Reminiscence of the Written Word

Written by Connor Bertie, originally published in Issue 110.

Everywhere I go, I tend to take down notes in a small journal, mostly as a form of recording my own thoughts or events that I want to remember; but I also like to offer the pen to others and have them write down something that’s on their minds. More often than not, they stare at the paper for a few seconds, before asking me with a puzzled expression: what do I write? I simply tell them: something; anything; everything. 

Some people have asked why I do this, which I understand; it’s not a usual thing to see anyone walk around with a pen and a notepad more frequently than a mobile phone nowadays. My answer is thus: I do this because I want to record history, albeit in a different manner than images captured on a camera.  

When a pen is put to paper, there's something about it that personifies a person differently than a camera can. It's a showing of a person’s true self, within the words they use, within each ink-stroke of character, there is a story to be found.  

Yet, these stories are almost never found in the modern day. Writing is a dying art, especially on paper. And so, I do this to preserve the art of the written word, written in the hands of anyone, and especially in the hands of those who would not do so otherwise. 

Since the beginning of this roleplay-historian project, I have received a variety of different quotes, phrases, terrible drunken jokes, life advice and creative sentences from many different people. These are mostly off the top of their heads, but if someone truly cannot think of what to write, I will give them three words: a verb, a noun, and an adjective, and have them write a sentence using those three words. The latter is usually where the creativity sparks and flourishes into something that surprises even the one who writes it. 

However, there is the occasional spontaneous quote that stands out more than most. I have, from one of the first people that wrote something down in my journal, a single quote that they wrote spontaneously, straight from the heart: “Travel when young, reminisce when old.” This in itself is a philosophic statement that could ignite conversation over when exactly that period between travelling and reminiscing is. But it's the latter half of his quote that stays with me, because it is towards that exact purpose that I feel determined to keep writing in my journal, as well as asking others to do the same – to reminisce when old.  

To one day in the very distant future have come far in life, to have lived life to its fullest in whatever way you see fit; and, after rummaging around in your parents’ attic, finding and opening a cardboard box that's been sealed for forty years, labelled: “misc.”, your hand clasps a familiar object. You turn the pages, and flip through sentences belonging to a time almost entirely forgotten from memory.  

The work of yourself and others, from a very long time ago. The reasons as to why any of it was written may be lost to you, but that is part of the beauty of it, to wonder. 

I have been to plenty of second-hand bookshops, and one thing that always stands out to me, (and forces me to buy books), are inscriptions written by a previous owner. Dedications to friends or family, a student’s scribblings of their thoughts as to the meanings of certain words or phrases, or; quite simply, who the book belonged to, and when they received it. Through this, you reminisce in a way, as if looking into a mirror and seeing a different reflection, viewing memories of life lived through another person, treading lightly within their footsteps.

It makes you evocative of a time that isn't even yours, yet you can still feel it. This is the beauty of the written word. It is the essence of reminiscence. 

In the words of JL Carr; an author who wrote in the novella ‘A Month in the Country’ around the theme of reminiscence, remembering days long gone; when describing a rose that the character Birkin receives as a gift, and telling of the account decades later: “I still have it. Pressed in a book. Someday, after a sale, a stranger will find it there and wonder why.”