Dear David Rees,
I am approximately a third of the way through your book How To Sharpen Pencils. I am enjoying it.
I picked up How To Sharpen Pencils from a stack of yet-to-be-read books as I left to go to work. Within the span of an hour, I had two separate people with whom I'd assumed I'd burned bridges reach out to me, and I decided I did not want to touch my phone for a while. How To Sharpen Pencils is packed full of information yet still reads very breezily. Your pages are small and full of illustrations and tables, I was able to blow through something like 30 pages on a 40 minute commute. These days, that's a good clip for me.
Allow me to apologize for purchasing a used copy of your book. Perhaps you will take solace in knowing I bought it at a local bookstore at which a friend works. Conversely, you might take issue with hearing that once I got to the title page, I was surprised to find that you had signed it, in 2013, to Eva, "with best wishes & thanks for the beers." I don't know who Eva is, I suppose there's a good chance that because I have her book, she might not especially know who you are. But I would like to believe that there is a chance she does not know this book wound up for sale. If you know this Eva, please send her my way and I will return her book to her.
Towards the end of the first chapter―an illustrated guide to pencil sharpening tools and supplies―a man boarded the subway car and sat next to me. He immediately gestures to the book. "What is that?" I was wearing headphones, but they were plugged into my pocket because I was afraid of my phone. I show him the cover, revealing that the book is titled How To Sharpen Pencils. "Is it serious?" I take my headphones off. Yes, it's serious. It's seriously a book about how to sharpen pencils. But it's also kind of about this disappearing style of niche do-it-yourself literature, and about dedicating your time to learning everything you can about one specific task. "Oh, so it's like philosophy." Okay, sure.
He shows me a book about counterpoint. I don't know from baroque, I don't think he does either. It sounds like he doesn't know much about music in general. "It's about vibrations," he remarks unhelpfully. "Music is the future." I'm quite positive this information dates back to the 1700s. "Yeah, but it's still relevant. Music and yoga." Oh wow, I know even less about yoga than I do about counterpoint. He tells me about activating your pineal gland, and the importance of seclusion. I look back down at the open book a couple times and try to read. He is still talking. "Yoga is great for philosophers like us."
I am reminded of a Brad Neely cartoon in which a man-child named Baby Cakes says he sees wizards everywhere. I suppose if you squint your mind a little, I look like a bonk-bonk wizard, or at least a bonk-bonk philosopher.
Two months ago, multiple strangers interrupted a conversation a friend and I were having, which prompted her to ask me, "do strangers approach you a lot?" I don't think so. I think I just latch onto the times they do because those are unexpected and often memorable. She tells me about a memorable interaction she once had with an interloper on a subway, who said he was motivated to speak to her because of her aura. She thinks that she herself became aware of auras after that moment. I sit politely through what I'm thinking is surprise mystical bullshit, but come out of the conversation figuring that "aura" is as good a term as any for unspoken social cues. I would think that having a conversation―or wearing headphones, or reading a book―might be a good cue that a person might not want to be approached. I suppose that to some aura readers, the content of the aura itself is more important than the wishes of its eminator, you know, in a McLuhanist lightbulb way.
My stop is next, I close your book. "So what do you do?" I teach music to children. "Oh! Music theory?" I guess. The kids are too young to be taught like that, it's just kind of music exposure for their undeveloped brains. I get off the train and say "have a nice day" for some reason and hurry to my transfer. On the Q train, I take a benzodiazepine, even though they've never done anything for me in the past. I am standing across from a middle-aged man who not only has a mustache, but has shaved the rest of his facial hair into a perfect linear extension of the mustache, from one end of his mandible to the other. I’m sure it is comprised of as much beard and sideburn hair as it is mustache. Baby Cakes would've called this an important thing.
I get to work too early and spend an exorbitant amount of money on lunch just to avoid being at work too early. I run my music exposure class without much thinking about theory. On our way home, the drummer and I walk past a music school, where a group of NYC jazz ringers are teaching an improvisation clinic. We watch them through an open window for five or six songs.
I resumed reading How To Sharpen Pencils on the commute back. I am up to chapter 7 now. I have already learned a lot about sharpening pencils, and have applied the knowledge in chapter 4 to sharpen a pencil with a pocket knife (above). It is difficult and satisfying. I am grateful to have such an in-depth reference on the theory behind pencil sharpening. Thank you.
Joe
