The lost art of letter writing

I found a most wonderful website.
Its called http://www.lettersofnote.com/ and is, according to site Editor Shaun Usher, 'an attempt to gather and sort fascinating letters, postcards, telegrams, faxes, and memos.'

Last evening I spent two hours filing through pages and pages of them.
It made me sad that the art of letter writing is disappearing and it filled me with such heady, refreshing joy that something like this exists in the world. I think you should check it out.

The below is from the website. I almost wept reading it.

On August 5th of 1962, 36-year-old Marilyn Monroe was found dead at her home. The next day, the following unsent and seemingly unfinished letter, addressed to ex-husband Joe DiMaggio, was discovered at her desk, folded up in her address book. It is thought they were planning to remarry.


Dear Joe,

If I can only succeed in making you happy — I will have succeeded in the bigest and most difficult thing there is — that is to make one person completely happy. Your happiness means my happiness.

Filled with Empty

Its about sitting incredibly still when situations feel overwhelming and trying to get your head around the things that you perceive are standing in the way of what you could achieve. It is about love. It is about being consumed.

Lo and the Beholds website launch

One of the 'best upcoming acts in London', Lo and the Beholds have launched their brand new website and it features one of my illustrations. Take a look at their site here
They sound like I imagine the baby of Madeleine Peyroux, Emmy the Great and Emmylou Harris to sound.
Love the music, love the illustration, love the design. I can't ask more than that.

If your heart was a unicorn

This poem should be read fast. At least thats the way I wrote it to be read. You should not stop for breaths. If this was a script from a Woody Allen film it would come near the end when Woody (the neurotic, insecure lead) would realise that the only way he can win over his love interest (no doubt played by Diane Keaton) is to lay everything out without thinking or editting himself-she needs to know all of him. I’ve been told I do a good impression of Woody Allen, now its seems to have spilled over into the words I write. (transcript below)

'if your heart was made of clay' i shout
'then i would wrap my hands around it and form it into
something else
something new.'

'Like a unicorn.
Unicorns never made anybody unhappy.
and they're made of glitter
and I'm sure they can grant wishes like genies
and ladies who sit on ends of piers
in headscarves
and dresses with beaded fringes
and floral prints.'

'I wish it was a thousand unicorns that would stampede and burst through your chest like that part in The Lion King that I can't watch cos Mufasa dies and it doesn't matter that Simba becomes King at the end and marries Nala and has babies because Mufasa is still dead.

I don't want to die though.'

'and now theres a hole in your chest from the aftermath of the stampede and I would put my hand inside and it would be the first time I got to go inside fully and my hand would be there and you'd smile and I would smile and the clay heart unicorns would be running free through clay heart forests on some new course and music would play amongst clay heart sticks and all the other clay heart animals that had been freed before by someone else.'

'But your heart isn't a unicorn.
Its not even a horse.'