Scattered Scraps and Paper Paths

Assemblage has been my theme this past week. Through sheer willpower the timeliness of my laptop locking down for a system update, I managed to lose myself in the cutting and pasting delights of collage.

As I covered my fingers in glue carefully selected my collage bits, I also reflected on how much of my writing/research seem like assemblages. My scholarly projects have danced through theories (and practices) of collage and assemblage — yet it’s genuinely the way I think and work, too. The materials I work with include my own writing, literature, images, audio media, and margin notes.

Assemblage is related to collage, but a bit of a different beast. I’ve written about this in a practitioner essay (find it here) and it’s a way to see the ideas and connections find their way to the spaces between others. Parts connect and break away as we sort through them.

I scribble these ideas and connections on scraps of paper that end up everywhere. Recycle! Reuse! These paper scraps appear suddenly in at least four different rooms of our house, in my backpack, and sadly even in the car (passenger side, of course). If I’m walking and something pops into my head, voice-to-text app on my phone is an easy win, even though I will forget to actually save the text for later.

There was a time when I wrote everything in a journal or sketchbook, and I’m slowly nudging myself back to that practice. A recent study popped up in my news feed about the benefits of handwriting. None of this is surprising, but its so easy to drift away from handwriting notes on proper paper pages (try saying that ten times…)

In fact, for years I was a dedicated fan of basic steno pads. Nothing fancy. In fact, the more ordinary the notebook, the more I used it. Some time ago, a friend gave me a beautiful blank book to write in. It remains beautifully empty. Maybe the things I wanted to write about simply wouldn’t fit, or be good enough, for those pages. There’s a sense of permanence when putting a pen to proper paper pages.

In an effort to get back to practicing proper paper pages, I take into account the following with my writing journal and treat it like an assemblage itself:

• Portability: it is with me at home, on campus, and in coffee shops, and these things influence what goes into it.
• Just glue it: my scrappy paper notes get pasted to the pages before getting lost in the kitchen or squished underneath cushions (oh my goodness: practicing proper paper pasted pages).
• Easy storage: it is my brain’s external hard drive and I can flip through at any speed, adding content whenever I want to.

Because of this week’s collage meanderings, I have tiny bits of paper all over my desk and some are sticking to my forearms as I type this. It’s a good reminder of the visual/mental pathways made possible by juxtapositions of paper, scissors, and glue.

Because, practicing proper paper pasted pages prevails. Period. (Okay, okay, I’ll stop).