Flyleaves Are My Flygirls: Making Rotting Paper Dance

New paper has little personality. There’s something uninteresting about a pristine piece of paper. It’s like a face without any discernible scars. There’s no life to a brand-new piece of paper. No story. No history.

Ever since I started making collages in a pop-Schwitters style (just thought of that, seems on point) I’ve looked out for old pieces of paper. When everyone has access to the same materials the creations end up looking similar. I’m not a collage maker that does intricate cuts or peculiar shapes; I mostly work with rectangles or squares where all the images touch one another. For me, making collages like this, with new and vibrant paper, the senses get overloaded. Too many new colors make the collage look like a high school project. You know, one of those ice breaker activities meant to introduce someone’s animated personality. Look, over there is Kelly Kopawski and beside her is an image of my favorite chip, Pizzarias.

Over time I’ve focused on flyleaves. Flyleaves (also called front-free-endpages) are the blank pages of a book that normally come directly before a title page. I find my flyleaves in the giant free bins at my local bookstore. I go there every week and tear out the flyleaves, as many as I possibly can. Sometimes you get two or three “blank” pages with every book since they’re at the start and at the end. I take the pages I want and toss the rest of the book back into the bin. Catch and release. Since I’m not really looking for content, it doesn’t matter what the focus of the book is. I simply dig around for books that look old. The condition is unimportant too. Because I’m looking for discarded trash, I can leave the bookstore with twenty or more pages that’s eventually going to end up in a landfill or a hoarder’s paradise if I don’t take them. Flyleaves from long forgotten 19^th century novels, weird encyclopedias, and hate-filled religious texts end up walking out the doors with me.

Time is what makes these pages unique.

There’s something beautiful about a book that has been in a poorly ventilated basement for fifty years, a book riddled with water damage, a book that held up the end of a cheap couch since Eisenhower was in office. The pages have dents and ruts and rot and mold. Art supply stores seem leery of mold and rot and that weird smell that old books get. If it doesn’t smell, I don’t want it. They always smell. My car smells. If the good people at Jovan Musk started making a fragrance called bibliosmia, I’d buy it.

Although almost all these pages start out white, time changes them in unique ways. Some paper is thicker than others which causes unique changes compared to very thin, newspaper-like papers. Things yellow in different ways and at different intervals. Texture is important. Paper from books printed in other countries will have a different feeling than from cheap books published in the US. There are bumps in paper and cuts. Whenever I finish a collage, I go over it with sandpaper. Doing this brings the composition together. All that paper mixed and cut and reassembled, some from a book published in 1897, some from Soviet-era guidebook, and some from cheap pulp novels, react in contrast to one another. The paper is essentially the same color, but on closer inspection there are tiny inconsistencies that come out. If you’re willing to look closely, you can see how all of it clashes into a new thing.

Can you smell it?

I’ve broken the most common types of flyleaves into four different categories. I did this for you.

Blank

The most common type of flyleaves are the blank ones. These are the ones that people have not really touched. They have the least personality but make up the bulk of the pages I rip from books. Although blank, that does not mean the paper hasn’t picked up a lot of “personality” from the time it was first printed. Oxidation is key. 

  

Distressed

This one is my favorite. Distressed flyleaves are truly the most idiosyncratic of them all. Look at this page, right here, there’s a long strip of yellowing on the right side. This takes time, decades and with little interference from other people. You can’t buy this piece of paper new. Dead center, both at the bottom and at the top, you can see where a piece of tape has corroded the page. Paper clips are also common, so are pieces of cut-out bits that have been stuck inside as a bookmark. When the piece of paper sits in there for decades, it makes a permanent impression on the paper. 

 

Scribbles

Scribbles are most found in textbooks or books that kids like to mess around with. Kids draw in books, they make notes, and so often they practice writing their names. There are more than a few textbooks I’ve found filled with long lists of a child’s name slightly different from the example above. It’s like they’re practicing signing autographs at an awards show. Scribbles done in pencil always look the best. Over time the marks smudge, and move, giving the handwriting a ghostly quality. 

 

Library

Although libraries purport to care the most about books, you can always tell a library book from a non-library book. Libraries like dropping in fun little stickers with the name of the library or the type of book, or those ugly barcodes. Often these books are discarded and sold at library sales, a major source of my joy. I always pull out any page that has the word “DISCARD” on it. Sometimes this is written and sometimes it’s rubberstamped. Sometimes you get “WITHDRAWN”, but I don’t like that word as much, too long. None of these marks matter when compared to best of library defacement, the “DUE BACK” stamp. Nothing is more beautiful than this. I can look at these all day long, whether they’re lovingly rendered in a straight line or presented sloppily like they are here. Whenever I get a beautiful due back page, I always look at the dates to see how loved the book was. This one was loved. 

 

Find, rip, cut, reassemble, mail.

The Year in Postage

There are two things constant with mail-art, you’re required to worship Ray Johnson, and you’re expected to comment on postage prices. The first I’m not so great and heeding, but the second I find myself doing more and more. Ten years ago, I complained about postage prices. Fifteen years ago, I complained about postage prices. Now, I’m complaining about postage prices! Just last week, when I left the post office, I looked at my total and winced. It was too much. I need to get rid of the things I make and since no one wants them, I have to mail them to unsuspecting victims. The higher postage goes the more crap I have in my house. 

 

No one talks about the rather genius decision for the “forever stamp.” I think it’s genius, I guess. Whoever came up with the Allen Toussaint stamp this year, thank you. He’s a hero of mine and I’ve bought this stamp over and over again. Anyway, having one consistent value while preparing envelopes makes it easier on senders, even if that isn’t as visually pleasing as having a whole envelope full of random stamps. It takes the math out of sending mail. It might have killed the overall usage of the one cent, five cent, and ten sent stamps, but move quicker through putting things together. As much as I love anything that takes math out of the equation, I love more than that they moved to stickers. Come on, what a no-brainer. I have no romantic associate with licking stamps. If they have flavored them, I might be more interested in licking them, but they never added grape, or bubble gum to the mix.

A quick google shows that in 2014 a stamp was $0.49. That seems low, very low. I’m sure it was very high, super high, to the people of 2014. Of course, I was making and sending mail art during that time, so I was for sure complaining about the prices. Stuff like, “If these prices get any higher, I’m going to significantly limit what I mail!” I’m sure I said it with anger, thunderous anger.

Just a little comparison. In the EU, a stamp costs between 1 euro and 1.9 euro. (I’m not looking for the euro symbol on my keyboard) Domestic EU rates change from country to country, and from which country you’re sending it to. Currently, a $0.78 cent domestic stamp in the US, would be .67 euro. In other words, US stamps are cheaper than those in Europe, if you’re sending them in-country. In Japan, it costs 110 to send a domestic letter, or 0.70 cents. It is a bit cheaper there, but not by much. In other words, we shouldn’t complain as much as we do. I mean we’re going to complain, but we should do it proportionately. This is too much math.

The US price of international shipping of packages is ridiculous. Cheeto Hitler did a number on those rates months ago as we inch closer to dismantling the postal system altogether. I’m sure Amazon will be running it before he drools into oblivion. When you buy a presidency, you have to get something in return, that’s just business. Unfortunately, sending anything internationally that isn’t completely flat, completely paper, is off limits. When I first started sending things, it was a luxury to mail something of strange proportions out of the country, but it wasn’t completely off limits.

So…how much am I helping to keep the USPS afloat? A quick search of my finances, and it seems like a lot, especially for a hobby. While I occasionally send them to friends and sometimes sell things online, the overwhelming amount I spend is on postage. It’s on stamps and metered mail envelopes filled with my shenanigans. 

 

I mostly go to one post office in Lexington N.C., and before I go and see my mom on Wednesdays. In a pinch I’ll go to the post office in downtown Winston-Salem, on in Mocksville if I’m teaching over there. I go to the Lexington branch because it’s convenient and people tend to know me. This is important because it’s harder for them to get a few extra pennies out of you, something that can easily be done if you’re not paying attention. Unfortunately, the lady I liked the most, has retired. She had a sense of humor and would ask about the stickers and stamps on the front of envelopes. The newer folks have little personality. The lady in charge seems to be not only working there, but existing in the world. Another lady cheated me out of a couple of dollars this past summer and wouldn’t fess up to it. If she hadn’t brought up the issue with her boss, the dead inside lady, I would have never ratted her out. It was fine. I like the younger guy with the braids; he has a bounce.

I spent roughly $1434.24 on postage in 2025.

Maybe I should complain more.

That’s 1838.76 stamps.

That’s about $119.52 every month. That’s about $29.88 every week.

I could probably buy a used Kia for that sort of money. If I were inclined and assumed that this would be the typical amount every year, for about ten years, I could buy a decent used Kia.

Although I’ve made jokes that I’m looking for a mid-life crisis, this one might be it. No getting into motorcycles or extreme mountain climbing, just postage. Just a consistent movement of paper around the world to mark that one day I will die. While sending off mail might be dangerous in some places, (part of the appeal of such a crisis) where I normally go, things are pretty quiet. I’ve heard some arguments in that building, but nothing that I would consider life threatening. The lady that’s dead inside is well…dead inside, but the guy with the braids is always cool.

 

 

 

 

Tim zerknittert alte Post / Tim Collapsing Old Mail

Being where I live, I don’t meet a lot of mail-artists. I’ve met a few in such places like Thomasville North Carolina (Richard C.) and the Temple of Apollo in Greece (Katerina N.). Things seem to happen socially in the mail-art world, but they always happen over there. The kids like to gather in NYC or Chicago, places that are hard for me to get to. I’ll get to one of these meetups at some time, but I haven’t yet. I text pretty frequently with a couple mail-artists, which feels slightly more personal than sending weird things to them, but not by much. In some ways, I feel like I send from a far-off planet, an outpost. Not exactly a land connected to a larger artistic community.

One meet-up randomly happened at a Stereolab show at the legendary Cat’s Cradle in Chapel Hill North Carolina. I was a little sick that day, hanging out at Weaver Street Café listening to Lætitia Sadier talk on the phone. She was a few tables over from me and talking loudly. It sounded like the tour wasn’t going well. Thankfully she was speaking in English. After finishing my coffee, I went down Franklin Street to the club. I made it through the opener and then most of Stereolab before I decided to move towards the back. I felt like I might need to leave quickly.

While I made my way through the crowd, someone stopped me. I had no idea who they were, but they knew my name. At first, I thought this was my assassin sent to kill me. Maybe from the future, maybe from our time. After a few quick words, I learned it was Tim Collapse…from mail. He recognized me because of all the silly stuff I send with my face on it. If he had done the same, I might not have worried about a potentially assassination attempt. Although I was happy to meet him, it wasn’t the place to have a proper hang. Nothing worse than yelling in a loud club followed by screaming, “What!” over and over. It was a quick meeting and then I made my way to the back of the club. Over the next couple of years, I continued to send mail to Tim, even picking up his phone number along the way.

Out of the blue he sent me a card asking if I wanted some of his mail. Yes! A little while later he followed up with some texts. “It {the collection} does contain a few Richard Canard pieces.” / “It’s around 4-5 medium sized priority boxes.” / Do you ever get to Reconsidered Goods in Greensboro? That might be a good meet-up spot, so you haven’t got to drive so far.” Reconsidered Goods it was. We organized a date to meet, and I drove directly there from class. 

Tim. 

 

Tim and I talked a little bit before loading the six or seven boxes into the back of my car. Although he mentioned that it was a lot of mail, I began thinking about what I had stacked at home. When he said this, a slight tinge of anxiety ran through me. I have more stuff, more paper, and more weirdo garbage than I would ever be able to work with, and now I’m taking on more.

Tim talked about his kids and showed me pictures of his daughter’s drawings. We went over stuff about music (Einstürzende Neubauten being one, thus the title of this piece) and a few mail-artists that we’ve both sent to for years, one of which has been a problem in the network for decades. He told me about his job and the weird and surprising sprawl of Mebane North Carolina. Of everything he said to me, he said, “I only keep the materials I’m working on…except for glue and what not. I’ll buy stuff, make something, and give the remaining materials away.” It was the most impressive thing I’d ever heard before. How is that possible? How can you not hoard tons of 19^th century paper?

 

The two of us wandered around the creative reuse store looking for materials. I found the usual paper for broadsides and some mailing supplies, while he focused on the ephemera section. While I was digging through things alongside him, I had a strange flashback when the UNCW radio station liquified all of their records, CD’s, and tapes. There, digging day after day until they tossed what was left, I’d dig through box after box with another weirdo. Since then, the accumulation of records and of paper have almost exclusively been a solitary one. Never dug through boxes of someone’s school photos (lots of pictures of Matt) or discarded bits of paper before with someone else. Unfortunately, I was on the clock. I had to get back to my house at my usual time, or the mess would have accumulated. I bid farewell to Tim and went back towards Winston-Salem.

When Miles was firmly engaged with his episodes, I started to bring in the boxes, first looking through them before taking them upstairs. The quick look was impressive, lots of zines and lots of meticulously organized pieces of paper. All of the Mike Dyar works were in one large envelope. All of the Ryosuke Cohen braincells were beside one another. I was impressed by the organization. Someone with such organizational skills could be disciplined enough to only keep the materials they were going to use. Once everything was upstairs awaiting further thumbing through, that feeling of anxiety started back up. What am I going to do with all of this new stuff?

Since writing the above, a couple days have passed. I finished up the last thing for this year. The desk is clean. The desk was clean. It took a few hours to sort through everything that Tim gave me. I made piles that I was going to donate, piles that I was going to keep, and piles that I was going to cut up. The latter part is going to take forever. I’ve already started. An hour of cutting barely collapsed the pile. To start, I’m going to make my usual brand of collages and then move out collaboratively. Might just send big piles of what I cut up for others to reassemble and then send around.

Thanks, Tim, for your generosity.