About messengers

This was in the late eighties and through the early nineties. It was by far the best job I ever had. It was an exciting, eclectic scene, messengers came from all walks of life and I often thought that, though we served capitalism at its worst, we lived like blood cells, or free radicals both traveling and circumventing the defined paths of the city as they were never intended to be followed. We carried and delivered messages in spite of their potential meaning, reveling in our perceived idiosyncrasy within the system. We competed with each other, we competed with the automobile, we competed with the law, we competed with the fax machine—and we always won, at least, that is how it felt at the end of a long day when we would gather in Dupont Circle to share stories.

Each day was newly defined and lived, one never knew the routes one might follow nor did one know what one might encounter. I saw things I would never forget, moments of sheer beauty (sakura in full bloom in the evening light), horrible accidents (I was hit three times by large moving vehicles), impossible nature that was defied (a winter blizzard that sent most home for the day, save for a few of us), or even, one day on 16th and K Street, coming across the forlorn figure of an elderly man replete with horned rimmed spectacles, hat, standard-issue trench coat, briefcase, and the brown brogues of a K Street lobbyist. I contemplated his posture while track standing, waiting for a moment to dive through traffic, when I stopped cold. I had recognized him. It was Robert McNamara1, architect of the Vietnam War, a man who had sent thousands to their deaths. He did not look like such a man now. He looked lost, lost to the system we defied and he once championed, perhaps weighed down by his conscience? What was he thinking about? Here he was, once a powerful man, some would say a mass murderer, waiting for a signal that would allow him to cross a busy intersection. Waiting, just like anyone would. Was he thinking about the power he once wielded that required no such concession to society or how it functioned, the rules and regulations of the city that we messengers, by contrast, flouted with particular zeal? What was he doing there? I then saw my moment, turning into oncoming traffic and confidently weaving a path going the wrong way, but it was the faster way, the right way, and I left my unintended interlocutor behind.

I had many more such moments, excusing myself to pass through a hushed conversation between Senators Lloyd Bentsen2 and Bill Bradley3 in the Hart Building, naively proud of my mohawk and imagined physical resistance to that culture of suits and ties. I ran from Senator Dan Quayle’s4 office having angered his secretary by refusing to bring back a letter for him the day after he had been announced as a Vice Presidential candidate. Messenger lives were all about efficiency, efficiency of movement, of direction, of propulsion. Knowing how to shave valuable seconds from a drop, like sending the elevator to the top floor while getting out on the third, pressing the down button knowing it would be there as you emerged with a signature seconds later. I was incensed that I had come all the way to the Hill and would have to bring this envelope back to Old State to be x-rayed, and told her as a courier I had the right to know what I was carrying and arrogantly opened the envelope for her to see the simple letter contained within—then looking up saw her punching numbers on the phone and yelling at me, “I am calling security!” Making my way out of the building, I wasn’t so happy with my mohawk then—but she must have thought better because no one stopped me.

Years later, when I had finally gone back to university, I took up the study of philosophy. Returning from those messenger days, I was attracted to larger questions. I was struck one day when a professor, William Cobb, if I remember correctly, remarked how pleasant it was to know the names of things. He meant, it was comforting to know the name of a bird one happened across in the woods, or a tree one might rest against. I was really taken with this idea, the comfort of words, the comfort of knowledge, of knowing where one was, of understanding the world—or at least, understanding one way of describing the world — I had grown up speaking several different languages, and I understood speaking another language also meant having another soul. Professor Cobb was a radical in his own right, alone and sometimes derided by his colleagues, he dared to dismiss the Platonic writings as an accurate carrier of the wisdom of Socrates. He railed against his colleagues, how could they know Plato transcribed everything perfectly? How could they claim to understand, to know, Socrates through the recounted narratives of a student? Looking back, I warm to those memories of his argument, now a professor as well, and I also find myself asking similar questions.

When I finally came to study graphic design many years later, it occurred to me that I had always been engaged with design, long before I knew the terminology or even understood it as a profession. I have always been attracted to questions, not answers. I learned how to ask questions, and took as much delight in this as perhaps stumbling across insight, or, an answer. A word. A definition. A thing. Being a graphic designer is not unlike being a bicycle messenger, we too seek efficiency, and we too long for some recognition of our idiosyncrasy, our individual being in the world. We seek undiscovered paths amidst established and well-trodden byways, we seek to send our voices through messages that are not necessarily our own. This can be a frustrating existence, especially when one is refuted by the pressures of the world, of convention, of precedent, of the same.

It is wonderful to know the names of things, it is a joy to discover language and its limitless capacity for description. But I have learned that it is equally important to welcome surprise, to suddenly find oneself without words. In a world where vast knowledge is literally a fingertip away for some that can afford it, it is more important than ever that one stumble across the unexpected, find things where they shouldn’t be and be amazed by them. Perhaps, more importantly, to be silenced by them.

This is what Oripeau is. It is a moment where one might recognize the medium, the form of the billboard, a familiar stage for some communication, but the work defies that perception and asks one to stop, to contemplate, to be with it in that moment. To be lost. To be inspired, to be confused. To have a question! This is a moment that opens new paths, new roads, new potential in one’s life. This is what Ficciones Typografika was.

Now, we could look further at this word oripeau, and my fingertip can find this Wiki definition quickly. It appears that its roots lie in the old French, oripel, and even older from the Latin, aurea pellis, skin of gold. The older meaning is shining copper blade, the plural, oripeaux, means ragsv. It anagrams into poireau, or leeks. A well chosen word, it seems to me, as many others, it offers more possibility than clear definition, but, I must admit, I do not really care what it means. I am in love with that fact that it simply is.

I have a wooden game I once found in an old book shop in Japan. I have no idea how it should be played, nor do I ever intend to find out. I am in love with this idea and moments like these, they are sometimes to be preserved, to be treasured, for it means a future. Knowledge does not necessarily promise or cement understanding, but questions do open up the world for those who ask. It is better to have questions. It is better to have Oripeau and not knowing what it is, or what it means, or what it carries. Very much like my old messenger friends, these messages run counter to the dogma of their day, they lie outside the restrictions of capital, of capitalism. It is best sometimes to not know, but to live with these things of beauty.

To find them where they don’t belong, to linger for a moment, to then take them with you, unanswered but preserved in memory, an emotion… a question.