In the bloody belly of the beginning of the academic year.
I realize that I stole 'On No Work of Words' for the title of an entry in July 2006, but I have been driven to purloin it again today because I am currently drowning in the utter insanity of the beginning of the semester.
It has been a week since my last confession, and it will probably be another week before I have time to put pen to paper and then fingers to keyboard, dear readers. This is something of a shame, as it is Ink Quest's fourth birthday tomorrow; I also have thrilling things to say about all sorts of inky matters. Still, there is nothing to be done but roll with the punches until the days (yes, days) of the station wagons are over. We shall meet again in the place where there is no darkness. (Well, just the usual level of gloom, hopelessness, and misanthropy.)
Got myself a crying, talking, sleeping, walking, inking doll.
As the parent of a two-year-old child, I have a detailed working knowledge of children's television that I simply did not possess before mid-2007. We don't allow Baby Ink to spend all day with the remote control in his hand, of course, but we're also not the kind of pious, hand-wringing middle-class parents who impose a complete ban on the medium. (What is wrong with these people? Do they really think that their actions are going to solve anything, or is it all just a performance for the benefit of the other worthy souls?) He has, therefore, a handful of programmes that he enjoys while winding down at the end of hard day, among them Dora the Explorer, Something Special, and the evergreen Tom and Jerry.
Between episodes of Dora on Friday, the usual parade of advertisements began. He pays no attention to the commercials, and I normally merely make an alarmed mental note of how much this season's coloured plastic is selling for. But something caught my eye that evening, dear readers: a range of dolls called BFC Ink.
The advert raced by too quickly for me to be able to figure out the precise nature of these objects ('Look! Dolls! Accessories! Play with them! Buy more accessories! Christmas is coming! Dolls! Accessories!'), so I had to wait until Baby Ink went to bed before I could do a little internet research. I was hoping, of course, that the BFC Ink dolls are a range of fountain-pen enthusiasts, each of which comes with a bottle of ink and an exquisite writing instrument:
New for Winter 2009! Collect them all! These girls say 'No' to biros! Meet Wendy: she's into calligraphy and italic nibs! This is Sally: she's a piston-filling girl at heart! Lucy mixes her own inks when she's not grinding nibs in her workshop! And don't forget our full range of inky accessories! Here's the Travelodge hotel -- host your very own pen show for all your friends on the outskirts of town! And how about this miniature bottle of Amodex -- even experienced inkthusiasts spill things from time to time!
With this double disappointment in mind, I have kidnapped Baby Ink's Dora doll, and, after a little weekend experimentation, I am proud to present the prototype of Best Friend Ink, which will be available exclusively from my grumpy, misanthropic emporium, Doll 'r' Us:
Could any child possibly resist a doll that comes with a bottle of Omas Sepia and a vintage Parker Duofold? 'You can never start kids on fountain pens too soon', inkthusiasts are fond of saying, and I think I have found a way to begin the inkdoctrination while they're still in the cradle. With Best Friend Ink, your child will come to love a bottle of ink as much as bottle of warm milk; the next generation of inkthusiasts is born. This is no joke, guys and dolls; I'm not toying with you.
Inks in the hand of Best Friend Ink today: Waterman Florida Blue; Private Reserve Tanzanite; Noodler's Walnut.
PS (1.00pm): If my new range of dolls makes me a small fortune, perhaps I'll be able to buy an ink cabinet like this.
PS (5.10pm): And if I have enough money left over, I'll be able to buy the entire contents of this.
I should probably just retire, retreat from the world, fountain pen in hand.
A secretary with whom I've worked closely for more than a decade is due to retire in several weeks, so I called into one of the other administrative offices in the building this morning to sign her farewell card and to contribute to the collection for a gift. This act of philanthropy -- I use the term literally -- may surprise longtime followers of Ink Quest who have come to be familiar with my misanthropic ways and regular reluctance to celebrate anything except misery and bitterness. Yes, dear readers, I do sign the occasional leaving card and donate towards gifts ... but I have probably refused on more occasions than I have consented, and I did once try to persuade colleagues that a certain individual who was leaving to take up another position was simply too vile to deserve anything from us. I draw the line, too, at the faux friendliness that regularly arrives in my work email inbox: Jason bought a carton of orange juice at lunchtime. If you would like to sign the card to congratulate him, please call into the office before Friday ... Susan's name is Susan, and we're organizing a collection to celebrate this special fact. I have, moreover, left strict instructions with one of my colleagues that there should be no gift or card presented on the occasion of my resignation/dismissal/retirement/in-service death. 'I don't think it will be difficult persuading people not to give anything', she assured me.
The secretary whose retirement is just around the corner, by way of contrast, is a popular figure, so the card already contained a fair few signatures when it was passed to me for my contribution this morning. As I was choosing a spot to make my mark with my Aurora Talentum, I saw that another member of the department had written his message with a fountain pen. I know that he always uses Pelikan Brilliant Brown ink, and I immediately noticed that the glossy surface of the card had caused his words to turn a strange shade of green-ish brown. I have discussed this curious phenomenon in a previous post, so I fully expected that my ink of choice -- Noodler's Walnut -- would undergo a bizarre change when my nib moved across the card.
I didn't, however, anticipate utter disaster. As soon as I'd written my message of farewell, I knew that something had gone terribly wrong. The ink wasn't changing colour; it was spreading, pooling, turning into a large brown blob and rampaging across the rest of the surface towards others' cheery inscriptions. (The department's CCTV captured everything on film; click here to witness the full horror.)
'Finished?', asked the secretary who's been looking after the collection and gathering signatures. 'Um ... well ... something's gone wrong', I replied. 'Let's see', she said, taking the card from me. She looked at the disaster area, frowned, and then glanced over at me. 'What did you do to the card?', she asked. 'I signed it', I said. 'But it's just a mess. I can't even read what you've written'. 'It's still just about legible, isn't it?', I replied, hoping. 'Well, did you mean to say "Frjkiukl fffjuepl, loijkoijbrgds. With best wishes, jtcjuf"?', she asked. 'So it is still legible. What a relief', I responded, backing away towards the door. 'This is what happens when you use a fountain pen', I heard as I was retiring into the corridor in shame. 'And that's why they invented biros'.
Yes, dear readers, I tried to do something warm and friendly, and I managed to ruin a retirement card. I feel like Curb Your Enthusiasm's Larry David when he discovers that his generous attempt to place a notice in the newspaper to mark the death of Cheryl's 'beloved aunt' has gone horribly wrong. (Readers who dislike what my grandmother always called 'blue language' should stay away from the following clip.)
I have defaced a potentially precious memento, scarred it with a monstrous blob. Will an urgent email be sent around to all staff in the department tomorrow morning? (jtcjuf has mutilated the retirement card. Could everyone who has already signed it please come and sign the replacement. In biro.) Should my ink collection be forced into early retirement?
I have, of course, celebrated ink's unpredictable and unruly qualities in many of my missives. But perhaps the sacred liquid overstepped the mark this morning. I don't mind if it changes colour, shades in unforeseen ways, or even splashes a little; these inkidents, as I've noted in the past, are what makes writing with a fountain pen so pleasurable. But there's a difference between light splashing and rampant, blob-like destruction of all that exists.
It occurs to me that 'retirement' is linked, as a word, to the French 'retirer', which in turn contains 'tirer', 'to pull'. (I think it's possible, inkidentally, to say that 'retirer' tire son nom de 'tirer'.) Anyone who's ever been to France will surely have seen doors marked 'Tirez'; I always remember that 'Tirez' means pull by thinking that pulling a door open 'tirez' me out more than pushing one does.
But 'tirer' can also mean 'to draw' (as in 'to draw a line on a piece of paper'). I can only conclude, then, that my Noodler's ink, on finding itself called upon to form words relating to the retirement of secretary who just happens to have a French name, decided that it was going to withdraw (retirer) from its duty of legibility and retire into the wilder realm of abstract drawing, of mutant blobdom.
I could carry on with this inky tale, dear readers, but I shall now retire. When it comes to words at this hour, I sense my story tired.
Inks threatening the world as we know it today: Noodler's Walnut; Private Reserve Tanzanite.
Something is happening here, but I do know what it is, Mr. Jones.
It seems that I'm not alone in needing a solid-ink pencil; Bob Dylan could also do with one. I'd like to say that I know this because he rang me for a chat last night ('Yeah, I've been reading Ink Quest while I've been on the road, and I think you should play guitar on my next album. Maybe you could help with the lyrics, too'), but the truth is rather more prosaic: I discovered to my surprise yesterday afternoon that a gallery in Cardiff Bay is currently showing several of his 'Drawn Blank' paintings, and it took me mere seconds to spot that my great hero's collection of writing instruments lacks something like the Sanford NOBLOT indelible ink pencil described in my previous post. (I say that I was surprised to see the art in the gallery because it's the kind of place that usually sells pictures of sports cars, tigers, and mundane tourist-or-homegrown-idiot-targeted watercolours of green valleys, coal mines, hillside terraces, and sheep.)
When I noticed that the gallery is asking nearly £1400 for prints of Dylan's art, I decided that I'd better look long and hard at the pieces, as there was no way that I would be walking out with one tucked beneath my arm. And so I stood and stared for a while. Before my eyes even reached the colourful pictures, though, they fell obsessively upon Dylan's signature. 'That's Bob Dylan's signature', I thought, awe-struck. 'But it's in pencil'.
Yes, dear readers, the eternally contrary Bob has chosen to authenticate the prints of his work with a signature that could be erased in an instant. The type of Dylan fan who likes to look for connections and conspiracies in his work would probably tie this fact to the opening line of 'Ballad of a Thin Man' ('You walk into the room with your pencil in your hand') or perhaps even to the pencil moustache that he's taken to sporting in recent years. Others might explain the use of pencil at the bottom of the paintings by pointing out that the term 'pencil' ultimately derives from penicillum, the Latin word for paintbrush. My immediate reaction, however, was: Why didn't he use ink? And is a signature still technically a signature if it's in pencil?
I can think of various situations in which the answer to that second question would be 'Absolutely not'. A passport application, for inkstance, needs (in the UK, at least) to be written in ink, as, I believe, do legal contracts. And I doubt very much that a bank would accept a cheque upon which the amount and signature were inscribed in pencil. But when it comes to art, of course, the usual rules no longer apply. A painting can be signed with anything.
I'm still somewhat disappointed, though, that Dylan didn't use ink and a fountain pen to sign his prints. I don't think I've ever seen a photograph of him with a writing instrument in his hand, but I now realize that I always assumed his weapon of choice to be a fountain pen. It's often said that you should never meet your heroes; perhaps it's now time to add that you should never learn about your heroes' choice of writing instruments. When it comes to Roland Barthes (one of my other heroes, as regular readers of this blog will know), we're on safe ground: as I've pointed out in many previous posts, the mighty R.B. often wrote about his love of fountain pens and ink. But what if other writers, artists, and musicians whom I admire have a penchant for pencils or, worse still, ballpoint pens? (Did Don DeLillo write White Noise in biro on cheap, low-quality paper? Does Philip Roth have a drawer full of rollerballs? Did Van Morrison jot down the lyrics of Veedon Fleece with a chewed Bic? Did Edward Hopper sketch the magnificent Gas in ballpoint before picking up his brush?) Should I be putting names on my list of heroes in pencil until I know for certain that each individual doesn't use a pencil?
Until I feel confident enough to answer these questions, until I know enough about my heroes' writing habits to master peace, I'll have to take comfort in twisting the lyrics to 'When I Paint My Masterpiece':
Someday, everything is gonna be diff'rent When Dylan inks his masterpiece.
Ink in use today: Noodler's Lexington Gray.
PS (2 September): The solid senders keep on sending fascinating references to solid-ink pencils. Honorary Penquod crew member Stefan has just discovered a tantalizing appearance of my latest object of desire in an 1866 volume entitled A Handbook for Readers at the British Museum. You can consult this fascinating title on Google Book by clicking here, dear readers.
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