Despite concerns around privacy and data security and the NSA, we remain curiosity about the content of other people's emails. Email has become the cultural touchstone that letter writing once was, and although snooping through other peoples' sent emails is frowned upon, it can be illuminating.
When biographers write about the greats of today, they won't be reading their handwritten correspondences but emails that others have received from them. Whether they're serious or romantic in tone, friendly or businesslike in purpose, emails can contain wisdom.
Now performance artist, actress, filmmaker and writer Miranda July has launched a project called We Think Alone. On May 31, sign-up opened for a weekly newsletter that arrives on Mondays for 20 consecutive weeks. Each newsletter contains emails from 10 creatives, centered around a weekly theme. The first We Think Alone newsletter appeared in subscribers' inboxes on July 1 and focused on the topic of money. A week later, on July 8, a newsletter sharing emails about advice arrived.
The project's contributors are Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Lena Dunham, Kirsten Dunst, Sheila Heti, Etgar Keret, Kate and Laura Mulleavy, Catherine Opie, Lee Smolin and Danh Vo. These individuals come from a range of creative fields, and many of them wear multiple hats. Their emails, though not originally intended for a wide audience's consumption, are sweet (e.g., an email from Abdul-Jabbar to a young fan who aspires to basketball greatness), funny (the Mulleavys' "advice" email contains only the text "whiskey sours!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!") and deeply personal (Heti's email offering advice to a friend about a significant other).
We reached out to the Mulleavys — the founding sisters of Rodarte — via email, and they shared some insight on their relationship with July:
We met Miranda when we first started designing and have been friends ever since. We are great admirers of her creativity and her diverse body of work. Miranda is an incredible artist who reexamines everyday experiences by interpreting and transforming their context; through her lens one gains insight into the complex human experience and spirit.
How did July become so interested in email as a medium? It all started when Heti interviewed her about a movie she'd directed, The Future, for Bad Day Magazine. Heti felt deeply inspired by July, more so than she ever had during an interview, and asked if they could have conversations on a regular basis. Though skeptical at first, July agreed to weekly phone conversations and emails with Heti, and what began as a professional relationship transformed into best friendship.
While emailing with Heti, a Canadian writer currently working on her seventh book, July began to reconsider the limits of email. On the We Think Alone website, July writes that "none of us use it exactly the same way we did ten years ago," suggesting perhaps that email has become more intimate and deliberate as handwritten letters have become more obsolete.
In that way, We Think Alone serves as a space for people to reconsider the apparent impermanence of emails. While we may never revisit a digital letter after clicking "send," it's not as though the words themselves have disappeared. In some ways, their imprints are longer-lasting than paper letters could ever be.
We Think Alone taps into our cultural curiosities about private conversations, humanizes high-achieving individuals by sharing their personal, online dialogues with us — some banal, others inspiring — and, at its core, raises email to the level of art.
Mashable composite: Images via iStockphoto, JoKMedia; Gustavo da Cunha Pimenta/Flickr
JoKMedia photographer = a creep...
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