“Good apple pies are a considerable part of our domestic happiness.”
Jane Austen, from a letter to her sister, Oct. 17, 1815
I’ve been thinking about letters, based on a recent discussion about Jane Austen’s letters, some of which are now on display at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York. (A number of them are also available, via electronic text, at the University of Virginia, Penn, and other university libraries. And of course there are books.) Written in a beautiful, slanted, wispy hand, I find Austen’s original letters, though perfect for their time, hard to decipher, items that need to be studied rather than read. But I trust she would not be able to decipher my grubby scrawl, which is nowhere near perfect, either. She would be able to read my e-mails, though, were any of the thousands of them permanently saved or properly archived and put into context.
“Woo-hoo!” I wrote in an e-mail to my friend Wendy Shang, just after midnight. “I think Mary and I just finished a first draft of our novel.” Then I added a P.S.: Jane Austen would never have said “woo-hoo.”
No, Wendy agreed, in her e-mail reply dated 25th of February. “I believe Jane Austen preferred a fist pump followed by ‘Booyaaaah!'”
These, of course, would be included in an exhibition of The Madelyn-Wendy E-mails, in the section titled “Re: In praise of sumo wrestlers.” There would likely be a number of e-mail exchanges with my other writing friends as well, some status updates from my Facebook page, and, if we want a true, proper reflection of my in-box, I suppose there will be one of my many e-mails from Viagra, with a sad aside from the exhibit’s curator that I apparently never replied.
The exhibit would contain a few of my paper letters, too, reflecting how I lived my day-to-day life and how I became the person I am today. There would be a few notes I wrote in college, along with the one note in my possession from high school that reads “I hate Chris.” On your right, you will notice a pissed-off missive to my insurance company, a permission slip allowing my son to go to the planetarium, and my letter demanding that KISS be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame:
“Are they camp? Sure. Sleazy? They revel in it. But they’re also rock and roll and they belong in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I’m asking that you put them there soon, especially as members of the band age or battle illness. This is an honor they should be able to accept together, now, not just when Gene Simmons is the sole survivor with an oxygen tank and a wheel chair with flames painted on the sides.”
It’s hard to know what to save and what to dump when you’re going through memorabilia. The paper plate with glued-on pumpkin seeds my daughter brought home from pre-school? The crayoned note that says I’m the worst Mommy ever? The one that says I’m the best? I have a hard enough time going through the tactile tangibles. But those e-mails? Early drafts of my stories? Ugh. It’s overwhelming!
On a recent bus ride, the man sitting next to me mentioned Thomas Jefferson’s writings, with the cross-outs. “Now you never see the cross outs,” he said. “Everything’s deleted.”
I save early drafts of my stories, but in a sense what he’s saying is true. There’s so much more out there now, and so much is deleted. (Hmm. Maybe that should be a T-shirt, along the lines of “My other car is a tractor.” My best writing has been deleted.)
What do you save? What do you dump? I don’t have answers, just questions.
Whether you’re a writer or not, you probably have questions, too. If you have answers, leave a note in comments, for crying out loud!
Oh, and if you want to write to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame committee regarding KISS, the address is here.
I was thinking I could just leave things in my in box until the end of time and let someone else deal with it =). But I often go on binges and I delete hundreds of notes at a time without even reading them again, because there’s SO MUCH and I just don’t get how to deal with it. (You’d think I’d have a leg up being married to a digital archivist, but, well, no.) I’ll keep thinking about it, though. And you know I’ll read anything you post!!
I threw away trashbags full of old drawings, sketches, and incidental bits and pieces. No regrets because it was really bad stuff and it felt like baggage. I still kept a lot, though.
Now you have me thinking a lot about this whole cleanout business…does the artist really have a responsibility to document their journey from point a to point b to final work? Or, should the final work be a piece in itself. It is probably different for art than writing, but I see the sketches and revisions as concrete forms of the thinking process. Ohhh I feel a blog coming on in the next few weeks.
As far as letters to other artists, I have wondered if I should print and keep the “good” emails between myself and other artists, or just leave them hanging around in my inbox until the end of time. It brings up so many issues of the fragility of modern communication versus good ol’fashioned (and tangible) pen and ink on paper…
People will definitely see I’m less than perfect no matter what I leave behind =)
Good to know the perspective threshold is 10 to 15 years. Did you throw away any sketches, Sarah? Would be interested to know! Somehow seems like it would be harder to throw away sketches than words.
Keep it – you never know…
Michelangelo burned thousands of drawings before his death so no one would see that he was occasionally less than perfect and that he even struggled with some preliminary sketches. (It is painful to imagine watching those burn…)
I just did a major clean out and deciding what to keep or throw out was a lot easier when stuff was 10 to 15 years old. Harder to have a sense of perspective in the moment or even a year or so later. My bad advice: save it now, trash it later. You never know.
Oh, and not having Kiss in the Rock and Roll Hall of Shame makes the Hall look like snobs…they need to get with the program.
Re KISS: Nope, not yet. They made the nomination list this year, I believe, but alas, not the final cut.
I haven’t quite trusted myself with my archives since I burnt a diary as a teen-ager.
KISS isn’t in the Hall of Fame yet? I thought they were. Love your letter, especially the flames on the wheel chair :D!
Don’t get me started on the whole what to save and what to throw out thing. I used to have every letter I ever received since 3rd grade. Finally shredded those. It’s sentimental attachment that gets me every time. As soon as I get rid of something, I find I need it. I need to purge a lot of stuff. Things have become a burden. And yes, I save all my drafts :).