Music to defecate to must be the final insult to the composer
On this day in letters
Happy birthday to the following letters, all of which were written on the twenty-eighth day of an August gone by.
[I]n the new public toilets at Shepherds Bush they have music which comes on as you enter. Music to defecate to must be the final insult to the composer.
Spike Milligan
Letter to Field Marshal Lord Bramall
28th August 1990
—Spike Milligan: Man of Letters, edited by Norma Farmes
There is something about the coming of fall that makes people conscious of their own insecurity. Just as squirrels step up the pace in the annual nutgathering festival, human beings begin to think a little bit more seriously about the prospects of the winter ahead—and most of them show some sort of reaction. Mine, in this case, is writing a letter home.
This is not to say that I would not have written a letter if the weather down here had remained balmy and summer-like—but only to explain the occasion of this letter and let you know that—even though I haven’t written for some time—I’ve been thinking about you.
Hunter S. Thompson
Letter to his mother
28th August 1957
—The Proud Highway, edited by Douglas Brinkley
One has to have time to live—and to create needs sometimes a great deal of time and sometimes only a flash. But the flash may need a lot of what seems like empty time—Oh dear. I do get muddled over this business of time. It’s one of the most puzzling things one can think about. That we so often measure it by the motions of sun and other heavenly bodies is I think one of the obstacles—intensity of experience has nothing to do with solar measurements.
Nan Shepherd
Letter to Jessie Kesson
28th August 1980
—Nan Shepherd’s Correspdonece, 1920–80, edited by Kerri Andrews
I am pretty sure of one thing [about a Charlotte’s Web film1]: there should be a narrator. This is a story—a story told to children. Children like to hear the words said, and they listen. Certain parts of “Charlotte’s Web” would be lost if there were no narrator—the words are there, but they have to be spoken if they are not to be lost. For example, a camera can show a barn. But a camera can’t come up with the barn as described in the first paragraph of Chapter III. You need the words. Words are also very useful in transition. “The next day was foggy. Everything on the farm was dripping wet. The grass looked like a magic carpet. The asparagus patch looked like a silver forest.” The camera can show all that stuff but it can’t say “the next day.”
E. B. White
Letter to J. G. Gude
28th August 1970
—Letters of E. B. White, edited by Martha White
I went into a shop yesterday and I was surprised at the tomcat smell in the shop—until I realised it was me.
Janet Frame
Letter to William Theophilus Brown
28th August 1970
—Jay to Bee: Janet Frame’s Letters to William Theophilus Brown, edited by Denis Harold
Across the counties, from mean, green, horse-thieving Wales, I raise one Playercoloured aspen hand to salute and supplicate. The last time I saw you, you had just gone from the Prince of Wales, and who am I to blame. The rest of the day was dark, shot with fire, a hummingtop of taxis and glasses, a spinning sight of scowls and leers seen through the wrong end of a telescope made of indiarubber, a rush of close-ups, strange mouths and noses flattening themselves on one’s own in places that seemed to be now a turkish bath, now a lavatory, now a gymnasium for midgets, bar, hothouse, hospital, knockshop, abbatoir, crematorium, revolving cathedral and, at last, a bed only an inch from the ceiling. ’m coming to town again on Thursday, and would love to see you.
Dylan Thomas
Letter to David Tennant
28th August 1945
—Selected Letters of Dylan Thomas, edited by Constantine Fitzgibbon
I will finish this letter and hopefully put it in an envelope and post it to you. It will be taken by airplane from here to London and you will receive it in a few days, perhaps in a week - that time is now, exactly when you are reading this for the first time.
What I would like to suggest with all this nonsense is that you go out (into the street) and buy a fax machine. With this machine you could receive this letter the moment I have finished it. You can keep the copy and send me one back at any time, you can draw, write, collage etc, and we will both have a record, the same one but reversed in positive and negative.
It strikes me as a wonderful new way to communicate. The telephone can be used but we’ve no need to speak, there will be no difficulty in hearing. Please do it. They cost about £1000 but are priceless in what they can do. I write many letters and never post them. I tend to think I’ve communicated when I’ve written it down. People find ten page letters to themselves amongst old newspapers here. With this machine I can deliver them myself.
Don’t let everybody think they are just for “business”, they are new tools that bring the hand back into play in a wonderful way. Handwriting can tell us something again. Please try it, I’m getting mine this week. By the time you read this (that’s now) I should have it.
David Hockney
Letter to Ron Kitaj
28th August 1989
A week ago we heard the terrible news that the only child of my first cousin who is like a sister to me, was killed fighting. Poor boy—22 years old. She, my cousin, is one of those very rare people, now, who is a born mother. And I daren’t think of her,—although of course I do, every moment of the day. If I could hear she had died in the night, I could almost be happy again. But I think it is quite probable she will go mad.
Edith Sitwell
Letter to John Lehmann
28th August 1944
—Edith Sitwell: Selected Letters, edited by John Lehmann
My difficulty is that I am writing to a rhythm and not to a plot.
Virginia Woolf
Letter to Ethel Smyth
28th August 1930
—Letters of Virginia Woolf, edited Nigel Nicolson & Joanne Trautmann
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The Charlotte’s Web animated film, with narration by Rex Allen, arrived three years later. White was not a fan.
Lol what exactly did she mean tomcat smell?
'Music to defecate to must be the final insult to the composer' 😂 Same goes for the concept of the 'toilet book'