Rust As We Are

One of the reasons that I'm so drawn to brown ink, I've realized, is its tendency to suggest antiquity. Other colours have their own connotations -- Roland Barthes once wrote a wonderful little essay that touched upon this subject; sadly, no one has ever thought to translate it into English -- but it's brown alone, for me, that indelibly conjures up the past. This, I'm sure, is because whenever I've seen a crumbling manuscript from much earlier times, my eye has been drawn to what are almost always sepia letters. And if the Ink Quest is devoted, among other things, to the preservation of a way of writing that reaches back centuries but is now threatened by the rule of the ballpoint, it makes perfect sense for an obsession with brown ink to be tattooed upon its pages.

I've just discovered something rather bizarre, though: the brown ink seen today in many ancient manuscripts would not originally have been that colour. Allow me to explain (with a little help from the fascinating source, The Ink Corrosion Website, that has alerted me to this fact). From the late medieval period until the middle of the last century, it was common to use iron gall ink whenever indelible lettering was required. While this ink would have appeared black when it was first used, the passage of time regularly sees iron gall script become a brown colour, as the iron in the ink gradually corrodes. In effect, the words start to rust.

It's still possible to buy iron gall ink today, and I'm very tempted to acquire a bottle, as I like the thought of my handwriting ageing and gradually decaying with me. (I do apologize for the macabre quality of the end of that last sentence. As if my recent jaunt through Philip Roth's Everyman were not gloomy enough, I've just started digging my way through Patrimony, Roth's non-fictional account of the end of his father's life.) Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, and Michel Foucault have all written about how Western culture has traditionally mistrusted writing because of its ability to outlive its author. (As soon as I write something down, for instance, I can drop dead, but my death does not kill the ability of those words to carry on meaning. I cannot, therefore, be the one who guarantees and oversees the sense of what I inscribe. For proof of this, see the writings of Barthes, Derrida, and Foucault, all of whom are now dead.) I wonder, though, if the rusting of iron gall ink complicates such an understanding of the written word. What if handwriting, so bright and fresh when it emerges from the nib, fades and withers with the hand that produced it? What if we show our age in our ink, and not just our skin, our hair, our posture? These are grave matters, dear readers.

Ink in use today: Waterman Havana.

Ironic post-script, 30/5/06: As I was having my hair cut this morning, I suddenly noticed that the clumps of hair falling onto the cape and the floor were not quite recognizable to me. My hair naturally has a vague rust-like tint to it (this can, I believe, be traced to the red-haired grandfather who started this whole terrible obsession by leaving me a Parker 61 when he died in 1974; I was a toddler at the time, so my parents wisely delayed presenting me with the gift). Well, it had such a tint, anyway, for I noticed for the first time this morning that it's starting to lose its colour ever so slightly. Yes, that's right, dear readers, it's developing a midlife-crisis-inspiring touch of grey. In other words, most ironically, what was in my youth the colour of rust is gradually ageing into the colour of fresh iron filings. I think, on reflection, that I'm going to need two bottles of iron gall ink: one to write with, and one to use as a long-term restorative shampoo.

The Inkanny

These are strange days, dear readers. The world no longer looks the same.

Yesterday afternoon, I caught a train from one of the small stations on the outskirts of Inktown. While I know the part of the city in question, I've never been to its railway station, and I've never travelled along the line that comes back from there into the centre of town. You already know, dear readers, just how tragically boring my life is, so I'll add another element that will confirm your suspicions about the sheer banality of my existence: I secretly enjoy seeing familiar places from unfamiliar angles. Sometimes this can simply involve looking at a landscape from a higher vantage point than usual. Yesterday, though, I was delighted to be able to see parts of Inktown -- a city of which I have memories stretching back something like thirty years -- in a new light as the train weaved its way through areas that were thoroughly familiar to me, but which now seemed curiously unfamiliar.

Freud writes about a feeling of 'the uncanny' arising when the familiar suddenly becomes unfamiliar, and I think that 'uncanny' is the most apt way to describe how the city felt to me yesterday afternoon. What I saw flashing by the window of the train both was and wasn't the Inktown that I see every day. I was simultaneously oriented and disoriented; I recognized buildings and streets, but they seemed to be in the wrong place, or just ever so slightly askew. As soon as the train joined the line that I travel on every day, however, the world righted itself.

I inadvertently managed to reactivate the uncanny, though, when I got home and inked up a pen to take some notes. I decided to use my Parker 61, which, although it's one of my most precious pens, doesn't come out very often. When it does enjoy an outing, it always gets filled with Herbin Terre de Feu ink. Don't ask me why -- it's the only one of my collection that has a 'dedicated' ink colour, and I have no idea why this should be the case. For some reason, however, I filled the pen with Waterman Florida Blue yesterday. The reasons for this shockingly spontaneous act are unknown to me (we all go a little wild sometimes, I suppose). I started to write. It was like using a pen that was half familiar, half unfamiliar. The distinctive lines that the 61's nib makes were there, but the blue ink (which had, thanks to the pen's curious capillary filling system, traces of the usual Terre de Feu in it) lent the whole affair an air of semi-mystery. I had, I believe, experienced the 'Inkanny'.

Ink(anny) in use today: Waterman Florida Blue.

With a Song in my Hart

It's not only ink, you know. I'm currently obsessed with a live version of an old Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart song, 'Mountain Greenery', that Mel Tormé once recorded. What really appeals to me, apart from Tormé's velvety phrasing, is the effortless wit of Hart's lyrics. I'm thinking of lines like

While you love your lover, let
Blue skies be your coverlet

and

Beans could get no keener re-
ception in a beanery.
Bless our Mountain Greenery
Home!

How on earth do you write something as clever as that? I can't even imagine where you'd begin.

I believe that 'Mountain Greenery' dates from the mid-1920s -- before, that is to say, the ballpoint had taken over -- so I'm going to put my neck on the line and say that lyrics as elegant as Hart's could only have been written with a fountain pen and ink. Wit of such calibre, such delicacy, could never have flowed from a ballpoint, a writing instrument that is good only for disposable jottings, as Roland Barthes once remarked. As I listen to the song, I like to imagine Hart hunched over his desk, dressed in a flawless 1920s suit, cigarette in one hand, fountain pen in the other, as the lyrics unfold in smoky ink upon a piece of crisp white paper.

My heart sank for a moment when I happened across the picture of Rodgers and Hart from the cover of Time magazine that I've posted above, for my eye was immediately drawn to the pencil that is being held. Had I misjudged Lorenz? Was he a pencil man? I quickly realized, though, that the person holding the pencil is Rodgers; Hart is the one on the right with the beautiful red tie that's been loosened impeccably. And here's why he's smiling so happily: he knows that he's not the one being photographed for the cover of a national magazine holding an inferior writing instrument. He knows that his lyrics were crafted with a nib and ink, and he knows that they're therefore flawless. Oh, I could write a book -- one from the Hart...

Ink in use today: Noodler's Walnut.

The Empire Writes Back

In one of the very early Ink Quest entries, I stated that I've never been too fond of blue and black inks. While I still feel the same about the latter (I use the permanent Noodler's Black for envelopes, but that's about it), I've become increasingly interested in finding the perfect blue. Please don't misunderstand me: brown is still my favourite shade, and Omas Sepia will always be the Great Brown Whale, but I've realized that I'm regularly filling one of the two pens that I take to work with some kind of blue.

I was excited to discover, then, that Noodler's -- an American company -- have just launched a new colour called Britannia's Blue Waves as part of a series of inks that is exclusively for the UK market. The little sample posted at The Writing Desk, from where I've ordered a bottle, shows a light and bright shade that will, I feel, serve Blue Beauty -- my beloved Stipula 'I Castoni' pen -- very well indeed.

The new range hasn't yet arrived upon these shores, so I'm currently allowing my days to be washed over with happy thoughts of what Britannia's Blue Waves will look like upon the pages of my notebooks. But something, as usual, is bothering me: have I, in buying something called 'Britannia's Blue Waves', inadvertently bought into imperialist nostalgia?

One of the other colours in the new range, I might add, is called Empire Red, and the label on that particular bottle is emblazoned with the Union Jack. I was brought up to believe that this flag is a reminder of the fact that Wales was conquered and colonized -- the Welsh flag is not represented anywhere in the red, white, and blue -- and that the Union Jack is the mark of empire. I have no interest in any form of nationalism these days -- I'm with Walcott when he writes about having 'no nation now but the imagination' -- and you know, dear readers, that Ink Quest does its best to sail far away from the high seas of politics, preferring instead to paddle in the shallows of trivia. I can't help, though, being a little uneasy about what I'm signing up to with Britannia's Blue Waves, even though I have no idea what's going to be on the label of the bottle. Something in me automatically flinches whenever I hear the song 'Rule Britannia' (why no comma in the title, inkidentally?), with its talk of 'thy native oak', 'manly hearts', and global domination of the waves.

I think that I have a way to turn this tide of anxiety, though. From now on, I'm going to hear the imperative 'Rule, Britannia' as a command to get out the writing instruments. What the phrase in question is really calling for, I've decided, is the taking up of plastic rulers and pens, and the drawing of straight lines with beautiful inks. Imperialism will be sunk by inkperialism.

Inks in use today: Diamine Prussian Blue, Noodler's Walnut.

Brief Inkounter

I'm still suffering from the vile plague that was brought on by prolonged contact with a ballpoint pen on Thursday, but I discovered this evening that ink really does save lives.

We've just come back from a delightful showing of the majestic Brief Encounter. I'd never seen it on the big screen until tonight, and I found myself touched more than ever by the tragic tale of a relationship that can never go anywhere. As soon as the opening credits began, in fact, my heart sank at the very thought of the story that was about to unfold. And by the time we'd reached the final reel and the lovers' last ever meeting at the railway station, I felt as if I'd been through every ounce of the emotional trauma with them. Luckily, my horrible cold gave me the perfect excuse to sniff and blow my nose at regular intervals.

In the film's final minutes, we learn that Laura very nearly threw herself beneath the wheels of an express train moments after she said her final farewell to Alec. (The way he touches her shoulder as he leaves! Sob!) She wanted to die, she tells us, but she couldn't quite bring herself to do it. It was at this point that I noticed something rather strange. As she steps back from the edge of the platform and returns to the café, a poster advertising ink for fountain pens can be seen on the station wall. (I've captured a still from the scene and posted it above, but the DVD of the film evidently crops the print a little, for the words were more complete upon the cinema screen this evening. Click on the image to see a larger version.) It suddenly became clear to me why Laura did not commit suicide. Even though her brief encounter with Alec had caused near-fatal emotional turmoil, she realized, upon seeing the advert in question, that to end her life would also be to end the possibility of future purchases of ink, future inkounters. As I've always said, ink is life.

Ink in use today: Diamine Sepia.

Hand-me-down

Does coming down with the plague begin with cold-like symptoms? (I haven't read La Peste since 1989, so I'm a little rusty on the details.)

After a day of having to write with a ballpoint, I'm feeling decidedly unwell. My throat is sore, I keep sneezing, and I have a dull ache in my head and back. I've tried, since I arrived home, fending off the illness by touching all of my fountain pens and ink bottles, but I think that seven hours' exposure to a Bic has taken its toll. Is there some ancient remedy that I need to know about? Should I be burying a bottle of ink in the back garden for seven days and seven nights? Lying in a darkened room with a chilled ink-soaked cloth pressed against my fevered brow? (I'm actually about to try my usual trick: several bowls of home-made garlic soup. Mrs Ink is away on business tonight, so I won't have to take my alium-drenched breath to the spare room.)

While the buboes are bubbling up, I'm going to take a moment to answer a couple of questions posed by one of the readers of Ink Quest (I feel like I'm being inkterviewed). What, he asked, presumably prompted by the recent Proustian posting, do I write with a pen that has been inked for the very first time? A certain phrase? A doodle? Neither, actually, dear reader. I've always struggled with this crucial moment, and I simply end up blandly writing out the alphabet and a few curved lines that will reveal the variation offered by the nib. And what, he continued, do I feel about previously owned pens? Do I ever wonder if they have, in the hands of earlier owners, written words that contradict my every belief? I do like this second question. I've just looked in my storage case, and there are six fountain pens that had previous owners. And as they're almost all from the 1950s or the 1930s, I think that it's pretty likely that those original parents are now dead. (I do apologize for the recent obsession with mortality; I just can't bury Philip Roth's Everyman.)

What if one of those former owners were, say, the writer of poison-pen letters, blackmail notes, or hideous propaganda? And what if these pens somehow remained faithful to their departed owners? I can't help remembering Mad Love, that gloriously macabre film from the mid-1930s, in which the hands transplanted from a murderer to a pianist retain their desire to throw knives. In fact, the movie must have been made at about the same time as one of my secondhand Conway Stewart pens. The one that I'm holding in my right hand now, in fact. Oh, wait, it ... wants ... to ...

Ink in use today: Herbin Terre de Feu.

Inkmunity

Is it possible, by spending extended periods of time with a fountain pen, to build up an immunity against the plague of the ballpoint?

This question is on my mind because I'm facing the rather unpleasant task of co-ordinating a day of student enrolment tomorrow. Please don't misunderstand me: my displeasure has nothing to do with seeing students. I spend my life surrounded by them, after all, and enrolment is always a good chance to see the ones whom I teach all together. What I hate about the day, rather, is the fact that I have to use a ballpoint for hours on end. I could take along a fountain pen, of course, but we always lose pens in the flurry of enrolment, as people have a habit of walking off with them when they've finished filling in the forms, and I don't relish the thought of discovering that my beautiful new Stipula -- Blue Beauty -- has been kidnapped. With tomorrow's Bic stint in mind, then, I have been clinging to my Parker Duofold this afternoon, attempting to build up resistance by spending quality time close to the sacred.

But something even more horrific has just occurred to me: perhaps I should be thinking about the principle of vaccination. Perhaps, in order ultimately to fight off the ballpoint, I need to introduce a small amount of the foreign body to my system. Should I be stabbing a Bic into my veins and allowing the vile, fake 'ink' to seep into my bloodstream? What if I take in too much of the hideous substance and start a monstrous mutation of my body? (I've seen a nineteenth-century satirical cartoon, possibly from Punch, of a woman who had begun to turn into a cow -- vaccinus -- after a botched vaccination.) What if one drop too many turned me forever against fountain pens and proper inks? I think, on reflection, that I ought to stick to plan A...

The day has even ended with an omen. We had to drive up to mid-Wales this evening. As we left Inktown, the sun was shining (as it had been all day), people were happily eating and drinking outside in short sleeves, and my three cats looked thoroughly disgusted when I brought them in from their patch of sun in the garden. The weather up in mid-Wales was much the same, and it was still light at about 8.30pm. As we came back down the Cynon valley, though, we spotted a huge black cloud hanging over Inktown. Worse still, lightning was streaking through and out of the dark mass. It was like something out of War of the Worlds. By the time we got to Tongwynlais, total blackness, riotous thunder and lightning, and demented rain had surrounded us. Even now, back at home at 10pm, the storm is raging. The cats are clearly still sulking, but they're also now running crazily around the house, looking for the source of the thunder. It's all a sign of the dark, dark day ahead of me tomorrow, I feel. Wish me luck, dear readers, as I march bravely towards the plague. If I don't return, please bury me in a grave dug with italic nibs.

Ink in use today: Diamine Royal Blue.

Inkvoluntary memory

A nibble did it for Proust; a nib did it for me.

As is well known, In Search of Lost Time is set off on its way by Marcel tasting a madeleine that has been dipped into a cup of tea. Without warning, the tasty treat opens the floodgates of memory, as Marcel is suddenly overwhelmed by his forgotten past.

The book calls the event a case of 'involuntary memory', and I think that I've just experienced what could be called 'inkvoluntary memory'. One of the pens that I brought to work with me today is my trusty Sailor 1911. As it has an extremely fine Japanese nib, I tend to use it most often when I'm marking students' essays, but it does make the occasional outing at other times of the year, such as today. As soon as I put nib to paper this morning and saw the distinctive line that emerged, I was dramatically catapulted back to the week in which I bought and first used the pen. I would even go so far as to call this event, borrowing from a description of involuntary memory that occurs much later in Proust, 'a convulsion of my entire being'.

Last July, I was doing some research at the BFI Library in London for several days, and once the work was over I took a trip to the suburbs to look at the 1911, which Sailor's UK office had kindly agreed to send to the Petts Wood branch of Webster's for my inspection. It was the middle of a heatwave -- the temperature must have been in the high 80s or low 90s -- so the journey on the tube and over-ground trains was particularly unpleasant. Nonetheless, I have happy memories of sitting on the platform at Petts Wood station, oblivious to the blazing heat as I unpacked and examined my new acquisition. I'd also bought a bottle of Waterman Havana ink, and I remember being keen to get back to my hotel so that I could fill up the pen and write my first sentences with it.

I'm using that same ink in the Sailor pen today, possibly for the first time since last July, and it was this potent combination that triggered the 'inkvoluntary memories' of the London trip. And I wasn't just reminded of the scorched, surreal trip to Petts Wood; I was also overcome by vivid memories of, during that same week, meeting an old friend for coffee on Tottenham Court Road (it was, I remember, too hot to sit at one of the tables on the pavement), having one too many cold beers in a tiny basement of a pub with a great jukebox somewhere off Oxford Street with another friend, struggling to open the lockers outside the Reading Room at the BFI Library, admiring pens that I couldn't afford in Harrods, feasting on a rather fine serving of spaghetti alio, olio e peperoncino, searching in several shops for the Great Brown Whale that is Omas Sepia ink, arriving at the National Gallery just as it was closing, walking across one of the bridges over the Thames and suddenly recognizing the location where one of the scenes in Closer was shot, discovering after all these years that a Travel Card bought for the tube also works on buses, and noisily dropping an expensive art book in the Waterstone's on Gower Street.

All of these memories were involuntarily brought back by the mere sight of a certain shade of ink emerging from the nib of a particular pen. Part of my past, it seems, is inkarnated in that combination of pigment and object. I only wish that Waterman Havana licked from a nib tasted as good as a madeleine.

Inks in use today: Waterman Havana, Private Reserve Tanzanite.

Grazie Mille

Crack open the champagne -- Ink Quest has just welcomed its 1000th visitor.

I'm amazed to be able to report, dear readers, that there have been so many meanders through this obsessive ramble since the Quest went public last September. I write these entries merely to amuse myself, I suppose, so I can't quite imagine why you keep coming back for more. (I'm delighted that you do, of course.)

But what's amazed me more than the fact that many of you are regular visitors is the way that some people have stumbled across the blog. Do you see that little 'Site Meter' icon at the very bottom of the page? That's linked to a wonderful feature that tells me who's visited (IP address only, though, so don't worry about your guilty secret being linked to your name in any way), where in the world the person lives (although this is not always entirely accurate, as one friend who lives about six miles away always shows up as being in the north of England), how long each visitor stays, and, fascinatingly, the words keyed into a search engine (usually Google) that actually brought the person to Ink Quest. These phrases are usually apt and clearly typed in by other lovers of ink and pens ('Where can I buy Omas Sepia?', for instance), but they're sometimes completely bizarre. One person has twice visited the blog after typing 'How do I remove permanent ink from a cheque?' (it may, dear American readers, have been 'check'; I can't quite remember); s/he hasn't visited for a while, so I'm assuming that the fraud was successful or that s/he is currently serving time. Meanwhile, another browser came here while looking for information about the policies of the DVLA regarding tinted windows in cars, and someone in Nevada was led to my pages by a Google query about good places to buy coffee in Chicago.

I like to think that Ink Quest has somehow left a little smudge upon these wanderers' lives. I know that I am, as far as many of you are concerned, preaching to the converted. There are, however, countless souls of ballpoint users to be saved. In my more optimistic moments (and there are, contrary to what the last few entries might have led you to think, a few of these), I imagine someone driving a car with heavily tinted windows and a bottle of ink on the dashboard, a convicted cheque fraudster writing a prison diary with a Parker 51, and someone from Las Vegas waiting for a flight home from O'Hare airport, espresso in one hand, overflowing Gilbertson Clybourn bag in the other.

Grazie mille, dear readers, grazie mille. Here's to a thousand more inkquiries.

Inks in use today: Private Reserve Tanzanite (just can't tear myself away from Blue Beauty); Omas Grey.

Blue Beauty

Two posts in one day, dear readers. You lucky, lucky people...

Before I retire for the night, I thought that I'd present you with a picture of the newest addition to the pen collection, the Blue Beauty that, as you already know, slowly drove me insane with anticipation in the weeks building up to my birthday.

We have now had several days in each other's company, and we've barely been apart. It turns out that Blue Beauty is not just a pretty face; the nib (a 1.1 italic, dear technically-minded readers) writes wonderfully smoothly, particularly when the pen is filled with Private Reserve Tanzanite ink.

But I shall have to be careful, for I have already noticed envious eyes soaking up the splendour of Blue Beauty. In fact, I was in a meeting this afternoon at which the person sitting next to me said, as soon as he sat down and saw what lay seductively on the table in front of me, 'What kind of absurdly expensive object of desire is that?'

Will people now be looking at us and thinking to themselves that I am way out of my depth with Blue Beauty? Have I, just as I hit my mid-30s, acquired a 'trophy pen' in a pathetic attempt to convince myself that I still have 'the old magic'? Is everyone congratulating me but secretly counting the days until this ludicrously mismatched couple separates? Is the honeymoon period already coming to an end? Will Blue Beauty only end up making me blue?

(PS: Is it clear that I've just finished reading Everyman, the majestically miserable new novel by Philip Roth?)

Desk-bound

The great Roland Barthes once remarked that you can tell a lot about a person by looking in his or her medicine cabinet. I feel much the same about people's desks. Isn't everything that you could ever need to know about someone immediately apparent from the space that he or she has devoted to the rite of writing? Isn't the placement of objects upon such a surface a sure guide to the character of the subject? Are graphologists working too far down the line, in other words? Isn't what happens before pen has touched paper just as revealing?

With this in mind, and because I've just bought my first digital camera, I've decided to share part of my desk with you, dear readers. Pictured above, then, is the surface upon which the fruits of the Ink Quest lie. (You can't see them all, I'm afraid, as some of the bottles are hidden from view or inside the cigar case that you can just about make out behind the two green Conway Stewart boxes. And you'll have to forgive the quality of the picture; I'm still figuring out how to use the camera properly.) I don't actually write here; that happens either at a desk that's placed at a right angle to one that you see here or, if I have piles of books and papers to contend with, at a larger table downstairs in Ink Towers.

You may be surprised to learn, given your knowledge of my obsessive tendencies, dear readers, that the desk pictured above is not arranged in any particular order; I regularly move the ink around, in fact, as I tend to forget about the bottles at the back. (I never thought that the principle of stock rotation, learned in a Safeway produce department c.1988, would end up being a transferable skill.) I couldn't ever produce a page of writing without this little space, however. Here, I feel, is where it all begins. Common sense tells us that ideas miraculously pop into our heads and then merely find themselves expressed in language. But if the Ink Quest has taught me one thing it's that everything starts with the material objects that make writing possible. The mind is actually a tabula rasa, and there are no ideas before the appearance of a table like the one pictured above. Let us raze traditional ideas of inspiration and raise the philosophy of inkspiration.

Inks in use today: Private Reserve Tanzanite (in the new Stipula 'I Castoni', about which I'll tell you as soon as I've worked out how to do 'macro focus' on the digital camera); Sailor Brown.