two weeks.  This one was in Bryant Park, Manhattan, a site of a previous Benched post.  I was coming around again, only to find the pastoral field completely buried under construction.  (They apparently turn it into a skating rink every year.)  I missed the field.

Which drove me inside the nearby NY Public Library.

There, in an oaken room filled with silent laptop users, their glasses glowing with reflected light, I found this large painting.  It’s of Homer, dictating to his daughters Paradise Lost.

How apropos.

My bench for this week waited just outside, in a high-ceiling hall that sported four, impressive murals, each one depicting a scene from the history of making books. I sat down across from this one.

The irony of the shot is not lost on me: beneath a medieval scribe, painstakingly hand-lettering a manuscript, a young teen thumbs out her texts.

Which made me think of what we’ve lost in our latest technological convenience.  Let’s not simply call it “handwriting,” for in that single action are countless delights – the flourishes, the unique slant of letters, the lilt of loops, the sweep and solidity of a signature.  There’s art in one’s scrawl.  It’s a unique product of you.

The first decade of this current century was a dark time for illustrators.  American culture turned away from hand-drawn art for the fancier imaginings of photo-illustration.  We were all entranced that photographs could be just as unreal as paintings.  At the time, I kept thinking that the trend would turn around and come back.  We have a deep longing for connection to other humans that digital effects cannot satisfy. 

And I was right. 

There is a renaissance, a rising tide of demand for hand-drawn art in popular media and advertising and even the corporate boardroom.  I am happy to be riding that wave and hanging ten for as long as I’m able.

I do sometimes (as my niece would testify), but not nearly enough.  How about you?  Will you invest twenty minutes to write out a note for someone you special?  Let’s regain the human touch we’ve lost in our messaging.  It's time to turn the trend around: what has gone from popular to neglected to nearly forgotten can be rediscovered and made popular again.  Let’s bring handwritten letters full circle.

Just like a carousel.