The Letters Live channel on YouTube is one of my favourite sources of online content, publishing fabulous letters read by some of the world’s greatest actors. I highly recommend spending some time dipping into them (click here for that).
I may have received a letter worthy of being read out loud by the likes of Benedict Cumberbatch or Olivia Colman although I’ve certainly never written one of that ilk. And yet it’s sad – because we’ve lost something – that letters are these days so seldom used for communication. Via WhatsApp and email we may be exchanging more words, but these bits of dashed-off typed text cannot possibly match the thoughtfulness that goes into composing a handwritten letter that will be one’s sole communication with the recipient until their reply is received. A letter arrives with a sense of occasion, perhaps postmarked in an exotic location, and cannot be read until the envelope has been opened and the sheets of paper unfolded.
By comparison, a text message received on a phone can be read on the screen without even unlocking the device, and may not even include any text, with a thumbs-up emoji doing heavy lifting for a variety of possible words. Even a heart emoji is a poor substitute for expressions of care or, indeed, love.
The Post Office here is pretty much a defunct operation, so the loss of letters is not solely down to technological or cultural changes. In South Africa, ‘posting’ a letter in a dustbin would have the same effect as using a postbox.
I have a stash of letters received nearly 40 years ago, most of them when I was busy with national service, and I can’t bring myself to discard them. Many are from my mother, with a smattering from past girlfriends and female friends. My brother was my sole male correspondent.
The letters, generally, are based on ‘news’, things that were happening in the writers’ lives. Looking back on them, they’re a reminder that things that seem very important while they are happening will soon be forgotten and certainly won’t stand the passage of four decades.
Depending upon the correspondent, letters can also be the repository of the types of musings we may not speak out loud, or if we did, they would not be expressed with the same elegance. In flipping through some of these letters, I’ve come across passages that would be fascinating starting points for present-day conversations, now that the person who wrote them has lived the life they were writing about. This one from Kim makes me particularly curious:
“Endlessly I pursue, and instinctively, I am drawn to the edges of the universe, those places that few dare to go to, and once tasted, a relentless Master. A mixture of dreams, love, passion, bitter emotion, fantasy – a kaleidoscope of image and dance.”
Receiving letters like this was certainly a reason to keep writing!
I wonder how I’d respond to re-reading the letters that I wrote at that time. I suspect there was a certain amount of pomposity and naivete in those letters, which may, to the much older me, be somewhat cringe-inducing. During lockdown, my friend Lloyd uncovered a letter I’d sent him when I was ten years old. This was one letter I was not uncomfortable reading, and I think it says a lot for his generosity of spirit that he kept it for nearly 50 years.
If nothing else, the letters we wrote are a view into who we were at that time. Even if we retrospectively don’t like what we see, what was recorded is more accurate than whatever is recalled from memory.
As to the letters we receive, apart from the sentiments expressed in them, they are physical evidence of the time someone spent thinking about us as they composed them. If that time was an investment, then the letters are the share certificates.