Love Letters

A friend told me he recently removed the email app from his phone. “I used to love in the old days, coming home and checking email — there would be new messages!” he rhapsodized. I felt the pang. Not only would there be new messages, but often, in those early days of email, they were actual electronic letters from friends, replete with emotional life updates and unspooling narratives. Before texting, email was an efficient way to communicate, and the way we communicated was in sentences, paragraphs, fully developed thoughts. We hadn’t yet glimpsed the future where “k” or a thumbs-up emoji was considered communication.

I’m always excited when people tell me they’ve deleted an app: another tiny reduction in the amount of time those in my orbit will be spending on their phones. Infinitesimal, perhaps, but moving in the right direction. We’re tinkering with these devices that own our attention, we’re taking back a little bit of control.

But I’m particularly interested in modifications that can bring back some of the magic of pre-smartphone communication, when letter writing wasn’t quaint and voice mails were miracles. I’ve written about my nostalgia for phone booths, recommending we borrow some of the parameters they provided and bring them into this century (say, containing our private conversations to private spaces).

Even if we’re nostalgic for the olden days, it’s hard to reinstitute the old habits. Deleting email from your phone may release you from the compulsion to check it all the time, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to come home to an inbox full of satisfying missives from your friends. Chances are, they’ve been texting you all day, and your inbox is actually full of spam and bills.

In an attempt to reduce my phone’s grip on my life, I once suggested to a friend that each time we wanted to send a text to each other, we send a postcard instead. I think we tried this for a week before admitting that it was an inefficient way to chat. I was aware of the art-project nature of the proposition from the outset and didn’t figure our experiment would replace texting, but I hoped that the postcards would be so delightful we’d at least keep a parallel stream of slow communication going. It didn’t happen.

A few weeks ago, I placed a phone call to a friend without warning, someone I’d never spoken on the phone with before. It felt a little reckless, a little rude, which made me want to do it even more, because it seems ridiculous that calling someone should be in any way controversial. It should feel wonderful that someone wants to hear your voice, that they were thinking of you and wanted to connect.