Splash No. 125 - Fountain Pen

Fountain Pen

After two seasons of watching The Crown, I decided I had had enough of the scenes of royalty writing letters and I bought a fountain pen for myself. The first day I got it, I spent the day running it across different pieces of paper, trying to find perfect surface for it to glide over and transport me to a different time, one where I wrote letters to my dear friends and imagined them doing dramatic things like riding horses and sword-fighting for no obvious reason. When I found the right notebook, I really just ended up journaling, but it felt much more dramatic and fun than normal journaling. 

There’s a trope about people who claim to be “born in the wrong generation,” associated with obsession with a particular era’s music and fashion and all. People find retro things to be cool, or at least the idea of a different time, when you can make up all of the details and ignore the realities in escapist fantasies. I’ve always had a penchant for old technology. I remember getting mad at my parents that they threw out their records and their typewriter before I was sentient. For me, the older technology represented simplicity — times when you could be connected to other people and the world without the need to stare at a glowing rectangle of some sort. 

Among young Gen Z kids, there’s a trend of romanticizing photos and videos of people who were in middle and high school during the 00s. They’ll show the goofy pictures and terrible outfits that everyone wore, remarking on how happy everyone looked. As someone who remembers the pains of middle school and my absolutely killer Aeropostale-based outfits, it seems absurd to want that fate. The 00s were a time before constant connection, and for those kids, something that they’ve never known.

In the last week, my tired eyes have made me realize how much time I spend staring at a screen. All of my entertainment, news, workouts, and reading come from screens, something that I used to actively work against. I’ve always had an inner Luddite, thinking that maybe all of this technology was a mistake. My version of romanticizing 00s kids is romanticizing the lives of hunter-gatherers, who never had to worry about things like the electoral college or calories or deadlines or finding purpose in life. Sure, they didn’t have running water or ice cream and I almost definitely wouldn’t have lasted in the wild, but can you imagine how free they must’ve felt? I doubt a hunter-gatherer ever needed to be told that their feelings were valid— they got anxiety about bears attacking, not about the number of exclamation marks in an email. Sounds like a dream to me.

I haven’t figured out how to undo the whole agricultural revolution and all ensuing technological process yet to bring us back to those times, so I’m planning on finding ways to disconnect in other ways. I’m hoping to replace some of my entertainment and news with reading books and the growing stack of print New Yorker magazines that I get weekly and never read. I plan to listen to music with my record player. I’m going to write in my journal with my fancy fountain pen until my brain is free from any and all thoughts. I don’t know if doing any of these things will help me or change things in my life, but wouldn’t it be nice to just focus on one thing at a time for a while?

The fight against systemic racism continues. With each day, we move closer to a more equitable world. Reminders:
 

Ways you can help Find your Local SURJ Chapter  

Anti-racism resources

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Deep breaths,
Nikhil