The Typographic Mind [514]

Greetings from the shed...

I’m Christian Payne, photographer and writer. In the photo above I’m resting between packing the shed into boxes and wondering if the Fujifilm XPro-3 will stay balanced on the empty bottle of Glencadam 18yr old.

Thanks for opening this email (or clicking the link). Hang in there and you’ll certainly find something interesting.

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#TheAction

World book day had me ruminating over my Gladstone’s library experience. It was a little overwhelming and at the time I thought my reading muscle was broken. I struggled to do much outside of dip into something and then shelve it to look elsewhere. It felt like I was treating the library like the internet. I missed what I remember as a full immersive reading experience.

It might have been that I felt like an excited kid flitting from one shelf to the next, but when I really wanted to focus deeply on something, I couldn’t.

So when I got home I read. And when I got distracted I removed the distraction from the room or I moved myself elsewhere. After about thirty minutes repeating this process, I felt like I’d cracked it. The muscle had been flexed and I was on a roll.

Obviously it was the [insert nagging digital device here] that caused the most distraction and as much as I enjoy these connections to people and things, I don’t need it 24/7. So remembering it’s ok to turn off all notifications has helped greatly.

I also found great pleasure in bypassing the algorithms in order to seek deeper, more meaningful connections. In regards to the shallow 'information gleaned' aspect, stepping back has meant I can focus on quality over quantity. This gives me more time for genuine social interactions, with less doom scroll/echo chamber related mental fatigue.

I'm now starting to see feed based online interactions far less rewarding as the richer experiences possible in other places. Thankfully there is still a lot to be said for conferences, festivals, pubs, clubs, cafes and creative spaces. As well as those random chats in a coffee shop and chance encounters on a dog walk.

I find all these places facilitate deeper connections and a more fulfilling social experience. Then thanks to my nerdy interest in radio, there is also a vast portal of possibility to have an audio chat with friends and strangers the world over. No algorithms to get in the way.

But all is not lost online. Audio messaging, emails and P2P newsletter interactions are still my favourite way of interacting on the social web.

We can even have a conversation in the comments if you like :-)

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#ThePictures

Why can’t we focus?

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How to take photos on Android without all the post processing fakery.

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#TheWords

As I mentioned above, this week I’ve made a concerted effort to read for longer periods of time. I started easy with 'Danny, the Champion of the World'. It only took a couple of sittings and I throughly enjoyed it. I can't believe this book passed me by as a kid.

It was recommended to me by a friend while we sat round the fireplace in Gladstone's library. He assured me it’s a book you can read at any age. He was right.

The book celebrates the magic of an adventurous childhood and the bond between father and son. There's also a healthy dose of sticking-it-to-the-man.

After that I read Gratitude by Oliver Sacks, ‘the Poet laureate of medicine’. A very different book where he confronts his impending death with a clarity and acceptance we can only hope to acquire when our own time comes.

It's a lovely reflection filled with appreciation for the large and small things in life. But right up to the end... there is also hope.

Right now I’m reading a book that has been around longer than me. It has followed me through the years with the first bookshelf I ever explored. Both book and shelf now reside in my shed. It’s called ‘Speed’ and is written by William Burroughs Jnr. Son of Willian S. Burroughs.

As a child the cover freaked me out. It was my mother’s book, and I when I asked her to read it to me, she told me it was horror and i’d have to wait.

As it’s now five decades later, I figured I’m probably old enough. I’m part way in and it’s an autobiographical novel about Burroughs Jnr. A kid who watched his famous dad accidentally kill his mother with a shot to the head at a party.

In the book he’s a young man consumed with addiction in the relentless pursuit of pleasure. It's both visceral and poetic and doesn't pull any punches with its vivid imagery of substance abuse and the darker side of the human condition.

As morbid as it is, I’m finding it a fascinating stream-of-consciousness page turner, with moments of beauty and realisation when the trip moves from the squalor of an urban environment into nature.

“There’s a certain tear-jerking way that some people can go slowly wide-eyed before any entertainment. I watch them at movies and in shows sometimes, and if the action is good, their shoulders will slope and they turn right into open-mouthed children. Some of them are so old you wouldn’t think anything could get through to them, but the sight of one of them seen from a few feet behind, catching the glow from stage or screen lights, hits me as a miracle every time.”

― William S. Burroughs Jr

Other books in my to-read list…. The Handmaid’s Tale, The Argonauts, and Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America

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#TheSound

A deliberately slow milk float adventure from my friend

Dan Kieran

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The Sideways podcast discusses Tempting Fate and a woman pushing her limits to determine her fate.

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You may already have seen this alternative version of the US national anthem but if not it’s still perfect for our time.

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And speaking of alternative national anthems… I recorded this on the 11th of June 2007 and I have no idea where, with who or why.

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#TheConsumed

My friend Adrian asked me if I’d grind a bag of coffee his wife was gifted.

It’s from the Japanese chain Miyakoshiya and is a French blend which would normally be brewed with the Flannel or ‘nel’ drip method. This is a much darker roast than I would go for personally. Pouring half a mug via my V60 dripper with top up of hot water made for a decent drink more to my taste.

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#TheBody

Perhaps not that surprising, but reading books is good for you. Check out the benefits of reading for self care and how reading books may add years to your life.

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#TheThings

If you move around a lot, then this is the book case for you.

There is this expandable one. Like a bookworm’s trophy cabinet that can continue to accommodate.

Or perhaps you would like to make your own folding bookshelf…

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I can’t wait to see all the nefarious uses that this vehicle deployed drone will be tasked with.

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#TheThanks

Massive thanks to the paying subscribers who continue to support this dispatch and the adventures/experiments that make it. You know who you are. ♥️

Photographer Gordon Tant is the latest to renew a supporting subscription. You can check out his work here. Thank you my friend.

If you value these words, ideas and curation, please consider an upgrade to paid…

Or if you prefer a random hat tip you can do that via PayPal

Either way… Thank you for reading, sharing, liking and supporting a human doing manual work with their brain.

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#TheWeb

• Visualising all books of the world in ISBN-Space

• Top font trends of 2025

• Where are you reading this? Want to log the location on the Documentally community map. If it feels to complicated I’m happy to do it for you. :-)

• Wetware is here… The world's first 'Synthetic Biological Intelligence' runs on living human cells …and for a moment there, my own brain flashed forward a few years to a cabin in the woods where I’m sat by a fire reading books and ignoring all of this.

• Apple takes UK government to court over ‘Backdoor’ order.

• Some of my other places include Letterboxd for film logging, Discogs for my physical music collection, Strava for documenting rare exercise, Untappd for new beers I might sample, my audio RSS feed stores recordings, Swarm where I log the occasional place, Vivino for questionable wine reviews, LinkedIn for doing something, a ham radio newsletter or search ‘Documentally’ on Wire, Birdsite, Bluesky or Zello to stay in touch. Supporting subscribers also get access to a Discord server. 👍🏽

• Gutted that the Athena craft fell over on landing. What a waste.

• The dilution of authenticity in the movie industry.

• How D&D helped siblings get over the death of a parent.

• The ebook The Old Ways by Robert Macfarlane is only 99p today

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#TheEnd

This has been fun. I hope you managed to explore some of the links and read more deeply. Leave a comment if you have a question, statement, or just fancy a chat.

Don’t forget it’s International Women’s Day tomorrow.

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“Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.” ― Anna Quindlen

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Read.

See you out there.

Over…

A ❤️ is a high-five, a comment is a hug. A supporting subscription earns my undying love.