_{FSSBA-0001 : 2022.06.27 : The Way of The Pen}

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FSSBA-0001 : 2022.06.27

The Way of The Pen

If you’ve arrived to this page, I’m delighted that you’ve found my blog’s first post!

Hello.

I’m Faizal Somadi. Thank you for visiting. And yes, welcome to my first, first, first post.

Honestly, I do not know how and where to start. There are so much things to talk and share about. This is not my first time blogging, but I’ve detached from my past websites and moved on to a different path.

I used to write a lot since young. But in the recent years, my writing declined because I was filled with more calligraphy practices and works. My collection of journals decreased. My habit of writing seemed to fade. So I thought.

But I realised it didn’t. I checked my devices, and there are pages and pages of notes, writings and jots of ideas on many apps. Mostly, in the phone. Noticing around me, I found study journals scattered here and there, by which, wasn’t my habit in the past because I used to record everything in a single journal. Still, those inks continue moving on paper.

In my earlier years, all I had was a computer, in the office or at home. In my bag: a personal journal, a pencil case, a pocket notebook, a magazine, and few other essentials wherever I go. Those were the times of my two favourite cellphones: Nokia 7110 and Nokia E51. Well, a phone was just a phone. And nothing more than 160 characters in an SMS. I had journals of all odd sizes and quality. I love calligraphy pens, fountain pens, felt pens, technical pens and hand-carved pencils. Part of the family, I enjoyed clicking away my FM2. Then, the world of touch-screen arrived. Well.

Allow me to share some memories.

Like any little kid, I had plenty of toys, which most of them ended up broken due to my impulsive curiosities. Otherwise it’s just me being easily bored. But the pen, was the most durable and long lasting comforting loyal toy. A ballpoint pen keeps me entertained, doodling my favourite TV heroes on grandma’s phone books. I don’t know why phone books. And yes, on those poor Ladybird books too. Maybe, if I write or draw something there, I could get connected with someone! My TV heroes? Well, I was only 3.

But I wanted to do what grandpa did all the time. I followed him everywhere, and on most afternoon tea time, he would quietly write in his diary about his movement and thoughts of the day. There were dates, time, activities, notes and opinions. So, I just wanted to do exactly what he did. I couldn’t be like him, but I certainly could write. Even though I didn’t know what to write, but I could copy texts! Yes, a kid with an absurd hobby of copying textbooks that he couldn’t understand. Literally copying pages after pages in exercise books. Now those textbooks are not for 8 year olds, but who cares. The most exciting part was: I felt like an adult. So that was how it “felt” to be an adult? From that moment, every end year, I looked forward to my father’s stack of free office diaries. And my life began to evolve on writing everything like a recorder.

My first calligraphy lesson was taught by my maths teacher when I was 10. Basic Bookhand and Italic scripts. I thought it was easy so I didn’t pay much attention, because I thought my ballpoint pen writing was good enough. So one day I got enrolled to a private maths tuition class. My homework was good, my maths was good, and my workings was clear and good. On the third week, a new boy joined the class. He was quiet, skinny, scruffy, always in untidy singlet.

One day I accidentally peeked into his exercise book. My eyes spun in shock. Gosh. Bookhand-cursive handwritings!! It was uniform, consistent and orderly. His maths workings were like infographics. Every page feels like prints from the letterpress machine. Who on earth is this scruffy chap??

From that moment, I took two things seriously. Calligraphy and maths. Because of that nobody-neighbourhood-boy, I worked harder. I got addicted to maths because I love to draw beautiful working diagrams, and unexpectedly eased my path to be teachers’ assistant for their writing administrations. How could I not love it when I got “authorised” excuses from other boring school duties. That scruffy boy, I will remember him. God bless.

Secondary school days were purely naughty years. I wasn’t that satisfied with what I’m learning because my calligraphy examination works became school’s property. Maybe I performed well but probably I didn’t feel appreciated. I did got excited in the process of creation, but I just got so bored with the results. So I took up tougher papers: wood carving and logo design. On top of that, design and technology papers. My wood carving exam piece was submitted for national youth competition, again it ended up as school’s property. Who knows who won. If the school’s the one submitted, only the school wins. Not me. Heck.

I got accepted into school of design. Fairly easy. But to keep up and maintain, the load of work felt worse than military training. About 9 deadlines and 3 projects per week. Shuttle running, back to back, all the time. Presentations and presentations after presentations. Calligraphy? It’s just 10% of the subjects. But 80% impact. Typography vs hand letterings. Fonts vs scripts. Those lecturers, they prepared beautiful notes all the time. Be it writing on the board, to scrutinising mistakes in my sketches, to handwritten handouts, or even type-generated notes, every single delivery, is highly customised first class presentation. Including criticisms.

Our information design teacher, instantly drew fonts and logos like plucking ideas from thin air, into a ready-for-official-use quality. We were expected to do the same. Our design journaling teacher kept pressuring for sketches with descriptive details over details of observations. Endless written arguments exchanged through our handwritten journal submissions. How did he find time to argue with 70-over students?? Our advertising teacher, keeps hammering our logic and grammar in copywriting lessons. Crosses and strikes all over our headings and copies, along with first-grade sarcasms right in the face. And our pottery design teacher will have his bold sketches and hand-calligraphed notes, made with heart-piercing remarks to put our design senses in the right place. Folios flew out to the corridors, literally. Welcome to a joyous school of embarrassments. School of design is where you’ll get skinned alive.

Clean and confident sketches. Clean and confident writings. Our simplest doodle on a coffee-stained serviette, must deliver a clear presentation, as well as representing a substantial point of reference. Basics. No such thing as stylus and touch-screen tablets or devices. We stood proud with our Copic, Prisma and Pantone markers. And Pilot pens.

Moving on to the army was fun. For a period of time life got frozen with freedom and I explored new things. I probably had my mind and body too stretched out, which leads me to an injury putting me in a stationary. After getting bored of studying advertising books, that’s when I got my calligraphy going.

After the army, I pursued the opportunity to explore more. Things just move with the flow. I got my poems published in the papers. I trained and worked on hand-building pots, from clay to high-fired stoneware. I received drills in harmonised acrobatic movement in martial trainings. I learned and broke down contexts in religious tutelage. Only then, I discovered some sense of purpose. What I want to do is not what I can do. But what I can do, can give me all that I want to do.

Not knowing where I’m heading, I moved towards things that would comfort my heart. I studied and drilled on basic Latin calligraphy for years. Trajan, Celtic, Gothic and Bookhand scripts. And I picked up Arabic calligraphy: khat, with my secondary school teacher. I applied calligraphy skills into pottery, martial movements, religious interpretations as well as design works. The pen, ink and paper, became powerful friends of the mind, and comforting friends of the heart. All I began to see: the flow of clay into forms, the flow of human body into spaces, the flow of words into songs, the flow of light into visions, the flow of codes in computers, the flow of roots in the soil, and the flow of scripts into beliefs. Everything flows.

And the flow of ink on paper.

I felt, I am the pen.

Am I?

15 years moving on, it’s not about what I want to do. It is what I need to do. First and always: to be responsible and accountable on the things I could do.

So there. Some memoirs of my beginnings.

How long and how far did it took me to trace my sense of being? I calculated my desires against my dreams, and all is there is just, the pen. Even without the pen, I will continue writing in my mind. Any of my senses could become the pen, and create records in my mind. It is an entity, that connects me with myself. It allows me to live within myself. The way of the mind.

In that phase of life, certainly it has reach a certain end point. And of course, it has arrived to a new beginning. With such realisation, I believe new waves of difficulties will keep growing along. Does one really think that one point of achievement leads to anything easier? Well, the only easy thing was yesterday. There will be ripples of responsibilities growing, even after the day you disappear. Easy or difficult is not a choice, is not a definition. It’s just a path to a destination. To what point it will arrive, I do not know. So wherever the dot goes, I must follow.

So the pen breathes out ink. And the ink molecules created new worlds on to the paper. As dictated by the creator.

This is the way of the pen.

To write what I’ve observed. To read what I’ve written. To take actions on what I’ve learned. And to take reflections on my actions.

A world where the mind creates worlds.

Thank you for reading.

Let’s continue another time. :)



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Faizal Somadi/2022/Jun/27