Punctuatio en Libertà

Dan Waber, first adventures of col and sem (2007)
(Click to Enlarge)
There is a dance upon its cover—or, simply, a dead stare and a wink; actually, a colon and a semi-colon, bits of punctuation set free to mean, to make, to be. On the floor beneath the two marks, there rests a tumble of punctuation-like marks: percent sign, ampersand, octothorp, equals sign, circumflex, question mark, star, plus sign, at grammalogue—all those signs that are not quite language to us but still essential to the communication in written form. And this is how we are introduced to first adventures of col and sem, a solid but tiny book of punctuation studies by Dan Waber that was released by kite tail press (a “division” of paper kite press) on the first day of this year.

As we move towards the story—across the title page and over the dedication—we discover that Dan identifies himself as col (a colon) and Jennifer (the dedicatee) as sem (a semi-colon). Not literally—which requires letters—but virtually, which requires imagination. In the first of a few adventures, “they meet.” What we notice first is that the punctuation marks on the page are the size they would normally be on the page, not enlarged for viewing. They swim in a sea of white. They live in their regular environment, but outside their expected context.

In the story of the meeting of our two heroes, we begin with col standing beside a pipe (). Printed only on the recto pages for easy viewing and flipping, each panel in this story consists of only two or three punctuation marks. We understand the excitement of col and sem by the presence of exclamation marks, and their wondering by question marks.

In “fishing for a kiss, col shows off,” sem remains essentially unchanged, with her tilde blowing in the wind, and

~; :

eventually becomes

~; •-:-•

and finally ends

~;:

So go the stories, gently, wryly. These are little comic strips of punctuation and flipbooks of flying signs (released by a thumb the pages move the story). And they teach us something about meaning, because the marks make their points both by the meaning they carry (! ?) and the shapes they bear (\ / \). They are the purest of texts, sans words, but plein de meaning.

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Below the Bar

In a Related Vein, an Announcement from Dan Waber

As we wave goodbye to the z of the Geodetic Alphabet by J. Michael Mollohan it's time to wave hello to the a of Rune 10, Rose Window, by Karl Kempton (Runaway Spoon Press, 1999).

New series starting today at:

http://www.logolalia.com/abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz/

Regards,
Dan

Submissions of artworks based around the complete sequence of the
roman alphabet which can be presented a letter at a time over the
course of 26 days are invited.

ecr. l’inf.