Signatures

Happy birthday, Robert Fripp! The experimental rocker is 67 today, and while you may know some of the details of his life - mainstay of the progressive band King Crimson; creator of many of the sounds on the Windows Vista operating system - I'd argue that perhaps you could surmise others from the buoyant signature on the album above. The raw gallows that forms the initial F; the dynamic, centrifugal energy of the first p: the autograph implies an artist who is comfortable rethinking received forms.

But Fripp's not the only one doling out signatures. Cleo - who isn't quite a birthday girl, but who happily tells strangers about her upcoming June 4 birthday party - spent a solid part of today spinning out variations on her name. Here's one of my favorites:

Favorite? But, you point out, the girl seems to be struggling here: the C is backwards, the O is a maelstrom - and of course the whole word runs right to left. Shouldn't this fragment be recycled, rather than celebrated?

And I respond, in turn, by pointing to one of the great masterpieces of Greek vase painting: to the Francois vase, which feature dozens of mythological heroes, including an image of a struggle between Achilles and Ajax. Have a look, if you will, at the labels:

Right to left, left to right: the coursing of text is merely a convention, and conventions are never - insist the progressive rocker, the ambitious vase painter, and the blithe two-year-old - hard laws. Rather, letters are signs: signs of sounds, certainly, but also signs of the deep creativity and imagination of the hand that renders them.