CALLIGRAPHICA
I write in English. Can you read it? Think with your hand, not your eye. You can read it.
My encounter with Islamic calligraphy was the great shaping event of my drawing, much more important than learning to draw, which I did much later. To learn to write is to learn to draw, and vise versa, is what I was learning from Islamic calligraphers. They had a whole spatial code that was totally new to me. The fact that I could not actually read it helped me see this graphic mastery.
So, not knowing either Arabic, Chinese, or any of the other really pretty ones, and also not being attracted to the twee aspect of nice lettering, I made up a script.
It has fast versions, formal version, shorthands. I’ve written hundreds of pages in this script. I often take notes in it. It allows me to take notes and have them not be read. It also has some really pretty variations.
Imperial Letters (Tell the King)
I wrote these in the middle of the night, over a month, while dreaming of Marco Polo and Kublai Khan. This whole project, in its early years, was filled with Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. Calvino taught me a lot about how to see, and also, what not to ignore. He also gave me a new permission, not just to think in fiction, but to make fictions: fictional things.
I made these thirty years ago. I can now read most of it, but not all.
Tell the King the envoy he sent is dead and no treaty is made… made. The enemy rules in all but name.
The word made appears twice because it ran too wide once a new sentence was added. It didn’t read clearly. As Imperial Letters are never corrected, they contain all kinds of mistakes.
Tell the King the horses will be ready on time. Tell the King there are not so many as he was told by the ministers.
There is only the slightest chance of a coup d’etat. Do not annoy the Sultan with this news.
O Sultan heed what I say. If you would make away, then you may go (to). There is no time to lose now.