Reflections for a Sunday: "Only paper is safe."

"There is a saying that paper is more patient than man." ~ Anne Frank

Photo: Light Reading by Vincent on deviantART

You can listen to me read this piece here:

I love paper. One of my favorite things to do is to go to the art store in search of paper. It’s a journey of looking for just the right paper, of feeling how rough or smooth I want it to be, of the quality. At last, I decide which pieces to take home. And then, with my pencils or my paints prepared, to look upon that blank page and know that I can make something happen there, well, that’s a moment both daunting and exhilarating. The paper leads the way and something magical happens.

Drawing from my sci-fi/fantasy book Luminaria: Tales of Earth & Oran, Love & Revenge

It’s the same with writing. To fill a blank page and then another is not an easy task. Certainly, one can fill pages with nonsense, but to create something of value or of beauty or of terror is an ability not easily acquired. It takes time and effort and a lot of reading. One must love to read, or one cannot write well.

Whatever happened to paper and that intimate relationship we once had with it?

That journey we all once knew, at least those of us old enough to remember, of going to the library; that wandering through the aisles of books to find a gem and then to sit down in some quiet corner and turn the pages, feeling the weight of those words in our hands.

A revolution came along. A revolution called the internet.

“The internet was supposed to liberate knowledge, but in fact it buried it, first under a vast sewer of ignorance, laziness, bigotry, superstition and filth and then beneath the cloak of political surveillance. Now cyberspace exists exclusively to promote commerce, gossip and pornography. And of course, to hunt down sedition.

Only paper is safe. Books are the key. A book cannot be accessed from afar, you have to hold it, you have to read it.”

~Ben Elton

Paper is safe because there is only one original. Yes, fakes can be made, and originals can be duplicated. But there is still only one original. Holding a book in our hands or gazing at a painting on a wall takes us to an imaginative far-off land, while at the same time, somehow, keeping us grounded in reality.

Once that original is put into the ephemeral world of the internet, anything can happen. It can be twisted and diluted to the point where it becomes meaningless.

I will never forget going to Trinity College in Dublin and seeing The Book of Kells. But what I was most surprised and delighted to discover were the illuminated Persian manuscripts. They were in a darkened room and glowed as if with an inner light. No price could be put upon these works of art. Human hands had meticulously made them over many, many hours. The books take us back to histories that will never come again. Histories that are still a part of us all.

700 hundred years of Persian manuscripts

One of my favorite movies, Only Lovers Left Alive, is about two vampire lovers living suspended between the modern world and the ancient world that gave birth to them. The one vampire, Adam, lives in the dying city of Detroit, within a gothic fortress filled with ancient artifacts, rare books, odd electrical gadgets, masterpiece paintings. While the other, “Eve” lives in Tangier and is at one with its exotic and old-world beauty.

When Eve goes to visit Adam, she does not pack such mundane items as clothes and toiletries. She selects a few prized books and puts them in a small case. In these modern times of fading reality, this is what matters to her.

Anne Frank understood when she said paper is more patient than man. It is on paper, through the slow hard process of writing or drawing, that truths are revealed—about us and the world around us. This is why tyrannies hate the written word. This is why their minions are tasked with destroying original art.

Aldous Huxley told us that “Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly – they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.”

The powers that rule through the internet want us to forget that “only paper is safe”.

Do not let them so distract us with the razzle-dazzle of fakery that we lose sight of what is true. And that it can be found, like a talisman protecting against dark magic, in the pages of a book or the strokes of a brush.