The Founding Correspondence: A Return to Real Letters
Pen Pals: A Writing Tradition
Writing is art, and art is intimacy. Before social media took over, writers discovered each other through ink and patience.
Dear Jack:
“Just finished hamburger sandwich. Pete and Laf on 14th St. helping LeRoi Jones paint new huge apartment. I didn’t mean to sadden you leaving you in taxi alone speeding away uptown. Here’s a poem. You OK? Your book [Lonesome Traveler] is very good, I sat down and read it yesterday at one reading and laughed aloud tickled by sentences lots times, aloud.”
Allen Ginsberg [New York, New York] to Jack Kerouac [n.p., Northport, New York?]
Why This Matters Now
We're drowning in instant communication yet starving for authentic human connection. Every social media platform optimizes for engagement, not understanding. The algorithm feeds you what confirms your biases, what triggers your dopamine, and what keeps you scrolling.
But a letter asks you to slow down. To think before you write. To imagine your reader in their actual life.
In my metacognition piece, I wrote about the coming cognitive wars. This is my resistance.
What Happens When You Become a Founding Member
You’ll receive my Slowly ID, an app that mimics analog letters. Your letter may take some time to arrive, depending on the geographic distance. You can remain anonymous and never reveal your identity throughout the entire correspondence.
What we'll explore together:
The questions you can't ask anyone else
The creative work you're afraid to begin
The transformations you're living through
The writers, poets, and the art that keep you alive
The rhythm: We exchange when the moment demands it, but I guarantee five substantial letters per year.
The boundaries: This is creative correspondence, not therapy, nor a form of sexual harassment. We're exploring ideas, art, and existence together. You write to me as one consciousness to another.
Begin
The best correspondences start with you.
What question burns in you?
Your first letter is waiting to be written. The distance between us is already humming with possibility.
"We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect." — Anaïs Nin