I’m one of those annoying people that’s constantly writing things down.
Usually not useful things, like shopping lists or directions or other people’s pin numbers, just stuff, the raw thought sloughing off my little brain.

I find that when I sit to think I can’t, and when I’m trying to do anything else I can’t do anything but think.

Thought’s wily game; it flees from any attempt at direct engagement. It can’t be stalked, can’t be baited, the only way to get it is still hunting, letting it come to you unknowing, exposing itself.

I find this incredibly frustrating, because it usually turns up when I have no means to capture it, I get great insights, thoughts perfectly formed, perfectly worded, but only when I have no way to record them.

Thought wanders into view, by the time you’ve zipped yourself up, put your coffee down, whatever, it’s ran off again.

You can’t eliminate these moments of course, you’d be mad to try, pissing in the woods, solitary cups of coffee, endless walking about, all part of hunting. Running and driving and showering are all part of thinking.

In a way I think things like that produce the best thoughts precisely because they produce thoughts that can’t be transcribed, therefore, thoughts unfettered. Once you have time to address them you can’t really remember them; the outline is there, but the detail has gone.

So in reaction you redouble your vigilance, you try and stay as ready as you can be when you can be ready at all. For me that means always having my little notebook, I suppose you could use a notes app or voice recording but personally it has to be paper.

Thought fits poorly in electronics, there’s something about actual paper & pencil, words as physical things, that feels so much freer, less restricted, easier to engage with. Maybe the interface is the issue, I’ve always found the implement used to have an effect on the writing itself. Electronic writing tools all seem to dilute thought further, but I’m not sure why.

Perhaps it’s the flexibility of analogue movement, the ability to make marks as you please, no frameworks or coding, no flex or headings or anything else. Just move the pencil across the page, turn from prose to pictograms to flowcharts and back again. You can edit text on a computer but you can’t do anything quite so freeform quite so easily.

And it’s slower, more emergent, it doesn’t feel the same as typing or speaking, it’s a thing onto itself.

I don’t know what speed I write freehand at but it can’t be more than 30WPM, less than half my unimpressive typing speed. I type a sentence at time, stop and think of the next segment then bang it out, disjointed, deliberate. I write slowly, steadily, one stroke at a time, working through each letter, thoughts flowing while my hand is moving.

Odder still, paper distorts thought less than any other medium.

Thoughts are invariably transformed in transmission, it happened when I drafted this article on paper, and it’s happening again as I transfer that draft to the computer.

The words in my mind leave me and arrive on the page subtly changed, and I’m not sure why.

Maybe its like an echo, growing weaker and less lifelike as it reverberates away, or like playing back a recording, the sheer strangeness of your own voice produced elsewhere.

Whatever causes that distortion it’s always apparent; and it’s always dramatically worse if I do the first transcription on anything other than paper.

Maybe it’s the lack of distraction, the lack of friction. Maybe it’s the meaning I’ve imbued it with, the intention behind the act. Sole purpose, singular, deliberate.

A computer is a magic box, a bag of many tricks, unknowable, arcane.

Paper is paper and paper can be anything. It is what I make of it. In interacting with it it becomes a part of me, when I leave it I leave that part behind but am not diminished for having done so.

There’s the alchemy, the power of paper. I wouldn’t know myself without it.