I was looking for a biography and ended up in something else entirely.
It was Autobiography by Sol LeWitt, first published in 1980.
Page after page of black-and-white photographs arranged in a strict grid.
Objects, walls, fragments of a life reduced to structure.
An autobiography, in title only.
He never once appears.
It is hard not to think of Instagram.
The same grid. The same accumulation.
The comparison feels almost too easy.
Because the structure is the same.
The intention is not.
LeWitt removes himself completely.
What remains is a system.
Now, the same language is used to do the opposite.
To be present. To be seen.
What was once deliberate returns as something continuous, almost unconscious.
And there is something reassuring in that.
That a medium like the book continues to carry these experiments, shaped over centuries.
Ways of arranging images and text, long before they become familiar.
Or perhaps before we notice them again.
Threads of Life
I visited Chiharu Shiota: Threads of Life at Hayward Gallery.
Walking into the space, you’re immediately held.
Beds suspended in a dense field of thread.
Lines crossing, tightening, almost vibrating.
During Sleep sits somewhere between weight and suspension.
Between what is there, and what is no longer.
I found myself standing still for longer than expected.
What struck me most was not the scale, but the restraint.
Very little, in the end.
Thread. Objects. Space.
And yet, within that, something vast opens up.
Something like memory, or the trace of it.
Something that stays without being fully there.
It made me think about how little is actually needed.
When the form is clear, and the intention precise, the work carries everything else.
When Anything Is Possible
Most projects start with constraints.
Projects for pitches.
Milestones to celebrate.
Portfolios to shape.
They usually arrive with limitations.
Materials.
Format.
Page count.
Often defined by what a streamlined, semi-industrial process allows.
Then something changes.
Some are not willing to give up on the original vision.
And with handmade books, suddenly anything becomes possible.
Or almost.
There are still limits.
Budget.
Time.
What the studio can physically do.
At first, that openness feels overwhelming.
But it does something very important.
It forces you to ask:
What is actually needed?
What should it feel like?
What should it mean?
For whom?
And why?
The Cock and the Bull
The other day, Harriet Bruce came by the studio.
Harriet did a residency at Mazzotti Books in 2019.
It culminated in a collaborative project, I Do I Undo I Redo, which went on to win the International Bookbinding Competition.
The residency programme started a year earlier, in 2018. The intention was simple.
Open the studio.
Invite new perspectives.
See what happens.
Since then, it has brought in people with very different ways of thinking and making. Each one leaves something behind.
The image above is a woodcut Harriet made earlier this year in Oaxaca.
A calendar. Wood, ink, time, pressure.
The visit turned into a conversation.
Then into a direction.
Something new is beginning to take shape.
The studio does that sometimes.
It brings people together.
That’s where things begin.
P.S. If you’d like to peek into Harriet’s woodcut project, click here.
A Place to Work, A Place to Think, A Place to Connect
I’ve been speaking with different people about making books.
Different backgrounds, same instinct.
To create something that didn’t exist before, to share with others.
What interests me is not only the object, but the encounter.
The studio becomes a place of connection.
Each project carries a story, not just of the book, but of the person behind it.
In that sense, the relationship is rarely transactional.
It cannot be.
To arrive at the right outcome, something has to be shared.
Time.
Attention.
Trust.
What is commissioned is not only the final object, but the process that leads to it.
And sometimes, what emerges is not what was expected, but something much closer to what was needed.
Nayan
Yesterday Nayan was launched.
In Sanskrit, the word means “eyes.”
It comes from the work of Ankit Vyas, founder of Niraamish.
Ankit is a London-based lawyer and an independent scholar of Indian miniature painting. What began as a personal fascination slowly became a deeper practice of looking.
Years of studying details in historical miniatures led him to share close-ups online. What started as an Instagram page grew into a community interested in the visual language of the tradition.
From that long engagement grew Nayan.
The book centres on ten eyes drawn from Indian miniature paintings across centuries. Each copy includes ten hand-painted eyes made in Jaipur by the master miniaturist Riyazuddin ji.
Ankit approached me with an unusual challenge: how to house ten miniature paintings within an artist’s book while still allowing them to be seen and, if desired, removed and framed.
The solution is an unfolding structure containing ten small frames (10 × 10 cm), alongside a monograph examining these eyes across centuries of miniature painting.
The project brings together historical research, close visual analysis, and contemporary miniature practice, with a chapter devoted to each selected eye.
What I admire most is the way the project moves between places and disciplines.
Between scholarship and making.
Between Jaipur and London.
Between historical tradition and contemporary form.
Above all, it is a book about learning how to look
Edition of 25 copies.
For acquisitions and enquiries please contact Niraamish.
The Antilibrary
19 February 2026 marked ten years since Umberto Eco’s death.
Eco owned around thirty thousand books.
When asked why, he questioned measuring a library by what had been read.
The value of a personal library, he suggested, lies as much in the unread as in the read.
Books as potential.
Books as reserve.
Books waiting for the right moment.
It’s tempting to treat books like consumer goods.
Buy one.
Read it.
Move on.
But that misses something essential.
A library is not an archive of what you know.
It is a map of what you don’t.
Some books sit for years before they find you.
Others arrive exactly when needed.
On Hubris
In Ancient Greek, hubris meant excessive pride.
The kind that invited a fall.
Craft knows that definition well.
You make a prototype.
You’re 90% happy.
Which is dangerous.
Because that last 10% whispers,
“Just tweak it.”
A millimetre here.
A “small” improvement.
You convince yourself it’s refinement.
Two days later you’re still undoing everything.
The tweak made it worse.
Not subtly worse.
Catastrophically worse.
Forty-eight hours to return to where you started.
Hubris.
Craft has impeccable timing.
It waits until you feel certain
and then reminds you
who’s really in charge.
One Work. Many Ways In.
I’ve been thinking about this for years.
If you buy a book, you should be able to access it in every format.
Print.
Digital.
Audio.
One purchase.
One work.
Multiple ways in.
The physical book remains the anchor.
But the experience should move.
You read at your desk.
You listen while walking.
You switch back without losing your place.
Technology makes this possible.
Publishing still treats formats as separate territories, divided by contracts, rights, and revenue models.
Last week, Spotify announced a partnership with Bookshop.org.
If you discover an audiobook, you can buy the physical edition directly.
More importantly, with a feature called Page Match, you scan the page you’re on and continue listening from that exact moment.
It isn’t seamless yet.
Scanning feels transitional.
Voice will likely replace it.
But the direction is unmistakable.
The book is becoming fluid.
I’m currently listening to Kitchen Confidential, read by Anthony Bourdain himself.
It feels less like consumption and more like conversation.
His voice adds texture the page cannot.
The page holds density and a personal rhythm that the voice cannot.
Why should I have to choose?
This isn’t about replacing print.
It’s about continuity.
The infrastructure is ready.
Readers already move between formats.
Question:
If books can move effortlessly between formats, would you want that?
Or is the integrity of a single format still part of what makes a book a book?
I’d genuinely like to hear how you think about this.
On Felice Beato
I came across Felice Beato again this week.
Again, because his images have been part of my visual vocabulary for a long time.I just hadn’t followed them back to the man.
Beato, an Italian–British photographer, was working across Asia at the end of the nineteenth century.
Among the first to photograph war.
Running a studio that developed its own methods for hand-colouring photographs, in collaboration with Japanese watercolour artists.
Learning that changed how I read the work.
The images didn’t change.
My distance from them did.
What I had taken as historical records began to read as deliberate constructions.Images made with an awareness of how they would circulate, how they would be seen.
It left me with a deeper appreciation, not just for the photographs,
but for the intention and labour behind them.
Sometimes that’s all it takes.
Not a new image.
Just the story around it.
The End & The Beginning
Happy New Year.
This was one of the last photos I took before the break.Under that pile of improvised weights there’s a book I can’t show (NDA): engraved marble front and back, sitting in a leather case.
Sometimes a job asks for more than what you already know.
You use what you have.You make it work.
Looking at it now, thinking about what’s next, I’m reminded how far resourcefulness carries the work.
You rarely have every tool, nor the right one.
If you stay calm and deal with the next constraint, things move.
A good reminder to start the year.
Less drama. More inventiveness. Same high standards.
Question: What’s one workaround you’re weirdly proud of?
The Ephea Book
Ephea gave me an open brief. Not an object, but a manifesto of materiality: something to slow us down and reawaken the senses. Before decisions or meaning comes feeling; it leads intuition.
From my piece in the Ephea Journal:
“When I first envisioned the Ephea Book, I thought about creating something far beyond a simple sample collection. I wanted to create an object that would function like an archive, but feel like a gallery, a space where each element had time and room to tell its own story.
I drew inspiration from vinyl records’ cases, yet I reimagined their structure to frame each sample as a unique material narrative. Every sheet of Ephea carries its own expression: textures, tones, densities unfolding one after another, designed to be explored slowly, by hand, with presence.
I wanted the structure to guide the journey, to decelerate it.
Not just a swatch book to flip through, but an instrument of discovery: tactile, intuitive, crafted to invite care and curiosity. Each gesture becomes a moment of encounter with the material, a silent dialogue between fingers and paper.
This is what makes the Ephea Book unique: it transforms consultation into experience, samples into stories, choices into discoveries.”
Question: are you familiar with Ephea's mycelium based materials?
Take a look here.
P.S. I’ve collaborated with Ephea and Mogu (Ephea’s sister company for architectural materials) for some time, and the evolution of their materials has been remarkable. Here is an interview in The New Bookbinder, Vol. 40 (2020), where I tested their early materials.
On cheating gravity
Last weekend I bound an A2 portrait book (420 × 594 mm), about 800 pages, almost 20 kg.
One of those commissions with an insane turnaround: if anything slips, you fix it on the fly and race the clock.
People imagine a bookbinding studio as a relaxing space.
The reality, especially in a big city like London, working to fashion and communications agency timelines, is the complete opposite.
We planned six working days. Files arrived two days late.
Then the printing press went down, twelve hours lost, and the first run arrived with issues that needed reprinting; another day gone.
2.5 days left. What do you do? You decide it’s personal. You make it happen.
I delivered at midnight on Sunday. I always swear I won’t take these jobs again. But there’s something powerful about making to the highest standard within a tiny window: a kind of total focus that turns down the noise.
When it’s finally done, it feels like cheating gravity for a moment.
P.S. Special thanks to Simon and Ira at LCBA; Nicky Oliver of Black Fox Bindery; and Francesco of Studio Bergini.
Lesson from la Tourette
Some buildings you simply visit. Others seem to visit you, shaping your thoughts, slowing your pace, and leaving an imprint that lasts long after you’ve gone.
In mid-July, while driving from London to Marseille, I had the pleasure of staying one night at Sainte Marie de la Tourette, a monastery near Lyon and the final building designed by Le Corbusier.
What struck me most was how light becomes an active participant in the architecture. It doesn’t simply illuminate; it moves freely, sliding across walls and floors, inviting you to follow.
The building uses undulating glass panes to control the light entering its large public spaces and long corridors, creating a rhythm of shadow and brightness that changes throughout the day.
With so little else competing, mind settles. Focus arrives. Attention deepens.
It’s a powerful reminder that inspiration doesn’t require abundance; the minimum, handled precisely, is enough.
Do you rearrange your space to think better, or let the space arrange you?
I’m exploring how studio layout affects error rate and flow.
If you have any tips, I’d love to compare notes.
P.S. The last picture shows my favourite architectural detail: the “sugar cubes.” They are everywhere. They serve no structural purpose; they’re there to frame the view, compelling you to focus more intently on what’s in front of you. Genius.
MAZZOTTI BOOKS' Manifesto
At the end of March last year, I attended an unforgettable workshop in London organised by the DO Lectures and run by David Hieatt and Mike Coulter. The focus? How to write a manifesto.
A manifesto is more than a set of rules or aspirations; it’s a compass. It’s what you return to when decisions get tough, when the path isn’t clear, or when you need to remind yourself why you started in the first place.
It’s taken me almost a year and a half to distill my ideas, challenge my assumptions, and put the words in the right order. But today, I’m happy to share the outcome, the foundation of what Mazzotti Books stands for and where it’s heading.
At Mazzotti Books,
We believe in the transformative power of books
Every book we create embodies our passion for curiosity and imaginative thinking, helping to shape a future where diverse ideas and perspectives are celebrated and treasured.
We are committed to those who care
The individuals and brands that dare to think bigger and strive for quality and individuality.
We uphold a standard of excellence and purpose
Ensuring that every decision we make reflects the integrity of the project and the creativity that defines us.
We thrive on challenges
Every day we receive ideas that no one else has been able to give shape to. We see them as opportunities to discover and play.
The approach is as important as the outcome
Creating a book is a multilayered process of navigating and discovering physical nuances.
We take you on a journey.
Craft matters
Craftsmanship infuses our work with meaning.
We care about our craft and the people we do it with.
We don’t just produce books, we breathe new dimensions into stories
Through form, structure and materials, we recontextualise narratives.
Daily Practice
A different way to approach thinking and making
The idea was born from a peculiar Instagram phenomenon in which makers feels the urge to post at least one picture of their paper offcuts, sharing their innate beauty and incredible potential, but rarely exploring it further. As Martina Margetts[1] wrote:
“Today’s internet deprives us of a connection with things: obsessed by surfing images, we consume superficially and judge prejudicially.” [2]
It is not enough for me to make useful objects. My aim as a bookbinder, artist and maker is to understand, deconstruct and reveal the physical nuances of my favourite medium: the book.
I started to collect offcuts because I felt that some of them were much more than merely the residues of processes. The simple act of accumulation led me to see them as a new raw material to be explored and used in different ways.
At the same time, I was inspired by Gongshi – spirit stones (popularly mistranslated as Scholar’s Rocks in English) after I worked on the seminal publication Crags and Ravines Make a Marvellous View published by Sylph Edition. In China, in the middle period of the Tang dynasty, during the first half of the 9th century BC, an enthusiasm for rocks developed in Chinese culture which gradually spread to Japan and Korea, and has continued to the modern age.
Rocks are venerated with all the respect that we would accord a work of art; except that what is really being honoured is the power of nature rather than the human hand. In a similar manner I started collecting urban debris from all around my studio, an area with an ever-increasing rate of development. By recasting the construction debris, I detached them from their past and gave them a new life, a new perspective through which to be seen. The appreciation of these objects, being man-made, becomes a starting point for reflecting on the power of creation and destruction contained within human hands.
I crystallised this current idea by creating a series of four new sculptures that explore the complex relationship between process and outcome, utilising the ‘in-between’ materials to capture nuances of the process that are otherwise invisible. At the same time, I wanted to create a departure from the linear narrative of binding a book – an object that itself is inherently linear – by developing a new visual language rooted in its physicality.
Daily Practice is now exhibited at “The Art of the Exceptional’ WOOD-GLASS-PAPER hosted by Fortnum and Mason on the third floor of their Piccadilly store until the 8th of May 2022.
[1] Martina Margetts is a Senior Tutor of Critical and Historical Studies at the Royal College of Art in London. She was Editor of Crafts magazine, and has curated a number of exhibitions for Britian's Crafts Council.
[2] Documents on Contemporary Crafts No.5, Material Perceptions published by Norwegian Crafts Arnoldsche Art Publishers, 2018
Mycelium Books
Interview for The New Bookbinder Vol. 40 - 2020
Fig.1
The Mycelium Books are part of "The Growing Lab - Mycelia" collection and are an ongoing exploration into using pure mycelium materials as an alternative to traditional animal leather traditionally used in bookbinding. Experiments in creating and using this material are being carried out by Officina Corpuscolu & Mogu [1] in close collaboration with Mazzotti Books .
What is Mycelium?
Mycelium is the vegetative part of a mushroom, namely the group of micro-organisms that we call fungi. Part of the many fundamental tasks that fungi perform within the natural ecosystem is that they are responsible for breaking down organic material and transforming these into freshly available nutrients that can promote the growth of multiple life forms – for example plants, insects and other microbial life.
How is it made?
Mycelium materials are cultivated by means of fermentation.
By growing fungi on a large variety of substrates deriving from agro-industrial waste such as straws from hemp, flax, wheat, rapeseed as well as wood-chips and sawdust from many wood types, it is possible to create a wide array of materials with different mechanical/technical properties (like tensile strength, compression strength, impact resistance, etc.) suitable for targeting many different applications, both within the creative and industrial world (i.e. furniture, interior design, fashion, etc.)
How is it currently being tested - that is, what products are being created?
Experimentally, Mycelium has been used to create many different products within the building industry, in furniture making, architecture, and the fashion industry but the actual range of products currently available on market is still limited. Mogu is in the process of releasing products for interior architecture and comfort, such as acoustically-absorbent and resilient flooring solutions. The company is also working on finalising flexible materials and solutions suitable for use in the fashion, fashion accessories and automotive industries.
How did Mazzotti Books become involved with Officina Corpuscoli?
I met Maurizio Montalti (Founder of Officina Corpuscoli and co-Founder of MOGU) when we were studying at the University of Bologna, Italy. Since then, besides our personal friendship, we have always been in touch about professional developments, updating each other on whatever we are working on and trying to create opportunities to collaborate on joint projects. In 2016, we decided to create our first three books for an exhibition called Veganism which was staged at Dutch Design Week (Figs 1,2 & 3).The books were produced by using the early prototypes of mycelium materials developed by Officina Corpuscoli.
Since then, the materials have gone through an incredible amount of development and improvement, and Mogu’s new range of flexible, pure mycelium materials (called PURA) was premiered in November as part of Biofabricate 2019, in London.
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
How does the research exchange work?
Officina Corpuscoli and Mogu are growing, testing and developing a variety of materials to be used in other industries and as a bookbinder I consider this an exciting opportunity; to able to work with a new material that has already been subjected to development and testing on other applications and that we feel could also be used for bookbinding.
Once a suitable material has been selected, I receive a sample and start handling the material, feeling it and understanding its properties.
I usually start by creating a case binding, just to see what the material does and how it reacts to glue and foil blocking. After that, I assess it and report back. This feedback loop continues until we have identified the most promising solutions.
Describe the material - what does it feel like? What is it like to work with?
The Mycelium I used as board material in book 1 (Fig.1), in 2016, has a lightweight consistency with a cotton-like feeling along the edges. In order to contain the fluffiness along the edges I have applied a thin layer of EVA along them. Unfortunately, although having a very interesting texture, it is not as resistant as millboard or grey board (it doesn’t bend, instead it breaks) and at the moment it only comes in a few thicknesses; the thinnest being 3mm. (Fig. 4 )
Fig. 4
On book 2 (Fig. 2) I used a leather-like material similar to Amadou [2], a material derived from fomes fomentarius [3] and similar fungi that grow on the bark of coniferous and angiosperm trees. To the touch it is very similar to suede, but much thicker and more spongy. I used this material as panels for the front and back covers, just gluing it on top of a 1mm millboard board with no turn-ins. To press it I used some thick memory foam between the pressing boards and the cover. The visibly darker areas are where there was either more pressure due to unevenness of the material or more glue. Like suede, it doesn’t take foil blocking very well.
On book 3 (Fig. 3), I created a central panel on the front and back cover with a different material closer to latex rather than leather but far less stretchy. This time I did turn-in although the material is almost impossible to pare, with different thicknesses throughout. The result is uneven turn-ins. Apart from this issue the texture is very beautiful, almost alien and has a noticeable caramel smell. It is also possible to foil block although not easy due to the heavy texture (Fig 5 ).
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
On books 4 and 5 (Figs 6 and 8), I utilised PURA material backed with Fray-not using EVA-con R glue (Fig.9 and 10).
Fig. 9
Fig. 10
The difference between books 4 (Fig. 6) and 5 (Fig. 8) is that book 4 hasn’t been pressed under a nipping press, therefore the texture of the material has remained very soft, so much so, that even after a day of resting under a weight I could still impress a finger print on the front cover (Fig. 7). Pressing book 5 with a nipping press has allowed the substrate backing to come to the forefront, resulting in little bumps all over the cover (Fig. 8).
Fig. 11
Fig. 12
Book 6 (Fig. 11) has been bound with pre-thermo backed PURA (Fig. 12). The material seems very strong and versatile although a bit too thick, around 0.65 mm
PURA materials can be blind embossed and debossed at low temperature, around 130 degree Celsius, but unfortunately it can’t be foiled (Fig. 13).
Fig. 13
Overall, compared to the early material samples that I received back in 2016, PURA materials appear certainly to be more homogenous in texture, density and overall consistency and much closer to a fully viable alternative to traditional animal leather, though not yet fully comparable to it.
Because these materials originate from a fungal skin, they constitute an entirely new category of materials. At the moment, PURA materials are going through major improvements that will possibly allow them to be employed as effective alternatives to traditional animal leather, without any need to be lined with other materials.
What I can see is that there is perhaps a good overlap between what is required by the fashion industry and bookbinding materials which could potentially accelerate the development of new bookbinding materials to work with as alternatives to traditional options.
Can you manipulate PURA like traditional leather?
PURA materials behave more like a book cloth rather than leather.
The materials that I received so far are still under a process of continuous improvement and they stretch relatively little when compared to animal leather due to the back lining.
Having said that, I am aware that there are already new PURA versions without any lining and with major improvements on mechanical properties. This result has been achieved by identifying suitable classical tanning processes.
Generally speaking, I don’t think it is correct to compare this material to leather or think that leather will be completely replaced by it. Soon this new material will have the same performance of leather but with different tactile properties creating a completely new range of materials.
Will it last - what does it wear like?
The first books produced (2016), are now three and half years old.
Book 2 (Fig. 2), unfortunately, has been eaten by flies although it was stored in a sealed box. The material had a high level of sugar content, making it irresistible to them (Fig. 14).
Fig. 14
The other mycelium materials utilised in 2016 do not seem affected or spoiled yet, but I also think that it is perhaps still too early to evaluate the aging process.
The newest book made with PURA lined with Fray-not unfortunately appears relatively fragile. After a few days of handling the corners are damaged and the material has started to delaminate (Fig. 15 and 16). However, the book bound with pre-backed PURA seems to be much stronger and I am absolutely excited to keep following its evolution and observing how it will age.
Fig. 15
Fig. 16
Do you think there is a future for Mycelium as a bookbinding material?
Definitely. I personally don’t use much leather in my work, although I like it as a material, purely because I don’t think leather is always the most appropriate material to bind a book.
Leather is very durable, has a nice smell that we consider warm and familiar, and feels nice to handle. It adds a luxurious feeling, but sometimes it also true that when a book is bound in leather, it often becomes more of a precious object and less likely to be touched, let alone read!
Also, if the book is to continue to be seen as an object that enhances thinking, openness, reflection and imagination; an object that is a reflection of its contemporaneity, then today, perhaps it is becoming increasingly difficult to justify wrapping a book in the skin of a dead animal.
I truly believe that books still have the power to spark curiosity, reflection, and action and at the same time I feel that we are entering an age where material consciousness is not only related to luxury but becomes a necessity that requires a radical shift toward the way we think about materials, especially how they are produced.
If the covering material of a bound book can tell us something about our social history and can comment on our past and current preoccupations, both cultural and political, then definitely bio-based, responsible materials should become one of the first choices to think about when binding a book.
Any ongoing plans?
At the moment I am hosting a writer in residence with the intention to explore the possibility that we don't need books as a medium to share stories. The main questions that we are trying to answer are:
What other ways are there to tell stories? What can a bookbinder and a writer do together that they couldn't do separately? What can collaboration reveal?
Through making books together we will try to understand and find out what physicality means. We will be publishing everything we are thinking about: stories, research and interviews; the only goal being to explore the written word, the internet and books, and to question how we can find new ways to tell stories beyond the physical book.
In addition to this research, over the last couple of years I have been developing a new body of artwork that explores the visual and tactile language rooted in the materials and processes of bookbinding.
As part of this artistic research practice, I mainly focus on the manipulation and grouping of discarded materials, and, in opposition to bookbinding, where everything is strictly controlled and focused toward a specific outcome, I chose my artistic research practice to be free from end goals. I am aiming to present this body of work for the first time by the end of the year.
Last but not least, I am really looking forward to receiving the latest development of PURA materials, without any lining, to test it.
I am quite confident that in the next couple of years, maybe even less, mycelium based materials will be a solid bookbinding option.
If you would like to know more, please do not hesitate to get in touch.
Notes
Officina Corpuscoli (corpuscoli.com)
Officina Corpuscoli (est.2010, in Amsterdam - NL), operates as a trans-disciplinary studio investigating and reflecting upon contemporary (material) culture, through the development of tangibly novel opportunities and advanced visions for the (creative) industry and for the broader social spectrum. Working at the junction between design, art, biotech and ecology, the studio develops design research, curatorial projects, critical installations, technologies and products, often inspired by and in collaboration with living microbial systems.
What do we see when we imagine? What do we see when we read?
by Writer in Residence Sean Russell.
6 min read
I see it very clearly. It is night outside and the cabin is surrounded by trees and the wind blows and rustles the leaves. Inside, sat on the floor, is a young man and a woman in her thirties. The interior is oak and there’s a fireplace and the pair are sat on a white rug and leaning against a grey sofa. She has a guitar and sings a song as he watches, lost in his own thoughts.
This is an image I can see very clearly in my mind. It is an image from the novel Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami, and the song the female character, Reiko, sings is of course the song Norwegian Wood by The Beatles.
Honestly, I have no idea if this imagining is accurate to the book. I can't remember anymore. It’s been a few years since I read the novel the point is, I can see that image, it sticks with me.
If I were of the mind, one evening, I am sure I could simply sit there and delve deeper into this image and I would be able to tell you what she’s wearing (a grey sweatshirt and tracksuit bottoms) or the posture of his body (back against the sofa, knees bent, elbows rested on knees, hands lightly touching one another in the middle). The point is, I see it as if it were one of my own memories, as if it happened to me.
Yes, I suppose in many ways it did happen to me. I was there. A voyeur, an eavesdropper, a stalker. Because reading a book isn’t passive like watching a film, instead you are really there, these images are conjured in your mind, and the memories they create become, to me at least, indistinguishable in quality from a memory of my own life.
I see Watanabe and Reiko as clearly as I see my brother and sister, mother and father on a Christmas day morning when I was a child. Can I say the same of films?
I can imagine a film, but what I imagine was not created by me, I was passive. I can recall Marlon Brando with an orange quarter in his mouth chasing his grandchild through the orchard. But it feels like recalling facts, I don't feel I was somehow in the orchard with them. The Godfather is one of the finest pieces of art, that is not to detract from film, it is just to say it is different to reading.
This image conjuring is something I took for granted. A few words on a page and I see it all:
"A red car roars down a road past the bustling crowd."
What do you see?
Do you see anything, or do you simply know what those words mean?
I see it. Not in the sense that I stop seeing through my eyes momentarily, but moments after I have read it, I remember the image as if I had really seen it with my eyes.
I assumed everyone saw their imaginations in the same way. So stupid to assume anything, but I did. I can sit and daydream for hours, but I do not daydream in words, but images, dialogues, entire worlds, parallel universes where I go and speak to the interesting person by the bar instead of standing by, quietly alone.
I see myself in the future, I imagine the past if I had done something different. I see it all, every detail.
Speaking with two friends recently I found out that when they read, they do not see these images. That the people in their books are blurs, faceless, abstract hints of colour and shape. They are no less moved by the writing, and feel everything perhaps just as I do. They just do not see it. They would not see Reiko, they would see no cabin, no trees.
This got me thinking about how one would write for different imaginations. Even if we just take two camps of imagination: those that see, and those that do not (and it is quite possible there are many levels on the spectrum of imagination) you could write two different passages to achieve different thing.
As someone who sees, I love deeply detailed writing. Someone like Hemingway who would write something along the lines of:
And we walked up the hill and the grass was wet from the morning's dew and when we got to the top of the hill we could see out over the trees and in the distance was a lake and the sun shone on us and it was a fine day to hunt.
I can see everything and it’s no coincidence that Hemingway's books stick with me far more as memories than other books, I can say the same of Charles Dickens and Arhundati Roy. Different styles, I know, but swathed in detail.
But take someone like Eimear McBride – whose writing is abstractly beautiful – you may get something like:
A step. Mud. I hope that. Deep breath. We get to the top soon. Oh and the land stretching and swirling shimmering dancing. He, next to me. I, catching my breath. Water down my throat. Look at the lake.
While I think there is something wonderful about McBride's language – read her, not my imitation – to me, personally, it is laborious. I need an image or else I lose interest, I am distracted. The story is reduced to pretty words and I am very aware I am reading, I am inside no one’s world. Whereas I know some friends who deeply love her style and feel everything her characters feel and are entwined with the nuances that can be expressed in this staccato almost private-feeling style. These friends mostly say that they do not see.
There is a term for mind-blindness, the inability to imagine a picture, it is congenital aphantasia. For these people when asked to recall a memory – or perhaps a story from a book – they often describe them as a conceptual list of things that occurred rather than how I would, like a movie reel playing in my mind’s eye.
In an excellent Conversation article the authors refer to Firefox internet browser inventor, Blake Ross, who explained his own mind-blindness in a Facebook post.
“He can ruminate on the ‘concept’ of a beach,” writes Rebecca Keogh and Joel Pearson. “He knows there’s sand and water and other facts about beaches. But he can’t conjure up beaches he’s visited in his mind, nor does he have any capacity to create a mental image of a beach.”
To find out whether the difference was indeed in the ability to imagine an image, and not, just the ability of the person to describe what they see, the authors carried out a study using an objective means to identify the ability of one’s imagination. It is described well in the article, but the result is that it is true that some people just do not have visual imagery.
I wonder if this is a spectrum along which all of us will fit. Those that can see Reiko and Watanabe in full detail, those that see faint images with no faces, and those that can simply process the words and know what they mean with little or no image at all, and everything in between.
Well, then, the way a writer writes a story would affect different people’s experiences very much.
But what about the way a person reads? When we spoke with Jonathan Harris he spoke of reading as an activity in which you are present with just yourself and the book and your imagination, the page. When looking at a screen you are in fact looking into a multi-dimensional portal of the internet, distracted by browsing, social media, email and all that goes with it.
How does that effect imagination? With a book it’s hard to get distracted, with a screen, much easier, so perhaps it is harder to form those images, whatever those might be to you, and even harder to maintain them when your mind wonders so easily off the words and to the red notification; as your hands anticipate the buzz of a new message.
It’s worth thinking about, there must be some reason a book feels different to a screen.
A reflection on my time at Shakespeare & Company in Paris
Writer in Residence Sean Russell writes about his time in Paris based at the literary hub of Shakespeare & Company, a shop that now needs help to survive during this pandemic.
When I arrived in Paris it was cold and it was January and it was grey and the wind blew. Yet somehow the city always has a beauty that others just do not have, whatever the weather may be. It was 2015 and I was 22 and idolised Hemingway amongst many others and saw no other place to be other than Paris, I saw no other place than Shakespeare & Company.
I didn’t have a lot of money but had discovered that if you thought of yourself as a writer you could live in the shop so long as you worked there for two hours a day and helped open and close it. You also had to write a one-page autobiography at the end of your time there and traditionally you were supposed to read a book a day – although I can’t say I managed quite that rate... These were George Whitman’s rules for letting people stay in his shop on the Seine looking directly at Notre Dame, rules which still exist to this day under his daughter, owner Sylvia Whitman.
I could think of no better place to be, Shakespeare and Company is more than a bookshop, it is a history and tradition. Many writers have passed through its doors – including the likes of Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso – and many famous people have come and gone. I remember meeting Owen Wilson in the library there, sitting down to enjoy a book one quiet windy evening.
The shop was so busy in the day, hundreds of people crammed into the place in a way that is unimaginable now during the pandemic. One of the jobs I would do during my two hours was stand on the door letting people in and out as queues built up to see this wonderful little nook in Paris. The customers would ask for book recommendations of us and we would happily give them and on some evenings, authors would read from their works to a wine-drinking audience.
But for the tumbleweeds – the name given to the writers who sleep in the shop – it was when the customers left that there was a different kind of magic. When night came, and the final readers and shoppers were gone, we would close the doors and be surrounded by quiet and books. So much more the quiet after such a busy day.
We would stay up drinking wine and reading books and chatting and writing, I made some of the very best friends I ever made in the shop and felt like I was part of this great tradition. Up on the third floor of the building there was an archive of one-page biographies, thousands of them dating back decades. We used to go through them and read them and find that we were just part of this long line of people looking for a Parisian dream. My autobiography, if I recall correctly, was horrifically pretentious.
The shop acted as a hub, it was where people were drawn not just from all over the city but all over the world. All small independent bookshops are important to the communities that love them, Shakespeare & Company’s community just happened to be from everywhere.
Some of the most cherished books I own are the ones I got from Shakespeare & Company with the little stamp inside the front cover reminding me of some little memory of the few months I spent in Paris sleeping next to the piano upstairs, but also after I left the shop and returned to meet friends and buy books.
Like many independent shops around the world, Shakespeare & Company is struggling in the pandemic and for all of us that love the shop it’s time to help if we can as they push for support. Any book from Shakespeare & Company is to be cherished by all book lovers, you buy into the heritage of the shop, you buy into the idea.
Now, if you can, please help support this wonderful shop. But if not Shakespeare & Company then any of the other independents needing help to survive right now.
Support Shakespeare & Company here.
A change of perspective
by Writer in Residence Sean Russell.
I felt I had to leave the UK and London for many reasons. First among them was that I could. With the switch to working remotely the whole world became my office. It took a friend to make me realise this, but once I began to think about the possibility of what I thought would be impossible in March – I decided to go to Palermo, Sicily.
While the first reason was that I could leave, the next reason was a feeling of being exhausted with the country. Tired of the outrage and anger; the divides so clear. Tired of the city. Samuel Johnson said if you’re tired of London you’re tired of life. Samuel Johnson probably never paid £700 for a room in a shared flat in the middle of a pandemic where all of those great things that make the rent worth it are closed.
I longed for the countryside and quiet, I longed to be alone. I longed to change my perspective.
As a writer there is perhaps little better you can do than change perspective. When you are so comfortable in the place where you are, the people you have around you, your routine, what can you possible write about? Or more importantly than “what” is how can you be sure of anything you write when you haven’t seen anything else? When you have nothing to compare and contrast.
Italy fascinates me for the obvious reasons – the food, the scenery, the architecture. But I also love the cinema, the cycling, the history. I wanted to learn Italian, a language which prefers a beautiful way to say something over a functional phrase – there are at least 10 words for “the”. And so I decided to go to Sicily, just to see how it was, to change my perspective. It was, as Jonathan Harris might say, “the next clear thing” for me at the time.
And so I left.
Accompanying my arrival in Palermo came a peace in solitude. I began to think clearer about my own little personal problems and saw that really they were not problems at all, mostly – not in the sense of real problems. I saw that everything in my life was good or as good as could be in a global pandemic, and I am lucky and grateful. I saw that people were outraged in the UK because they are exasperated, because the country that once I was so proud of is an embarrassing mess. I understood that they knew no other way to express this than in anger and outrage on social media.
To me Italy has always been an idea, a fantasy of mine. I had images of Jude Law in The Talented Mr. Ripley in my head. La Dolce Vita – I saw myself sitting over an espresso with La Gazzetta Dello Sport, wearing a suit and looking over my sunglasses like Marcello Mastroianni in 8 ½. But the fact is, as with most fantasies, the truth wasn’t there, at least not in Palermo in the middle of coronavirus.
One of the issues of travelling during a pandemic is a constant feeling of anxiety. You’re not entirely sure what’s going on around you, but everyone is keeping to themselves. And that’s a hard place to be when you’re alone. I’ve never much found travelling alone hard, but in a pandemic it takes the confidence right from underneath you.
But I did travel to Solunto, lauded as Sicily’s Pompeii, and it was empty because there are few tourists at the moment and I took the train out and walked up hill for 35 minutes in Birkenstocks because I believed erroneously that it was a five minute walk. And there I had a Phoenician/Greco/Roman settlement to myself. I walked around and imagined mundane scenes because really people haven’t changed all that much and probably were complaining about such and such a pain in their back and how hot it was or something. I found a room in a ruined old house which said it was the toilet. Now, the toilet to me is a great thinking place, and so I thought it must have been for someone long before me. So I sat on the “toilet” and did my thinking where once someone else did their thinking, and it was comforting to be able to meditate in this way in this place.
I'm not sure I could live in Italy, but I could spend time here, I could get away from the UK and breathe and ride my bike into the mountains which is perhaps one of the finest experiences I have ever had in my life here in Palermo, and I could do that every year for the rest of my life and that would be a happy life.
But while here I also began to think about pub culture, I don't really know why, except that I love British pub culture. There’s something about those stale-beer smelling places of friendship. I realised little things, like in the UK most everything just tends to work, whereas in Palermo I just assumed they wouldn't and was happy when they did.
This is not a love letter to the UK. I am distressed by the state of the country and its government. I am embarrassed where once I was never embarrassed. And I cannot get over the odd obsession with World War 2. But good or bad the change of perspective helped me think clearer.
Whilst here, I began to experiment with other forms of writing also. Here in Italy you cannot help but think of beautiful things when surrounded by them all the time.
Haiku (the modern kind as opposed to the pre-modern style) is something I have never played with. It never really made sense to me. But being here and trying to see things differently there is something about those 17 syllables that forces you to see things for what they are with no imposed judgement. The symbolism is suggested, the idea is hinted at, but ultimately, they are all about the same thing, the moment, and the impermanence of all things.
Being confined to 5-7-5 makes me think and see things differently and I hope to continue writing Haiku when I return to the UK and beyond. How better than to capture a moment? To change one’s perspective?
There’s a ring of wine
Amongst others on my desk
All of them are mine
A lizard scuttles
Downwards past the balcony
A fly flies away
A blue shirt old man
Puffs his cigarette butt
Over his face mask
A chocolate wrapper
Washes up in the bright sand
A small fish struggles
Salt and pepper man
On the balcony clips his nails
They rain on the street