Purchased a fountain pen the other day. I should note here that I almost wrote “purchased my first fountain pen”, but killed it mid-sentence. Trying to watch out for unwitting tendencies towards object fetishization. But can I help it? My predictable taste, the favored scotch & the ideal camera & the correct pen. The correct pen! Come on.

But seriously, this pen is fantastic. It’s durable and it’s cheap, relatively speaking. And even if it wasn’t cheap all is forgiven, your taste is your taste and it’s yours because you can’t help it. If you could help it, it’d be an affectation.

But who’s to say I can’t help my taste in affectations?

This reminds me, somehow, of a conversation with Carl a while back. I had given him a Paolo Conte track.

“What’s he saying?”

I don’t know, I don’t speak Italian.

“How can you listen to it if you don’t know what it means?”

My god, so easily, probably easier still than if I knew the lyrics.

A friend once told me about translating a few Beatles songs into Italian for some Romans he knew. They were horrified. That was what they’d been listening to? With lyrics so terrible?

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