Where On Earth Are You?
Navigating one of my favourite websites - for Moleskine notebooks - I was reminded of the late, great travel writer, Bruce Chatwin.
Moleskine, you probably know, are the legendary notebooks beloved by European artists and intellectuals ranging from Henri Matisse to Ernest Hemingway.
A streamlined black notebook, the Moleskine has been the trusted travelling companion of generations of diarists and thinkers.
Photo courtesy of Mecookie
A scribble, a sketch, a creative seed idea - all have been committed to the pages of a Moleskine. It’s the analog equivalent of our Inspirations page here at Millican. But for all our affection for digital inspiration, we’d still never be without a Moleskine.
Writer-traveller Bruce Chatwin swore by the notebook, stocking up on them in a dusty Parisien stationery shop before another of his marathon journeys. “Losing my passport was the least of my worries”, he once wrote, “losing a notebook was a catastrophe”.
It’s a tantalizing idea - that a personal journal is more valuable than a passport. However much the passport embodies our legal identity, it’s a journal that gives full expression to who we are and where we belong.
One of Chatwin’s most influential works was his 1986 "Songlines", a book spun from the journals that Chatwin carried on his travels through Australia. In "Songlines", Chatwin proposed that there is a vital link between the Creation stories of Aboriginals and their physical landscape. According to Chatwin, Aboriginals speak or sing their songlines both as a navigational tool and as a way of preserving the spiritual life of their people.
Perhaps writing in a modern journal - or Moleskine - is also part of our attempt to etch our thoughts into concrete form, to anchor ourselves to our environment.
It’s something that I muse on since Nicky and I moved here to the Lakes partly in order to find a more anchored way of life.
Of course, it’s just as possible here to spend a busy day at work, eyes glued to the computer, sealed inside, and oblivious to the presence of Nature beyond.
But we certainly find a certain slowing down essential to remind ourselves who we are, where we are, and what really matters to us.
Via his jottings in a Moleskine, Chatwin - the eternally restless traveller - defined something vital about our need to discover who we are and to belong. Our need to attach ourselves to a specific environment instead of floating rootlessly in cyberspace.
The page of a journal, a patch of fells - both can mark the places any of us belong. So let's keep alive the spirit of Chatwin’s notebooks and songlines. Let's keep scribbling, let's keep walking.
Moleskine, you probably know, are the legendary notebooks beloved by European artists and intellectuals ranging from Henri Matisse to Ernest Hemingway.
A streamlined black notebook, the Moleskine has been the trusted travelling companion of generations of diarists and thinkers.
Photo courtesy of Mecookie
A scribble, a sketch, a creative seed idea - all have been committed to the pages of a Moleskine. It’s the analog equivalent of our Inspirations page here at Millican. But for all our affection for digital inspiration, we’d still never be without a Moleskine.
Writer-traveller Bruce Chatwin swore by the notebook, stocking up on them in a dusty Parisien stationery shop before another of his marathon journeys. “Losing my passport was the least of my worries”, he once wrote, “losing a notebook was a catastrophe”.
It’s a tantalizing idea - that a personal journal is more valuable than a passport. However much the passport embodies our legal identity, it’s a journal that gives full expression to who we are and where we belong.
One of Chatwin’s most influential works was his 1986 "Songlines", a book spun from the journals that Chatwin carried on his travels through Australia. In "Songlines", Chatwin proposed that there is a vital link between the Creation stories of Aboriginals and their physical landscape. According to Chatwin, Aboriginals speak or sing their songlines both as a navigational tool and as a way of preserving the spiritual life of their people.
Perhaps writing in a modern journal - or Moleskine - is also part of our attempt to etch our thoughts into concrete form, to anchor ourselves to our environment.
It’s something that I muse on since Nicky and I moved here to the Lakes partly in order to find a more anchored way of life.
Of course, it’s just as possible here to spend a busy day at work, eyes glued to the computer, sealed inside, and oblivious to the presence of Nature beyond.
But we certainly find a certain slowing down essential to remind ourselves who we are, where we are, and what really matters to us.
Via his jottings in a Moleskine, Chatwin - the eternally restless traveller - defined something vital about our need to discover who we are and to belong. Our need to attach ourselves to a specific environment instead of floating rootlessly in cyberspace.
The page of a journal, a patch of fells - both can mark the places any of us belong. So let's keep alive the spirit of Chatwin’s notebooks and songlines. Let's keep scribbling, let's keep walking.
posted by jorrit at
10:40
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