I often read old letters from people celebrated through history or otherwise, and the only thing on my mind is how imperative it was for them to say what they wanted to say with the best of words and the most surreal, most unexpected sentences. Merely telling someone something was not the purpose of such letters; it was about telling it well, with a sort of personal panache, a flair to the sentences that only they could write, and it makes me wish for people who would be so careful as to write a well-thought-out sentence, and of course, this wish will never be granted. We must be the victims of our time, and we must live with how things are, and if they are too unfavourable to us, we ought to try and change them, but then, the change must make sense. The incentive to write a letter has but been lost to time, and now, all we have is an archaic archive of arduously written analogies about the most mundane things in the world. We have curtailed sentences and messages that deliver instantly. Since it is a world of information, it is no longer a world of artists but one of businesspeople and journalists who want to be incisive, want to be quick, and who, I do not know why, cannot stop for a second to read a sentence unless it pushes a bottom line.
They say language evolves with usage, but perhaps “evolve” is a word too generous, too forgiving. Language changes with usage. Whether we could call it evolution is a different debate altogether. One that I do not intend on having with another person living in my time, for if they understood my loyalties, there would be no debate, and if there is one in the first place, I must confess that, unlike others, and there sure are many of them, I do not enjoy banging my head on a wall. Perhaps, wit is a flavour of society that is impossible to recover. We have lost it in lieu of speed, whatever good that has brought us. And, of course, excuse my ignorant remark; it has brought a lot of good, and I know it all, and it is but the most wonderful thing that the world is so deeply, so impossibly connected and entangled, and yet, there are still no letters, and that is how it is. We can go forward but still miss what we left behind.