As It Comes

A new Moleskine is something that gently thrills me, something that gives me a frisson of excitement like nothing else, something that will mean nothing unless you know what one is. A Moleskine is a brand of notebook that comes in various shapes and sizes. They have a long history, you sense it each time you pick one up. At its simplest, it is a beautifully crafted notebook, at it’s most complex it is storage for the rocket fuel of the intellect – ideas.

A Moleskine is a tool for everyone, not just writers and artists. These days you can buy all sorts of specialist Moleskines to record your likes and dislikes, but it still boils down to one thing, a tool to hold information. A place to capture a fleeting thought and give it space to grow.

The best tools are the simplest, they have a simple function which they fulfill simply. Whilst those wonderful multi-tools look very functional, in truth they do very few of the jobs well. A hammer hits. A pen writes. Moleskines hold ideas. It is as simple as that. For me a good tool helps you do the job, it fits your hand and encourages you to use it to it’s best potential. It makes you want to do your finest work. It helps you to sharpen your skills.

A classic Moleskine is well crafted, a thing of beauty. It has weight and substance. The solidity of the cover speaks of quality. It’s heavy creamy pages cry out to be filled. Their richness of feel makes you consider what you will put into it, makes you distill your thoughts and ideas so that only the finest go down on the precious pages. After a while it becomes habit to focus when you open a notebook to write. You know at some visceral level that what you write will have value to you. It matters not if it has value to anyone else.

My most important tools are words, each one supremely fit for purpose. They make the intangible tangible. Each word encapsulates a meaning, when joined together they give form to concepts so that they can be shared, expanded and ultimately acted upon, creating new forms to take us to new places.

Those words need to begin their journey into form somewhere and that place for me is the Moleskine. It is fit for purpose. There is no higher praise in my world than that.

So what is it about a Moleskine that gives me that thrill each time I open one? It is the promise of venturing into uncharted territory, a sense of adventure. Where will the words that are destined to fill the pages take me? It is the joy of using a tool that fits my hand, that makes me feel. It is the place where my battered spirit soars.