Philip Traylen on Substack

This is what happens when worlds collide and then mingle over time. Living cultures and languages evolve and transform. Thought experiment: people still say ‘Pick up!’ when calling a busy person’s mobile, even though nobody really uses landlines that require picking up anymore. What might future evolutions of that utterance involve? Maybe one day,

He seemed to be somehow sending up the awkwardness of the situation; even though he was famous, one of the rulers of the room, and even though he was obeying the conventions of the party—chatting, sipping—there was something about him that was simultaneously acknowledging its inherent awkwardness and subverting it. Something about him, like me, did

We no longer accept that writing must be lifeless, that it can only convey our tone of voice roughly and imprecisely, or that nuanced writing is the exclusive domain of professionals. We’re creating new rules for typographical tone of voice. Not the kind of rules that are imposed from on high, but the kind of rules that emerge from the collective p

These moments are not corporeal, they are a nod to the senses. A texture; a color. The black of ink; the kiss of rain. These things define the vibe while simultaneously freeing it from the burdens of definition, taking us urgently out of the body and transporting us to someplace softer, almost liminal.

vibes exist where time does not.

What’s cool about expressive lengthening is that, although it started as a very literal representation of longer sounds, it’s ended up creating a form of emotional expression that now has no possible spoken equivalent, making it more akin to its typographical cousins, all caps and italics.