Dressed to Quill

Are my cats trying to tell me something?

Ever since I wrote about the joys of dip pens and wondered if a true inkthusiast ought to turn away from fountain pens towards earlier forms of writing instrument that keep the ink on the outside, in full view, at all times, my feline housemates have been bringing feathers into the house. They quite often come rushing through the cat flap with gifts -- we've had numerous birds, one of which was still alive, mice, worms, and, dozens of clumps of moss -- but all three seem particularly excited about the feathers that have appeared within the last few days. The photograph above shows one of them keeping watch over today's specimen, shaking her head in excitement.

I'm beginning to think that they've been reading Ink Quest. Two of them are particularly fond of sneaking into the study, where the computer sits, via the bathroom window, so perhaps they've been logging on while I've been downstairs. And perhaps, having read Friday's entry, they decided to bring me feathers for turning into quills. There's just one problem, though: according to this website, a quill should be made from turkey or goose feathers, and it looks to me as if my three little helpers have raided a pigeon. There's also a lot of complicated preparation involved, I've discovered, and I'm absolutely useless at anything that involves tools, precision cutting, or following even the most basic DIY instructions. This may be one particular feather to escape my cap.

I'm still drawn to the idea of writing with a quill, however, even if it raises all sorts of fascinating questions. How would one transport a quill from home to work, say? Are there shops that sell quill cases, or do you simply wipe the end of the feather clean and slip it in your pocket? Is there a special name for someone whose profession is quills? (We have milliners, so maybe there are quilliners.) Where would you go to train for such a job, and is there an accepted qualification (quillification?) that I should be looking for when sourcing quills? And is there some kind of terrible ethical contradiction involved in being a vegetarian, a volunteer for an animal rescue charity, and the user of a quill? Are the feathers removed from the birds while they're still alive? If so, does it hurt? If not, are there farms breeding turkeys and geese solely for the quill industry? Can you buy shares in quill companies? Do such firms even make any money these days, or do they suffer from feather-bedding? These, on the wing, are my feather-brained thoughts for the day.

Ink in use today: Noodler's Manhattan Blue.

Dipomania

The Ink Quest is dipping its toe in uncharted waters.

I've just received in the post a delightful package from one of the readers of the blog, who also happens to be the father of one of my dearest friends. He -- let's give him the pseudonym Mr Stone, shall we? -- is a painter and illustrator who makes, among other things, amazing pixellated portraits of celebrities out of recycled postage stamps. Each stamp becomes a separate pixel, so you can imagine how much work must go into his giant pieces of 'Post Pop Art'.

Mr Stone has very kindly sent me two old dip pens and a selection of beautiful nibs that were boxed for the Liverpool Education Committee by Hinks, Wells and Co. of Birmingham and London. I don't know exactly how old the nibs are, but a quick Google search has revealed that the company was founded in 1836.

I've only been playing with my new acquisitions for about fifteen minutes, but I think that I'm addicted. (If dipsomania is a craving for alcohol, then I think that I have developed dipomania.) The nibs have a flexibility to them that you simply don't find with most modern counterparts (I've written about the joy of flex in earlier posts, I think), and there's something gloriously immediate and pleasingly repetitive about having constantly to dip the pen into the bottle.

We've become so accustomed to having ink inside our pens, hidden from sight, that it's easy to forget that dipping was the normal practice for centuries; ink didn't go indoors, as it were, until a fairly late point in the history of writing. I'm fascinated, in fact, by how my new dip pens have no 'inside'. They're solid, and the ink always remains on the outside, lightly coating the nib, but going no further. As I've remarked on numerous occasions, today's risk-obsessed society is so terrified of ink that it constantly seeks to keep the dangerous fluid hidden from sight (in ballpoints, rollerballs, printer cartridges, and so on). With a dip pen, however, the ink is always outside, always glistening, always within reach. If we are to be open to ink, perhaps we need to keep ink in the open. Perhaps all true inkthusiasts should diplomatically discard their fountain pens and return to dipping, inkhorns and all. Let outside be in again. You'll have to excuse me now, I'm afraid -- I'm off to take another dip.

Inks in use today: Herbin Lie de Thé; Noodler's Manhattan Blue.

Sushink

Do cities have colours?

I'm asking this question because I'm writing today with Noodler's Manhattan Blue, a gorgeously dark colour that's made exclusively for Art Brown of New York. I've never been to Manhattan, so I'm wondering if the colour was crafted with the feel of the place in mind. Is there something particularly 'Manhattan-ish' about Manhattan Blue? Would someone who knows the 'isle of joy', as the brilliant Rodgers and Hart song christens it, be instantly reminded of it if he or she looked at the lines that I have written on my notepad?

This wondering has led me to give some thought to what an ink dedicated to Cardiff, the nearest city to Ink Towers, would look like. Cardiff skies are often grey -- they are today, in fact -- so perhaps it would have to be of such a shade. The possibility of Cardiff Grey reminded me of a song by Max Boyce, the legendary Welsh comedian (pictured above), entitled 'Rhondda Grey'. The complete lyrics to this masterpiece can be read here, but I should think that some of their melancholy genius will be lost to readers who are not familiar with the culture of South Wales (the poignant phrase 'The tools are on the bar', for instance, even though it's in English, is one that both needs and defies 'translation').

The little boy in 'Rhondda Grey' never gets what he wants, simply because 'no shop has ever sold' a colour that will do justice to the feel of the valley ('You can't buy that in Woolies, lad' is one of the greatest lines ever written, I feel). Perhaps it's time, something like thirty years after Boyce wrote the song, to start making amends. Cardiff isn't in either of the Rhondda valleys, of course, so we'd need two different colours: Cardiff Grey and Rhondda Grey. I think that I might camp outside the Senedd and petition the Welsh Assembly to set up a special company that would begin to heal the wounds that have been inflicted upon Wales at the level of ink. I'd call it Incio (the Welsh word for 'ink'; there is no 'k' in the language), and we could set up a series of outlets modelled upon the successful Yo! Sushi chain. The delicate little bottles of Cardiff Grey and Rhondda Grey would slowly revolve around the room on one of those kaiten devices, and customers could select their choices as the ink passed by. Yes, that's right, dear readers, I'm calling for an empire of Yo! Incio.

Ink in use today: Noodler's Manhattan Blue.

Ink Memoriam O.G.

I'm being haunted.

It's perfectly common to be unsettled by seeing the handwriting of someone who was once close to you, but who is no longer alive. It happens to me every time I open my inscribed copy of Don DeLillo's White Noise, which was given to me by my grandmother on my nineteenth birthday, some six years before she died at the age of ninety. (No, she wasn't an 84-year-old avid consumer of postmodern American fiction; she asked me if there was a book that I'd like as a present.)

But today I've been spooked by a dead ink. Between lectures, I escaped from my office to the library to read through my typed notes for this afternoon's class. I last looked at them exactly a year ago, and I'd completely forgotten that I'd added some handwritten thoughts in the margins of the text. The fineness of the lines suggests that I employed my Sailor 1911 with its very slender nib, but what really caught my eye was the ink that I'd used. It was Omas Grey, a distant cousin of the Great Brown Whale. I can remember the exact moment that I snared the bottle: the Inkette and I were on a day-trip to London, and we stopped off in Selfridges, where I was hoping to capture some Omas Sepia. The colour was, of course, out of stock, but the sales assistant did manage to find me a bottle of the grey at the back of a cupboard.

I soon became very fond of Omas Grey, with its unique and mysterious shading, and it regularly flowed from my pens. Earlier this year, however, disaster struck. On going to refill my Pilot Custom 74 one afternoon, I noticed that the ink had undergone a hideous mutation: the bottle was filled with what looked like mouldy, dirty water. In a small, private ceremony, my longtime companion was poured down the drain. It was taken from me suddenly, cruelly, but no one could say that we didn't burn brightly for a short, glorious time. I kept the bottle; it still sits upon my desk, and I leave fresh flowers every weekend.

I haven't seen a line written in Omas Grey since the funeral -- it wouldn't be appropriate to fall into the arms of a new bottle so soon, I feel -- so stumbling across its familiar tones on my sheet of notes this afternoon was something of a shock. Memories of happy days came rushing back, and I was once again reminded of my loss. I thought that the grieving was over, but there's clearly still mourning to be done. 'Do we indeed desire the dead / Should still be near us at our side?', asked Tennyson's In Memoriam A.H.H. Of course we do. At our side and in our pens.

Inks in use today: Rohrer and Klingner Sepia; Noodler's Brown.

The Inkredible Rescue

They're alive!

You may remember, dear readers, that Friday's instalment recorded the thrilling arrival in the post of several vials of ink from a fellow inkthusiast in the USA. But there had, I reported, been a small accident during the voyage, for the plastic bag in which the plastic containers were sealed contained a dramatic spillage of blue ink.

After hours of delicate rescue work involving plastic gloves, a small crane, and a helicopter with a winch, I have rescued all four vials, and I'm pleased to report that not one of them was cracked. It would appear, rather, that the tops of two of them had become loosened en route. I've have posted above 'before' and 'after' photographs, captured from the CNN live broadcast of the whole riveting affair.

The inks are now recovering in the utility room of Ink Towers. As soon as they're back to normal, I shall try them out. But here's the thing: I'm not going to know exactly what I'm sampling in every case. Two of the labels are intact, so I know that I have Private Reserve Naples and Noodler's Brown to test. But the other two vials' labels are no longer legible, for they soaked up huge amounts of the spillage. I believe that one container holds Noodler's Manhattan Blue, but I'm really not sure about the other. In fact, the enigmatic fourth colour might not even be a blue -- now that the spilled ink has been wiped away, I think I can see a decidedly plum tone, or possibly even cherry.

This has actually made an already exciting afternoon even more thrilling. Being able to try out PR Naples and Noodler's Brown alone is enough to keep me happy for hours on end (the latter isn't currently available in the UK), but the sense of mystery attached to the other two vials takes things to new levels of enjoyment. I could easily email the generous sender and ask him for their identities, but there's something quite appealing about not knowing. What happens if one of the unknown shades suddenly becomes my perfect colour? It would be in my possession ... but not quite. I'd be in love with a mystery, a nameless being. The Ink Quest would take a new turn, in which the object of desire were captured but still somehow elusive. Perhaps the name of the game is anonyminkty.

Ink in use today (so far): Rohrer and Klingner Sepia (a very dark brown/grey colour; it's so grey, in fact, that the Inkette didn't notice the brown tint at first).

'Trying Hard to Make This Whole Thing Blend'

It's been a day of blending.

First of all, I arrived in work this morning to find a package from a fellow ink lover waiting for me. We've been exchanging opinions about certain colours in recent weeks, and he kindly offered to send over from the USA several vials of shades that I don't own. But the US and UK postal systems have taken their terrible toll upon the precious cargo, for I opened the package to find that several of the containers have leaked or cracked. Luckily, the vials were sealed inside an airtight plastic bag, so the spillage -- an intriguing blend of a couple of blues -- is safely contained. I will need, though, to call in a biohazard team to help me rescue the bottle of brown, which seems to be undamaged, when I get home this evening. (I can't remember if it's the standard Noodler's Brown or the special new colour that has been made by the company for members of the Fountain Pen Network. Either way, it's a brown that I've never tried, and it doesn't get any more exciting than that.) I've told it to hang on in there, that help is on the way, and that it should put the ending of Titanic out of its mind. I've even though about pulling the rubber 'O' ring off my Pilot Custom 74 pen and throwing it into the bag for the brown vial to hold onto.

Then, a couple of hours later, I received an email from a reader of Ink Quest who, inkidentally, shares a first name with the generous sender of vials ('Everything is connected in the end', as Don DeLillo once put it.) He drew my attention to a truly brilliant YouTube clip, in which a pile of forty ballpoints is put into a blender and reduced to sludge. You can watch this masterpiece by clicking here, dear readers. Who cares about the new James Bond film when we have gems like this available for free?

When I run the country, this short clip will be required viewing in every school. Daily. Once the class has pledged allegiance to the fountain pen, all ballpoints that have been smuggled onto the premises will be gathered up, placed into a giant blender, and ceremonially destroyed. We will blend the bland across the land. This is the only way to save civilization, to correct the current blindness to the beauty of real ink. 'To blend' used to mean 'to make blind' in English, inkidentally. The formulation is obsolete for a reason: I will blend to make people see the light.

Ink in use today: Rohrer and Klingner Alt Bordeaux (a lovely wine-coloured ink; the Sepia has also arrived, but I haven't had a moment to try it yet).

Ink on the Tracks

It's often said that the greatest break-up album of all time is Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks, which was written in the wake of a dissolving marriage. It's a bitter, furious, wounded, resigned, melancholy masterpiece -- I'd probably put it second on my list of 'desert island discs', just behind Van Morrison's Veedon Fleece. (It also contains the best 'angry' song ever recorded: 'Idiot Wind'. Bizarrely, though, the quiet, acoustic outtake versions always strike me as more devastating, more raging than the full-band version on the album itself.)

I've been listening to Blood on the Tracks a lot this last week or two, along with a much later Dylan song that is, in my opinion, just as poignant than anything on the earlier album. It's called 'Most of the Time', and here's how it goes:

Most of the time
I'm clear focused all around,
Most of the time
I can keep both feet on the ground.
I can follow the path, I can read the signs,
Stay right with it, when the road unwinds,
I can handle whatever I stumble upon,
I don't even notice she's gone,
Most of the time.

Most of the time
It's well understood,
Most of the time
I wouldn't change it if I could.
I can't make it all match up, I can hold my own,
I can deal with the situation right down to the bone,
I can survive, I can endure
And I don't even think about her
Most of the time.

Most of the time
My head is on straight,
Most of the time
I'm strong enough not to hate.
I don't build up illusion 'til it makes me sick,
I ain't afraid of confusion no matter how thick,
I can smile in the face of mankind,
Don't even remember what her lips felt like on mine
Most of the time.

Most of the time
She ain't even in my mind,
I wouldn't know her if I saw her
She's that far behind.
Most of the time
I can't even be sure
If she was ever with me
Or if I was with her.

Most of the time
I'm halfway content,
Most of the time
I know exactly where I went.
I don't cheat on myself, I don't run and hide,
Hide from the feelings, that are buried inside,
I don't compromise and I don't pretend,
I don't even care if I ever see her again
Most of the time.

It's the 'most of the time' part that kills me whenever I hear it. He's over her ... but not quite. And I think I've realized why I've been listening to the song so much recently. As you know, dear readers, my long, passionate quest for Omas Sepia ink recently came to an end. We finally met, but it turned out that the Great Brown Whale wasn't really The One. Our conversation was short and sweet, you might say. Since the moment of union, I've found myself thinking about Omas Sepia less and less. Once it filled my thoughts every moment of every day; now I don't think about it most of the time. There's an occasional pang, but then I remember that the relationship fell into ruin rather quickly. The bottle still sits upon my desk, but we rarely exchange meaningful glances. We both know it's over. It was gravity which pulled us down and destiny which broke us apart, you might say.

The healing has begun, in other words. And I've taken the first steps towards a new relationship, for Rohrer and Klingner inks are finally available in the UK, courtesy of those wonderful people at The Writing Desk. I've just ordered two bottles (ink twice, it's alright) -- Sepia and Alt Bordeaux -- and the anxious waiting has now commenced. (Every acquisition of a new colour is like a blind date, I find.) What will they look like? Will there be an instant connection, or will one look be enough to make it clear that there is no future for us? Could one of them be The One? (And what if they both are?) I've barely thought about the Great Brown Whale ever since I submitted my order. I think I'm over it. I'm back in the game, baby.

Ink in use today: Noodler's Sequoia.

Paper Cuts

Welcome to Ink Quest's 100th post, dear readers. How on earth have I managed to find so many fascinating things to say about ink?

As Ink Quest is growing, though, another part of my deathless prose is being subjected to ruthless cuts. I have to give a forty-minute talk on Hitchcock's Psycho next week, based on a longer chapter about the film that I've already written. The only problem is that the latter is far too long to fit into the time slot, so I've spent several days frantically slashing it down to size. I read the edited version out loud to myself this morning; it was still about five minutes too long, and I really couldn't see what more could be cut. I've been sitting at my desk for the last ten minutes with my pen in my hand, searching unsuccessfully for superfluous phrases.

But I've just realized what's wrong, what's holding me back: I was using a pen filled with grey ink (Herbin Gris Nuage, to be precise), when the conventional colour for censoring and editing is blue. I needed, I suddenly recognized, to start 'blue-pencilling' (or 'blue-penciling', dear American readers). I have, therefore, just switched to Diamine Royal Blue ink, and I've now managed to find a paragraph that can be cut. Out of the blue, it appeared to me. I am no longer blue in the face. When I was poised to edit with brown ink, by way of contrast, the section in question seemed beyond deletion.

I take this as proof that ink can change the way someone sees the world. Inks are like lenses. (Did you know, inkidentally, that 'lens' derives from the Latin for 'lentil'? It's all in the shape, dhalings.) Switching colours opened my eyes and lifted me out of my blue funk. I can see clearly now the gray has gone.

Inks in use today: Diamine Royal Blue; Herbin Gris Nuage.

PS (9 November): A brief update to Sunday's post about the search for the perfect tie. Having read the entry, the Inkette secretly did a bit of internet browsing, and I'm delighted to say that a perfect black silk tie with white dots was unexpectedly delivered yesterday afternoon. You can, dear readers, expect future entries in which I complain about not being able to find the perfect £750 Omas fountain pen in any of the local stationery shops.

Spots and Stripes

At last, a philosophy to which I can subscribe.

It's fictional, sadly, but 'Resistentialism' -- created by Paul Jennings in one of his amusing short pieces -- comes closer than anything I've ever read to corresponding with my view of the world. The movement's motto, Jennings tells us, is 'Les choses sont contre nous': things are against us. 'Resistentialism', he writes, 'is largely a matter of sitting inside a wet sack and moaning'. And it's not hard to see why: Jennings also recounts how one researcher, following the legendary Clark-Trimble experiments which proved that a piece of toast covered in marmalade is more likely to fall face down on an expensive piece of carpet than it is on a cheaper counterpart, 'carried out literally thousands of experiments, in which subjects of all ages and sexes, sitting in chairs of every conceivable kind, dropped various kinds of pencils. In only three cases did the pencil come to rest within easy reach.'

Actually, my own take on things goes one step further than Resistentialism, and it's a little more individualistic. My outlook (Exinkstentalism?) can be summed in the following manner: the whole world is against me.

Let me give you an example. Fighting my way through the pre-Christmas crowds in Cardiff this afternoon (never have I needed a scythe more), I had one thing on my mind: a new tie. Not just any old tie, but something quite specific: a black silk tie with small white spots, just like the one pictured above. Simple, classic, elegant -- the kind of thing that Cary Grant might wear when meeting an acquaintance from Milan for a mid-afternoon Martini in Manhattan. The knot would be delicately dimpled, casually loosened.

Even though Cardiff is a capital city, and even though it has plenty of shops that sell men's clothing, the tie upon which I had set my heart could be found nowhere. When I asked one sales assistant if the obscure object of my desire happened to be stashed away in the storeroom, she informed me that 'Most people want stripes these days. Stripes are the fashionable thing'. Clearly, for it was at that point that I noticed the rows of hideous striped rags on the wall of the shop.

I take this as proof that it is more than merely things that are against me; the entire structure of Western fashion and opinion is pulling in the opposite direction. And I know that it's doing this merely to make my life a misery. If I'd gone out today looking for a striped tie, I have no doubt that I would have discovered the prevailing opinion to be in favour of spots. Strangely enough, the Inkette managed to find exactly what she was looking for, and more, in the city this afternoon. Le monde entier, chers lecteurs, est contre moi.

Rejected by orthodoxy, I took refuge in the pen shop about which I have written on various previous occasions. (It's the one where the owner tries to stifle a sigh whenever I walk in. He's in league with the world, I'm sure, and he's probably writing a scathing account of my visit on AnnoyingCustomer.blogspot.com at this very moment.) As the store stocks a wide variety of Diamine inks, I thought that I would lift my dampened spirits by purchasing a bottle of Sapphire Blue, one of the new colours recently launched by the company. But this happy ending was, of course, made impossible by the fact that, even though something like twenty different Diamine shades were on the shelf, Sapphire Blue was, like my dream tie, nowhere to be found.

In a desperate, final attempt to at least strike one blow against the striped-tie-filled-and-Diamine-Sapphire-Blue-devoid world (it's somewhat ironic that, archaically, a 'stripe' was a stinging blow), I managed to find one item in the shop that I liked: a small Clairefontaine notebook. But this hardly counts as a victory. The world remains set against me. The Ink Quest is always struggling upstream, always looking for something that the universe withholds. The Penquod will plough on, though. If the whole world is against me, then I am against it. I am, after all, a man of that stripe.

Ink in use today: Waterman Havana.

Lately I've Been (Almost) Breaking Glass

Perhaps, after all, I do need professional help.

I was teaching a section of Freud's Psychopathology of Everyday Life to a group of students this morning, so I spent yesterday evening rereading the text, which, it turns out, is a treasure trove for inky-fingered types. In chapter eight, Freud recounts how he once knocked the marble lid of his inkwell to the floor, causing it to smash. This, reports Sigmund (Sinkmund?), was particularly puzzling: 'I cannot remember ever breaking any household item' in the past, he declares.

Even though common sense might tell him that the smashing of this precious item was nothing more than an unfortunate and innocent accident, Sinkmund starts to look for a motive. Before long, he finds one. Shortly before the incident in question, he recounts, his sister had been in the room and had said: 'Your desk looks really nice now, except for the inkstand, which doesn't suit the rest. You ought to have a prettier one.'

From this, Freud concludes that he must have unconsciously read his sister's comment as a promise that she would buy him a new inkstand as a present. The 'accident', that is to say, was not an accident at all: Sinkmund had unconsciously 'broken the old, plain one to make sure that she put the plan she had indicated into action'. The 'sweeping movement' that led to the destruction of the lid 'was only apparently clumsy, and in reality was both dextrous and purposeful, since I contrived to avoid all the more valuable objects standing close to the inkstand'.

I came very close to repeating Freud's destructive behaviour last night, just after I had finished rereading the Psychopathology of Everyday Life. As I was refilling Blue Beauty with Omas Sepia before retiring to bed, my hand suddenly made a strange, uncontrollable movement that very nearly sent the bottle crashing to the floor. On a conscious level, I had no desire to see my latest acquisition destroyed, particularly because I have waited so long to get my hands on the ink in question. But I, like Sinkmund, began to wonder if there might have been an unconscious wish working in the opposite direction.

What if I was unconsciously trying to get rid of the Great Brown Whale so that I could then put the creature behind me and move on to the next ink? What if I have unconsciously come to think of the bottle of Omas Sepia that finally sits on my desk as some kind of anchor that is holding back the Ink Quest, the next voyage of the Penquod? Have I, the proud owner of the colour that evaded me for so long, started to harbour doubts about its effect upon me? Would the truly logical gesture of a Captain Inkhab devoted to the endless pursuit of ink involve the destruction of all bottles in his possession? Should I ditch my entire cargo in Boston Harbour?

Inks in use today: Omas Sepia; Diamine Indigo.