It's always a treat receiving a letter from my dear friend Currado Malaspina. The epistolary tradition is a withering flame, a weak fragile rump from a faded past whose futile inefficiencies are ill suited to our hyper-utilitarian age. The illuminated missive is a rarer bird still and I credit Currado's stubborn persistence in maintaining this form of expression. For this alone I look forward to his every note.
His awkward drawings with their unembarrassed intimacies are nothing but refined, visual versions of the boastful bombasts one finds among contemporary rappers. Typically, his renderings depict some unlikely sexual conquest by some self-satisfied protagonist whose appetites range from the illicit to the bizarre.
The letters themselves are usually full of rich gleeful anecdotes, bitter ruminations and detailed analyses of the French medical establishment as seen through the prism of his own unfortunate ailments.
I recently received a long note written on what looked like the kind of paper placemat one finds in Greek diners in Jersey. The paper had that faint wavy tooth running evenly throughout - the kind of surface that vainly attempts to grant some small degree of gravitas to the cheeseburger, the iceberg lettuce/lone tomato salad and the bottomless cup of coffee. (I even think there was a small gravy stain blotting the corner, but that could have been watercolor).
The letter contained a manifesto of sorts. It was a rambling exhortation defending the resurgent use of the Mesmer baquet in certain remote convents in Brittany. He claims that it has cured him of gout and that it alone restored his esophageal motility. (Perhaps the placemat had some talismanic significance).
I believe my good friend has lost his mind which is very bad news for him but great news for us!
I love these strange new screeds.
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