Love for writing

Love for writing is packing an old Olivetti, making your suitcase insanely heavy to carry, but not being able to picture yourself, without its company, even during your holidays. Not wanting to renounce to the rhythmical lullaby of its keys, rocking your thoughts as you write. Or, the peaceful moment when you stop typing, actually kind of putting yourself on pause, and let your hands change automatically the filled page for a bright clear one, inviting again some more words in.

It couldn’t be a really good holiday if you can not sneak to write, leaving your family and your delightful grandnieces enjoying the pool and, finding those moments to sit by yourself in the terrace, with the sea at the background, and the house quiet. And then, in that perfect moment of calmness, let your imagination fly away but, actually, you end up grabbing it, to avoid getting it lost. Making your thoughts prisoners to the paper, but finding the way to present them in the most accurate, yet beautiful way, so they become more real: transitioning from your imagination to become a story.

I met the 80 year old gentleman this summer, but it was his daughter who told me about the typewriter journey from Rome to Malaga, packed as a child would take his teddy bear, to keep him company. And I could understand the man and, at the same time, I felt deeply moved by the story because, it is the same love that makes you pick just one pencil in an exquisitely displayed museum shop. It attracts you because you can picture yourself using it against some paper, leaving its traces behind, making words just look pretty, 2D plain monochromatic beauty. And you find that gracefully designed pencil so inspiring to help you connecting your brain with your hand, noticing the flow through your arm to its solid wood and, hearing the murmur of its tip, scratching slightly the paper.

Or the same love that wakes you in the middle of the night, to switch your computer on and type the story you need to tell before its momentum falls away and, you lose forever your idea, its strength and whatever thought inspired it.  And you can not stand that your story, slippery as a fish, may go forever to the kingdom of thoughts without you being able to bring it to this world, in a material, perceptive way that, at least for you, makes it more real.