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"I have never felt so naked. That's how exposed I felt at the idea that my handwriting was going to be seen by the world," says Tim Brookes, founder of the Endangered Alphabets Project and author of the new book about handwriting By Hand: Can the Art of Writing Be Saved? Writing the book (yes, by hand!) celebrates the act of handwriting, even overcoming the shame arising from his own.
The Allusioverse Gift Guide, a directory of stuff made by members of the Allusioverse - writing, music, art, craft, podcasts, whatever form your creative work takes - is open for contributions. Find out more here; anyone can browse it, but only members of the Allusioverse can be listed, so become one at theallusionist.org/donate, and help fund the show’s continuing existence too. Oh, and you get membership of the Allusioverse Discord community, wherein there are many fans of pens and writing therewith.
EXTRA MATERIALS:
Tim has made Endangered Alphabet games - board and tabletop, plus wordsearches and sudoku.
About Marion Richardson.
See her handwriting materials for learners, Writing and Writing Patterns.
Beachscriber, who makes calligraphy in the sand.
I once did a TED talk about handwriting, which I will never watch back and you can’t make me.
I mentioned that my bathroom wall displays several hand lettering things I’ve done in the past year or so; you can see those at instagram.com/allusionistshow.
There are several Otherlusionists that relate to this one:
In Your Hand, about the business of graphology;
Typo Demon, about Titivillus the demon of the manual equivalent of typos;
The Ballad of Bic and Biro, about two eponymous ballpoint penmakers;
WPM, a performance piece about speed typing champions;
In Character, about the difficulties of getting print technologies to work with/for Chinese writing;
The whole Survival series is about oppression, extinction and revival of languages, and the episodes about First Nation Australian languages and Māori in Aotearoa New Zealand are particularly relevant to what Tim talks about towards the end of the episode.
YOUR RANDOMLY SELECTED WORD FROM THE DICTIONARY:
enfleurage, noun: the extraction of essential oils and perfumes from flowers.
Origin 19th century French, from enfleurer, ‘saturate with the perfume from flowers'.
CREDITS:
Tim Brookes is the author of 22 books; the latest is By Hand: Can the Art of Writing Be Saved? He is the founder of the Endangered Alphabets Project, which you can find out about, and buy some of his carvings, at endangeredalphabets.com - also contact him there if you would like to attend his fortnightly Sunday discussion group to enjoy interesting people talking about interesting things.
This episode was produced by me, Helen Zaltzman, on the unceded ancestral and traditional territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.
Music and editorial assistance were provided by Martin Austwick. Download his songs at palebirdmusic.com and listen to his podcasts Song By Song and Neutrino Watch.
Find the Allusionist at youtube.com/allusionistshow, instagram.com/allusionistshow, facebook.com/allusionistshow, @allusionistshow.bsky.social… Essentially: if I’m there, I’m there as @allusionistshow.
Back in two weeks with a new episode - HZ.
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